Duterte ready for mutual truce with Reds

APPEAL In a speech in Digos City on Sunday, President Duterte calls on the communist New People’s Army to stop its attacks and says he is ready for a mutual ceasefire with the rebels. MALACAÑANG PHOTO

President Rodrigo Duterte on Saturday urged the Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP) to “please stop waging war” against the government, warning that the military might stop supporting the peace process.

Mr. Duterte said he was ready to declare a “total ceasefire” if the CPP and its armed wing, the New People’s Army (NPA), were also prepared to declare a truce.

“Would you please stop waging war against [the government] … If we are to talk in the future, then stop waging war because these soldiers also might not want to talk anymore,” the President said at the 50th founding anniversary of Davao del Sur in Digos City.

“You decide. Do not create something which is not acceptable also to me and to the guys doing the fighting,” he said. “I do not control everything and I cannot control everybody.”

Ready to reciprocate

Mr. Duterte said he was ready to reciprocate if the communist insurgents would declare a truce while the government was trying to resolve the crisis in Marawi, where government forces had been battling Islamic State-inspired terrorists since May 23.

“I ask the NPA now … tell them that they can announce and I will announce a total ceasefire in the meantime that we are busy with the problem in Marawi,” Mr. Duterte said.

On June 16, the National Democratic Front of the Philippines recommended to the CPP to order the NPA to stop offensives in Mindanao while government forces were fighting terrorists in Marawi.

Two days later, Labor Secretary Silvestre Bello III, the chief government peace negotiator, said the government would also stop offensives against the insurgents.

But that same day, the NPA raided a police station in Maasin, Iloilo province.

“What is it really all about? Are you going to stop the attacks or are we going to talk?” the President said on Saturday.

“If you want to stop firing, you want to talk to us, then my God, please stop killing us,” he added.

Speaking in Davao City on Thursday night, the President chided the communist rebels for attacking government troops.

“Those at the top say they have ordered a [stop to] attacks [on] government forces and yet we continue to read that a detachment here has been burned, a soldier is killed … How can that be?” Mr. Duterte said.

“I am angry … the right hand does not know what the left hand is doing,” he added.

On May 27, the government peace panel withdrew from the fifth round of peace talks with the rebels in the Dutch city of Noordwijk after the CPP ordered the NPA to step up attacks on security forces after the President declared martial law in all of Mindanao following the rampage of terrorists through Marawi.

Later, the CPP offered to send the NPA to fight alongside the military against the terrorists in Marawi, but Mr. Duterte spurned the offer.