EDITORIAL - Give peace a chance

The threat of the communist New People's Army to launch attacks ahead of planned peace talks in Oslo later this month against the military and companies and local government officials who do not pay revolutionary taxes should serve as an eye-opener to the government.

For so long the government has acted in good faith, pinning its hopes of resolving the insurgency on the negotiating table. It is time it opened its eyes to the reality that negotiated peace has never been in the agenda of the communists.

Just take a look at the kind of language the communists are using. Justifying its threat to carry out the attacks, the communists say there is a need to punish human rights violators. But isn't this duplicitous in light of the same threat to attack firms that do not come across?

What crimes have these companies committed other than to refuse paying taxes to entities that do not have the slightest shred of authority to levy taxes? There is a word to describe such imposition but the communists never use it to describe their own actions.

One of the clearest indications that peace has never been on the agenda of the communists is the fact that ever since the movement's inception in 1969, no government seemed ever good enough for it to deal with peacefully.

There has never been a single president that the communists and its front organizations have not rallied or protested against as part of their never-ending program to destabilize and undermine government.

Nobody begrudges the communists their quest for ascendancy and legitimacy in the marketplace of ideas. Even the mature democracies of Europe and elsewhere have seen the wisdom of assimilating them into broader society. But they have to relinquish violence, which they did.

But the communists in the Philippines seem to have other ideas. They seem to equate ascendancy and legitimacy only through victory in armed conflict. That is a rather antiquated view of the modern world, to say the least. It is time to give peace a chance.