NPA slams Davao City mayor over surrender call

DAVAO CITY, Philippines – The communist New People’s Army (NPA) called as stupid Mayor Sara Duterte’s appeal to local rebel leaders Kumander Parago and Ka Oda to surrender following the November 29 landmine explosion that killed three soldiers in Sitio Guinobatan, Paradise Embac in Paquibato district.

Rigoberto Sanchez, spokesperson of the NPA’s Merardo Arce Command, said in a statement e-mailed to the Inquirer that the mayor’s call only showed “her reactionary character,” and her being “unacquainted” with the NPA as a “revolutionary group” in the country’s “ongoing civil war.”

The NPA even compared the mayor with her father, the elder and former mayor Rodrigo Duterte, who “never disparaged Ka Parago and the NPA in his two decades as mayor.”

“Sara Duterte has made a sweeping call not even made by her father, long-time Davao City Mayor Rodrigo Duterte,” said the statement.

Duterte appealed to Parago and Oda to surrender following the death of three soldiers in a landmine explosion. She also told a local reporter she would be willing to sit down “with those who will lay down their arms.”

But Duterte said her “offer of peace and to sit down and talk is far from reactionary.”

“It’s in fact conciliatory. I know they would say no but I just wanted to show the people their rabid and vile reaction to a call for peace. So, who is stupid now?” she asked.

The NPA statement also criticized Duterte for defending the 69th Infantry Battalion of the 10th ID in connection with the NPA ambush in Paradise Embac.

It said that in defending the AFP, Duterte has condoned the impunity in which soldiers allegedly harassed and intimidated the communities.