Año dismisses Day 2 truce marking CPP’s 57th anniversary
MANILA, Philippines — National Security Adviser Eduardo Año on Friday dismissed the unilateral ceasefire declaration of the Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP) as the first part of its truce order on its armed wing New People’s Army reaches its second day.
Año made this remark on Friday as the CPP commemorates its 57th founding anniversary through a truce rejected by the military.
READ: Reds’ unilateral ceasefire begins, but Army says ops continue vs NPA
However, CPP said the NPA rebels are ordered to be in “active defense mode” and to be on “high alert” during the four-day truce.
“Declarations of temporary ceasefires, when coupled with explicit calls for continued armed readiness, merely show insincerity for genuine public safety and community welfare,” Año said in a statement.
CPP’s central committee said the first part of the truce will run from 00:00 hours (12 midnight) of Dec. 25 to 23:59 hours (11:59 p.m.) of Dec. 26. NPA will also observe the second two-day ceasefire from 00:00 hours of Dec. 31 until 23:59 hours of Jan. 1, 2026.
In a Dec. 26 statement, the Maoist central committee also said the NPA achieved “modest advances” while admitting that some areas have “lagged and some have suffered losses due to still unrectified weaknesses.”
“Some units have more advanced experience in rectification and rebuilding, while many are catching up, even as some lag behind,” the CPP said.
For his part, NTF-Elcac executive director Ernesto Torres Jr. dismissed the “rectification” talk of the CPP.
“Militarily and politically, the NPA is now fragmented and depleted,” Torres said in a statement.
“Fifty-seven years on, what remains is not a mass movement but a sunken organization clinging to an outdated ideology,” he also said.
CPP was established on December 26, 1968, with its armed wing, NPA, being created later on March 29, 1969, to wage the world’s longest Maoist insurgency.
Since then, the total number of NPA members has dropped to around 780, Torres has said, far from its peak in 1987 when the Maoist guerrillas had up to 25,000 members. /cb
