This combination photo shows CPP founder Joma Sison (left) and President Rodrigo Duterte. INQUIRER FILES
MANILA, Philippines – A left-leaning youth group has contradicted communist leader Jose Maria Sison’s view that President Rodrigo Duterte can be the country’s greatest president, saying he should not get a free pass for merely implementing the communist demands.
According to the Samahan ng Progresibong Kabataan (Spark), Sison might be “losing his touch” with the realities in the Philippines if he believes that Duterte can be considered as such, amid his attacks on workers and activists nationwide.
“Could he be losing his touch on the actual social conditions of the Philippines to be making such a statement in light of the recent intensifying fascist attacks of the Duterte regime on the masses of workers and other marginalized sectors of society?” Spark asked in a statement on Monday.
“SPARK asserts that simple meager economic and political compromises are not enough to clear Duterte of his innumerable crimes against the working class and the rest of the toiling masses,” the group added.
Sison’s statement was carried out in a Philippine Daily Inquirer story on Sunday, where he said that the condition for Duterte to become the greatest was to assert “national sovereignty and territorial integrity” and “economic and social reforms” that have been pushed by the communist movement since its inception.
“There would be lasting peace with the revolutionary movement,” Sison, founder of the Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP), said in an online interview from his base in Utrecht in The Netherlands.
The founder of the Communist Party of the Philippines was initially asked to react on the administration’s termination of the Visiting Forces Agreement (VFA) with the United States — perceived as an enemy by the communist rebels.
READ: Duterte can be greatest President yet – Joma Sison
However, Duterte has been criticized for other things apart from sovereignty and economic issues. One of the major spots on the government is its bloody war against illegal drugs, which has garnered condemnation from various local and international bodies.
As of December 2019, at least 5,500 drug suspects have died in legitimate police operations, although opposition groups believe the number could be even higher.
READ: Drug war deaths still at 5,500 mark—gov’t tally
Spark believes that even if Duterte would implement Sison’s wishes, it would not be enough to absolve him of responsibility in the killings.
“Even if Duterte would seriously implement the bourgeois demands of national industrialization and genuine land reform, it would not clear the blood stains of thousands of killings under the anti-poor drug war, the continuing capitalist domination of our politics, neoliberal economic policies that have harmed the most marginalized of Philippine society,” Spark said.
“SPARK maintains that it is not through the decisions of one elite politician that can reverse the fascism of Duterte, the domination of the capitalist ruling class in all spheres of social, cultural, political and economic life,” they added.
The relationship between the leftists and the Duterte administration has been unstable for most part. Initially, activists were given seats on the cabinet but these were rescinded after the communist rebels allegedly violated ceasefire agreements.
Recently, the President said that he is still open for the peace talks between the two parties, even if a national task force has been assigned to address local insurgencies.
READ: Duterte: Peace with NPAs may come ‘much earlier’