GRP-NDF peace talks: Clarifying certain points

After its widely welcomed announcement that peace negotiations will be resumed with the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF), and the National Democratic Front of the Philippines (NDFP), the Aquino government is already committing blunders.

Why? The government has not defined a clear-cut path towards achieving a mutually acceptable negotiated settlement with each of the two revolutionary movements. It also seems unwilling to break away from its predecessors’ self-imposed constraints and obstructions to the talks.

Last September, Malacanang rebuffed the newly-named head of the GRP panel to negotiate with the MILF, UP College of Law Dean Marvic Leonen, after he told media that amending the Constitution could be among the possible steps towards forging a peace agreement. No, a Palace spokesperson said, the government won’t allow constitutional change. That rebuff may have stalled the resumption of the talks, originally set after the end of Ramadan in late September.

This week that penchant to rebuff came up again and may also delay the resumption of the GRP-NDFP peace talks, suspended since August 2004. Presidential spokesperson Edwin Lacierda brushed aside a proposed courtesy call on Mr. Aquino in December by NDFP peace panel head Luis Jalandoni and panel member Coni Ledesma. Lacierda reportedly said in a press briefing, “I think it will be better for the NDF to visit the Palace with a signed peace agreement.”

Last Oct. 21 the head of the GRP negotiating panel, Health Undersecretary Alexander Padilla, had struck a note of optimism by saying the government hoped to resume the peace talks before year-end “without any preconditions.” Welcoming the NDFP’s return goodwill gesture would have helped the process along.

Let’s look into the implications of the administration’s bungling, and other issues that have caused the repeated, prolonged suspensions of the peace talks, particularly the GRP-NDFP negotiations that began in 1992 under the Ramos administration.

1. Constitutional amendments inevitably come within the purview of peace negotiations, both with the MILF and the NDFP, in consonance with political arrangements that may be arrived at in a final settlement. No Constitution is deemed immutable; it undergoes amendments to adjust to changing conditions. Still, the second Aquino administration apparently eschews the idea that amending the Constitution can be part of peace negotiation. (In the GRP-NDFP talks, political and constitutional reforms rank third in the sequence of discussions of the four-point agenda).

Repeated insistence by the GRP, under different administrations, that all negotiating points and agreements must conform with the existing Constitution have caused deadlocks in the talks.

And for good reason: such insistence is tantamount to demanding capitulation to the authority of the GRP, even as negotiations have yet to begin.

2. President Aquino’s hedging on whether or not to welcome the NDFP representatives indicates a lack of clear policy, and of hindsight, since there’s a precedence. In 1998 President Ramos received Mr. Jalandoni in Malacanang.

That meeting led to the signing by the GRP and NDFP panels of the Comprehensive Agreement on Respect for Human Rights and International Humanitarian Law (CARHRIHL), the first agenda topic that took years to negotiate. The European Union hailed the CARHRIHL as an unprecedented agreement for providing a good mechanism to address HR and IHL (laws of war) violations in an armed conflict.

In fact, all the breakthroughs and advances in the peace talks, though slow-paced, happened under the Ramos administration. Yet, Ramos had opposed the first GRP-NDFP peace talks initiated, but dropped within seven months, by the Cory Aquino government in 1986-87.

Mr. Aquino told reporters on Nov. 1 that he had to consult first with his peace adviser Ging Deles and Undersecretary Padilla. “If I don’t listen to their advice, why appoint them in the first place?” he explained. That is characteristic candor on the President’s part. But how explain Mr. Lacierda’s gratuitous statement in his behalf?

3. As regards the NDFP’s demand that the GRP work on removing the CPP-NPA and Jose Ma. Sison from the terrorist lists of the US and the EU, Deles claimed the government couldn’t do anything. “That’s something beyond our control,” she said. That’s a lie she picked up from Gloria Arroyo. The inclusion in those lists was upon Arroyo’s behest. Deles should know; she was also Arroyo’s peace adviser.

In November 2001, Arroyo visited George W. Bush in Washington DC and urged him to include the CPP-NPA and Sison in the US terrorist list. A year later, the late Foreign Affairs Secretary Blas F. Ople toured EU member states urging them to include the CPP-NPA and Sison in the EU list. I was in Europe then, I trailed Ople’s tour, and questioned him in the House of Representatives during deliberations on the DFA budget why he did that. To pressure the NDFP to sign a peace accord, he replied.

In the quest for peace, President Aquino has promised to pursue his mother’s mantra: to “address the root causes of the armed conflict.” He must earnestly do that. And, hopefully, listen to advice other than that of his peace adviser.