Gov’t, Reds still willing to resume peace talks

THE TWO sides stepped back from the brink on Sunday, keeping the door open for a ceasefire, possibly a negotiated truce the next time around.

President Duterte lifted the unilateral truce with the communist New People’s Army (NPA) on Saturday evening, six days after a ceasefire was declared as a goodwill gesture ahead of formal peace negotiations in Oslo, Norway, next month.

The move came after the National Democratic Front of the Philippines (NDFP), the umbrella organization for the Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP) and the NPA, failed to respond to a deadline to reciprocate the government’s declaration.

“We may work out a negotiated truce with the communists,” said Jesus Dureza, presidential peace adviser. “It was in our agenda when the formal peace talks resume in Oslo. The peace talks will go on as scheduled.”

“I am ready for any effort to pave the way and move the peace negotiations forward,” CPP founder Jose Maria Sison said in an online interview with the Inquirer on Sunday from his exile home in the Netherlands.

“Although there is no longer a Duterte unilateral ceasefire to reciprocate, the CPP can still decide to issue a unilateral ceasefire order,” Sison said.

He said this would take effect “only upon reciprocation by the [government] or [President] Duterte and upon the fulfillment of certain considerations, like ensuring ceasefire by the AFP (Armed Forces of the Philippines) and PNP (Philippine National Police) and their armed auxiliaries and the release of all political prisoners through amnesty.”

 ‘Peace saboteurs’

Sison hinted that “peace saboteurs” in the Duterte administration had wanted to prevent the release of political prisoners and also to put the NDFP in a bad light. He did not identify them, though.

The peace talks, brokered by Norway, will resume on Aug. 20, four years after bogging down due to the NDFP demand  that 500 political prisoners be released. The Duterte administration has given its promise to free them for health and humanitarian reasons.

SISON: I amready for any effort to pave the way and move the peace negotiations
forward. INQUIRER PHOTO

Dureza said he welcomed the statement from Sison, who told a local TV interviewer hours after Duterte withdrew the ceasefire that the communists had also intended to impose a truce but it was overtaken by events.

High alert

“This is what we have been waiting for,” Dureza said in an official statement. “The leadership of the CPP/NPA/NDFP announced through the media its belated but still strategic and awaited decision to also declare its own unilateral ceasefire.”

Mr. Duterte was also angered by reports that NPA rebels had killed a militiaman and wounded four others in an ambush on Wednesday as they were returning to an Army base in Davao del Norte to comply with the government’s unilateral truce.

On Saturday night, he recalled his ceasefire order after a 5 p.m. deadline he had set passed without a response from communist leaders.

After the revocation, the President ordered the AFP and the PNP  to resume combat operations against threats to national security.

The PNP chief, Director General Ronald dela Rosa, on Sunday directed the lifting “effective immediately” of the suspension of police operations and told troops to be “on high alert and continue to discharge their normal functions and mandate to neutralize all threats to national security.”

Normal mandate

On Saturday, Gen. Ricardo Visaya, AFP chief of staff, ordered “all our forces to resume their normal mandate tasks and work to neutralize all threats to national security, protect the citizenry, enforce the laws and maintain peace in the land.”

The AFP public affairs chief, Col. Edgard Arevalo, said before the President’s revocation of the ceasefire that the Philippine Army had completed the pullout of the 2nd Special Forces Battalion from San Miguel, Surigao del Sur province, on Visaya’s orders.

He reiterated that Citizens Armed Force Geographical Unit (Cafgu) forces were pulling out in Kapalong town, Davao del Norte province, on Wednesday when they were attacked by the NPA.

Extra mile for peace

“The pullout was in compliance with the President’s directive to step back from the operational area where there are likely armed engagement between government security forces and members of the communist forces,” Arevalo said.

In a statement on Sunday, Dureza defended the President’s decision to end the short-lived suspension of hostilities against the Moist insurgents.

“It is very clear that the President walked the extra mile for peace. And no doubt, he will still continue to do so at any given opportunity,” he said.

Cabinet meeting

Without providing details, Dureza said he would recommend the government’s appropriate response to the President and the members of the Cabinet during their scheduled meeting in Malacañang today.

In an earlier interview over ABS-CBN News Channel, Sison called Mr. Duterte, his former student, a “bully” for compelling the NPA to bow to his call for peace within the period the President had set.

Sison, who had expressed his intention to return home from Utrecht amid the Duterte administration’s openness to broker a peace agreement with the CPP, said the President’s behavior was “thuggish.”

“If he doesn’t want peace, so be it,” said the 77-year-old Sison, who has been seeking to overthrow the government for over four decades. With a report from the wires