‘Localized peace talks aimed to isolate Joma Sison’

MANILA, Philippines — The government’s localized peace negotiation is aimed to isolate National Democratic Front chief political consultant and Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP) founder Jose Maria Sison from revolutionaries, the NDF national council said last Monday.

“Localized peace talks are a vain attempt to isolate (Sison) from the mass of revolutionaries, because of the crucial role he plays in the (negotiations). It could hardly be a coincidence that the latest vilification (against Sison) has come on the eve of the Duterte regime’s issuance of its guidelines on the localized talks,” said the NDF statement on its website.

Calling the localized talks a worn-out tactic of past administrations, the NDF said these have failed because revolutionaries – their armed wing New People’s Army (NPA) – oppose the form of negotiation.

“Localized talks are a classic divide and rule tactic. The idea is to hoodwink local CPP leaders and NPA commanders into agreeing to local ceasefire arrangements and later on induce them to surrender,” the NDF said.

NDF claimed that the NPA National Operations Command has exposed the fakery in these mass surrenders by pointing out that ordinary civilians, ex-guerrillas and even paramilitary elements are presented as surrenderees so that high-ranking military officials could pocket the millions of pesos in funds allotted for this program.

“Regional CPP leaders and NPA commanders fully support the NDF negotiating panel in the peace negotiations with the government. The CPP, NPA and other allied organizations of the NDF are of one mind that the peace talks must address wholly the social, economic and political roots underlying the armed conflict,” the NDF said.

 NDF said regional revolutionary forces are already issuing statements repudiating the Duterte administration’s localized peace talks scheme. 

“Only deluded minds like those of (Defense Secretary Delfin Lorenzana) and his band of militarists are desperate enough to make another stab at this failed and worthless tactic,” the NDF said.

‘Daydreaming’

Localized peace talks are absurd and stupid, Sison said last Monday. 

“You are daydreaming if you think that you can divide and disintegrate the united nationwide armed revolutionary movement led by the (CPP) by trying in vain to stage so-called localized peace talks,” Sison said.

Sison added that localized peace talks are “little zarzuelas (musical plays) staged by the military and local peace and order councils for (psychological war) purposes and for pocketing public funds in the name of fake surrenders.”

The NDF chief negotiator said Duterte and Lorenzana should admit that “you have all along been sabotaging the (peace negotiations), canceling and terminating these so often due to your failure to reduce them to mere surrender negotiations.”

Sison concluded that Duterte has never been interested in pursuing sincere and serious peace negotiations with the NDF, citing the President’s repeated termination of the talks. 

“He was merely play-acting when he said he would like to make peace with the people’s revolutionary movement and become the first left and socialist president of the (country),” Sison said.     

After Duterte assumed office, Sison said, the President withdrew his promise to grant amnesty and release all political prisoners.

“In violation of The Hague Joint Declaration of 1992, he kept on making preconditions amounting to the surrender of the revolutionary forces,” Sison said.

Blame game

Meanwhile, blaming the assassination of local government officials on the NPA is meant to hide the real culprits and justify nationwide martial rule, the NDF national council said.

“The Duterte regime is making these ridiculous accusations in a futile attempt to muddle what Duterte himself had already impliedly admitted when he said mayor Antonio Halili of Tanauan City was killed because of his involvement in the illegal drug trade,” the NDF said.

The NDF added that the Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency has also made disclosures that some of the mayors and vice mayors killed were on the government’s list of narco-politicians. 

“The growing number of local government officials getting killed – the 12th to date being the vice mayor of a Tawi-Tawi town – is clearly part and parcel of the Duterte regime’s brutal campaign against illegal drugs that has already killed more than 20,000 people,” the NDF said.

The NDF claimed that earlier in the campaign, “the police had even engineered the gangland-style murder of Albuera mayor Rolando Espinosa Sr. right inside his jail cell and boasted about it.”

“But not only is the Duterte regime trying to hide its hands in these killings, it is making the NPA the scapegoat in a malevolent scenario-building scheme to justify the imposition of nationwide martial law,” the NDF added.