Lorenzana to Sison: Come back and you’ll end up in jail

Defense Secretary Delfin Lorenzana has warned Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP) founding chair Jose Maria Sison that he would be “made to account for [his] sins” over the years if he comes home from self-exile in the Netherlands.

Lorenzana made the statement on Thursday, contradicting President Duterte’s assurances in May that he would not order Sison’s arrest even “if nothing happens” in the peace negotiations between the government and the communist camp.

The President threatened to “kill” Sison, however, if the peace talks failed.

Mr. Duterte earlier canceled the peace talks, supposed to have resumed on June 28, saying he wanted more public consultations on the matter.

Lorenzana said Sison was “doomed to irrelevance … because the President has decided with finality that the talks would be held in our country.”

“You come back and you will end up in jail. Your country has progressed a lot despite your destabilization efforts for the past 49 years,” Lorenzana said.

“Or maybe you don’t want to come back because you will be made to account for your sins, like the Plaza Miranda bombing, [and] the mass liquidation of NPA (New People’s Army) cadres on suspicion of being deep penetration agents,” the defense chief added.

‘Biggest protectors’

Presidential spokesperson Harry Roque similarly dismissed Sison and refused to comment on the communist leader’s allegation that the President and his son, Paolo, Davao City’s resigned vice mayor, were the biggest protectors of the narcotics trade in the country.

“Now that peace talks are not being held, he is being irrelevant as far as I am concerned,” Roque said on Thursday.

In Davao City, Paolo, called Sison a “pathological liar” for accusing him and his father of being “the biggest protectors of the drug trade.”

In a forum with the Foreign Correspondents Association of the Philippines on Thursday, Sison claimed that the younger Duterte and his brother-in-law, Manases Carpio, were involved in drug smuggling.

‘Parroting a liar’

“It turns out his own son is involved in drug smuggling and his son-in-law. It turns out Peter Lim is the kumpadre (wedding cosponsor) of Duterte. In fact, I accuse Duterte of being the biggest protector of drug trade in the Philippines together with his son,” Sison said.

In a Facebook post on Friday, Paolo said Sison, a former professor of his father, was “completely losing it.”

“Mr. Sison, a pathological liar himself, is parroting a liar,” he added, referring to Sen. Antonio Trillanes IV, who has accused Paolo of involvement in the drug trade.

Paolo and Carpio, husband of Davao City Mayor Sara Duterte, the President’s daughter, were implicated in the P6.4-billion “shabu” (crystal meth) shipment that passed through the Bureau of Customs in 2017.

A Senate inquiry chaired by Sen. Richard Gordon, however, said there was not enough evidence to press charges against Paolo and Carpio.

In Legazpi City, local executives and the military said they were looking into the possibility of conducting peace talks with local rebels in their areas.

Mayor Noel Rosal, chair of the Regional Peace and Order Council, said on Thursday that the initiative for local peace talks was “on the drawing board of the council.”

But the National Democratic Front of the Philippines, the CPP’s political arm, has ruled out localized peace talks, saying the NPA, the CPP’s armed wing, was not authorized to engage in such matters. —WITH REPORTS FROM MAR S. ARGUELLES, DELFIN T. MALLARI JR., FRINSTON LIM AND JUDY QUIROS