Jose Maria Sison, founding chairman of the Communist Party of the Philippines (File photo from Philippine Daily Inquirer)
LUCENA CITY — Exiled Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP) founder Jose Maria “Joma” Sison denied that the communist rebels were in cahoots with the Magdalo group and Liberal Party to topple the Duterte administration.
“The broad united front promoted by the CPP against the Duterte tyranny is open to all patriotic forces,” Sison said in an online interview from his base in Utrecht, The Netherlands.
“But as far as I know, there are yet no talks between the CPP and Trillanes group or the Liberal Party,” he said, referring to Sen. Antonio Trillanes IV, who was of the Magdalo, which was involved in the 2003 Oakwood mutiny and the 2007 Manila Peninsula siege.
President Rodrigo Duterte, in a televised interview with his chief presidential legal counsel, Salvador Panelo, said he had evidence to prove that his political opponents, the communists, and the Magdalo group were conspiring to overthrow him.
He said his evidence included a conversation provided by a foreign country sympathetic to his administration.
Sison said there had never been any discussion between him or the CPP with Trillanes or the Liberal Party about ousting Duterte from power.
However, he stressed that it was no secret that the revolutionary movement would wish “to promote a broad united front of patriotic forces and encourage the broad masses of the people in their millions to rise up and oust Duterte,” as Marcos was ousted in 1986 and Estrada in 2001.
Sison said: “Duterte is now worried to death and so desperate as to imagine that he would be ousted this coming October.”
He accused the President of “lying and bluffing” by claiming that there were recorded conversations between the CPP and the other plotters provided by a foreign government.
“I know Duterte long enough as a congenital liar and an incorrigible political swindler. And I challenge him to present publicly what he claims as recorded conversations,” Sison said.
He said: “The experts will easily expose the fakery if he dares to present anything. This could be something like his invented foreign bank accounts of Trillanes.”
Sison said Duterte’s ouster would happen when military and police forces withdraw support from him “upon the sight and inspiration of the rising people in their millions throughout the archipelago.”
However, Sison admitted that it might take a little more time to build up the broad united front and the mass movement and prepare the way for the key military and police officers to withdraw support from the President.
“At any rate, Duterte will be lucky if he survives 2018 and even luckier if he survives middle of 2019,” the rebel leader said.
He said the President was facing the threat of a determined Filipino people to oust him, considering his deteriorating physical and mental health. /atm