Top Reds’ wives also longing for home

LONGING TO COME HOME After 30 years of living in exile in The Netherlands, Juliet de Lima and husband, Communist Party of the Philippines founder JoseMaria Sison, look forward to returning home. PHOTO FROM NDF WEBSITE

LUCENA CITY—For the wives of top leaders of the Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP), the biggest plus in a Duterte presidency—and its promise of peace talks with the CPP—is the prospect of coming home after 30 years of exile in The Netherlands.

“I miss most our relatives and friends, the food and the sights and sounds of places we were familiar with,” Juliet de Lima-Sison told the Inquirer in an online interview on Wednesday.

Juliet Sison and her husband, CPP founder Jose Maria Sison, went into exile after the 1986 Edsa People Power Revolution that ousted strongman President Ferdinand Marcos and settled in Utrecht, The Netherlands.

Consuelo “Coni” Ledesma, wife of National Democratic Front of the Philippines (NDFP) peace panel chair Luis Jalandoni, was as elated and said she hoped she would be coming home for good this time.

“The Philippines is home, and even if we’re able to return more often now than before, every time we return, I still experience the joy and happiness of returning,” Ledesma said in a separate online interview.

Presumptive President-elect Rodrigo Duterte said he would allow Sison, his former college professor, and other exiled communist leaders to return to the country for the resumption of peace talks.

Juliet Sison, who chairs the NDFP Reciprocal Working Committee on Social and Economic Reforms, promised that the NDFP panel would work hard with representatives of the Duterte administration in forging a peace agreement.

“It appears that [Duterte] has the political will and should be encouraged to take initiatives in advancing the peace negotiations,” she said.

She added that her husband, the chief political consultant of the NDFP, was also looking forward to the prospect of coming home and “meeting with representatives of [Duterte] and to … drafting papers in connection with the peace negotiations.”

In an earlier interview, Jose Maria Sison said he and Duterte were planning to meet somewhere in Europe before the latter assumes office on June 30.

Coni Ledesma said that already, her husband was updating himself on news about the Philippines through the Internet.

“We sleep late to get the morning news from the Philippines. And once in a while, a telephone call in the middle of the night means an interview from a Philippine radio station,” she said. Delfin T. Mallari Jr., Inquirer Southern Luzon