Joma thanks Duterte for releasing jailed NDFP consultants for peace talks

National Democratic Front (NDF) chief political consultant Jose Maria Sison talks to Philippine media at the NDF office in Utrecht. Photo by Kristine Angeli Sabillo/INQUIRER.net

LUCENA CITY, Quezon — Communist Party of the Philippines founder Jose Maria Sison thanked President Duterte on Tuesday, for assuring the rebel group that all consultants of the National Democratic Front of the Philippines (NDFP), the CPP’s political wing, would join the peace negotiations in Oslo, Norway next week.

“Once more, I am grateful to President Duterte for his good acts to move forward the peace negotiations between his government and the NDFP,” Sison told the Philippine Daily Inquirer through an online chat on Tuesday.

Sison acknowledged the President’s help in the release of jailed NDFP consultants protected by the Joint Agreement on Safety and Immunity Guarantees (JASIG).

In a statement, the government’s chief peace negotiator, Labor Secretary Silvestre Bello III, said Mr. Duterte gave the assurance to NDFP representatives during a meeting in Malacañang on Monday.

Mr. Duterte, during that meeting, had instructed the Bureau of Immigration and the Department of Foreign Affairs to process the documents of the consultants so they could travel to Oslo in time for the start of the formal peace talks, Bello said.

The NDFP has been demanding the release of detained communist leaders before the resumption of the talks, saying they were covered by provisions of JASIG signed by rebel leaders and government officials in 1995.

The peace talks will resume in Oslo on Aug. 22.

Sison said he and Mr. Duterte would continue to communicate during the negotiations.

“We intend to perform our respective parts in order to make the talks successful and beneficial to our people,” he said.

Sison noted that he and Mr. Duterte, his former student, remained friends despite what he described as a previous communication “glitch.”

Sison and Mr. Duterte had traded words after the CPP failed to reciprocate a unilateral ceasefire declared by the President during his State of the Nation Address last month.

The word war escalated and threatened to derail the talks, until the government assured the CPP that the peace negotiation would go on as scheduled this month.

Sison, who has been living in exile in Utrecht, The Netherlands since 1987, said his and Mr. Duterte’s friendship “has a strong basis in previous cooperation of long duration and in a common desire to serve the national and democratic rights and best interests of the Filipino people.”

“Furthermore, we have plenty of mutual friends who help maintain our friendship,” Sison said.  SFM