Sison: So-called NPA hit list with Duterte on it ‘psy war’ of anti-peace talks execs

LUCENA CITY – Exiled Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP) founder Jose Maria “Joma” Sison branded as “psy war”, or psychological warfare, reports that President Rodrigo Duterte is on a communist hit list of assassination targets.

“I do not think so,” Sison replied to the Inquirer when asked if Mr. Duterte was on the assassination list of the New People’s Army, the CPP’s armed wing, in an online interview Wednesday (Dec. 18).

“The claim that Duterte is on the so-called NPA hit-list is malicious psy-war from (National Security Adviser Hermogenes Esperon) Esperon,” Sison said from his base in Utrecht in The Netherlands.

Esperon was former Armed Forces chief.

Early in the day, Brig. Gen. Jose Eriel Niembra, the commander of the Presidential Security Group (PSG) disclosed to journalists in Malacañang that Duterte was on the NPA target list based on a revelation by Esperon.

The PSG chief clarified that Mr. Duterte was on the hit list, not only of the NPA, but of drug lords and syndicates.

Sison claimed that Esperon and the other war hawks in the military “want to sabotage the planned resumption of the peace talks and wish to prevent the ceasefire for the holidays from Christmas to New Year.”

Sison said the National Democratic Front of the Philippines (NDFP), the political arm of the communist insurgents, had proposed to Duterte, through Labor Secretary Silvestre Bello III that goodwill measures be put in place during the holidays. Bello was head of the government peaxe panel.

The goodwill measure could take the form of reciprocal ceasefires between the NPA and the AFP-PNP and the release of sickly and elderly political prisoners on humanitarian grounds.

Edited by TSB