LUCENA CITY, Quezon—A leader of the Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP) will pose no objection if President Aquino appoints a former military official and the chief architect of the anti-insurgency blueprint Oplan Bayanihan to head the government peace negotiating panel.
Jose Maria Sison, founder of the CPP, said the National Democratic Front of the Philippines (NDFP) had been informed since last month that retired Armed Forces chief of staff
Gen. Emmanuel Bautista was being considered to lead the government peace panel in the planned resumption of the peace negotiation next month to once more try to find solutions to end more than four decades of bloody armed conflict.
“We have offered no objection because he has already retired from the military service,” Sison, also the NDFP chief political consultant, said in an online interview from Utrecht, Netherlands, on Sunday.
The NDFP is the political arm of the CPP that has been engaged in a protracted peace negotiation with the government for the past 27 years.
The exploratory talks came to an abrupt end after both parties failed to reach a settlement particularly on issues over the release of detained communist rebels and a long ceasefire.
The Office of the Presidential Adviser on the Peace Process (Opapp) has reportedly recommended to the President the appointment of Bautista as the government’s chief peace negotiator with the NDFP.
Bautista was credited as the brains behind the Internal Peace and Security Plan, known as Oplan Bayanihan,to end the 46 years of rebellion by the New People’s Army, the CPP’s military arm, before the end of President Aquino’s term in 2016.
The military plan involves the participation of all stakeholders with greater emphasis on noncombat means to end the communist rebellion.
Karapatan, a militant group of human rights advocates, however, said Oplan Bayanihan was behind the spate of killings of political activists and massive human rights violations among civilians.
In August, Bautista was appointed executive director of the Cabinet Cluster on Security, Justice and Peace with the rank of undersecretary.
Bautista was AFP chief of staff from January 2013 until he stepped down last June after reaching the mandatory retirement age of 56.
In an interview in March, Sison had expressed his desire that the government panel should be headed by the likes of former government negotiating panel chair and now 1 Bap Rep. Silvestre H. Bello III and the late Tarlac Rep. Jose Yap.
Sison said Bello and Yap were both committed to the government side but know how to respond to the demands of the revolutionary movement for the sake of the people’s welfare.
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