AFP still hopeful communists will give up armed struggle

AFP Chief of Staff General Emmanuel Bautista/ AFP Public Affairs Office

MANILA, Philippines – The military chief remains hopeful that communist rebels will abandon armed struggle despite their earlier statement that they will continue peace negotiations after the Aquino administration.

“Right now the talks with the Communist Party of the Philippines-National Democratic Front-New People’s Army are not moving forward. There are no talks going on right now but as far as we are concerned, from the Armed Forces point of view we want them to abandon the armed struggle,” said General Emmanuel Bautista, Armed Forces of the Philippines chief of staff, in a television interview Monday night.

“We are asking them to abandon the armed struggle. We have achieved all of these gains in the Internal Peace and Security Plan because we are now working with the rest of the nation,” he also said.

The IPSP is the military’s campaign plan against internal threats.

Jose Maria Sison, NDFP chief political consultant, said last month that there is no more chance of negotiating peace talks with the government under the Aquino administration.

“The NDFP policy is to negotiate with the government of the Republic of the Philippines (GPH) in accordance with The Hague Joint Declaration, Joint Agreement on Safety and Immunity Guarantees, the Comprehensive Agreement on Respect for Human Rights and International Humanitarian Law, and other agreements. The Aquino regime is responsible for paralyzing the peace negotiations by refusing to comply with these agreements,” Sison said in a statement released last month.

Sison said the current administration “has run away from peace negotiations,” adding that it could resume talks only “if it shows respect for and comply with existing agreements.”

The CPP-NDF-NPA had been waging war against the government in over four decades, seen as the world’s longest running communist rebellion.

“The Aquino regime is responsible for blocking the peace negotiations and is in contempt of the people who desire a just and lasting peace. In fact, the Aquino regime announced last April 2013 that it had already terminated the peace negotiations,” Sison added.

Talks between the NDFP and the government had been going on for the past 27 years. In 2011, both sides met in Norway but failed to reach an agreement on issues over the release of detained communist rebels and long ceasefire.

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