President Duterte troops the line during a visit to the First Scout Ranger Regiment at Camp Tecson in San Miguel, Bulacan, on Friday. On Thursday, he signed a proclamation ending peace talks with communist rebels. —JOAN BONDOC
There will be more blood. President Rodrigo Duterte, already being criticized for the bloodshed that marred his war on drugs, told soldiers to prepare for heightened violence following his decision to scuttle peace talks with communist rebels.
The rebels, Mr. Duterte told members of the First Scout Ranger Regiment, “will strike again.”
“There will be virulent confrontations,” he said a day after signing Proclamation No. 360 terminating peace talks with communist rebels.
“Be prepared for that,” said the President, who wore a Ranger uniform in a gesture that appeared to deliver the message that he was ready for a full-scale war with communist rebels.
CPP warning
The President issued the warning shortly after Jose Maria Sison, founder of the Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP), declared there would be more rebel attacks as a result of Mr. Duterte’s decision to end the talks.
Mr. Duterte told Rangers he would not allow the Armed Forces to be at a disadvantage in the war on the New People’s Army (NPA), the armed wing of CPP which has been waging a Maoist revolution for nearly 50 years.
“I will not allow a weak military or police,” he said at his speech at the Ranger camp in San Miguel, Bulacan.
“I intend to build a strong Armed Forces and police,” he said. “If I don’t they will just push us around,” Mr. Duterte said.
He said he was willing to spend more on weapons and war materiel for the military but that these should be brand new. “No more hand-me-downs,” the President said.
Open unofficial doors
War with the rebels was also the theme of Mr. Duterte’s speech to alumni of his alma mater, San Beda College.
“You can somewhat expect a more violent activity of all sorts,” he said.
A key ally of Mr. Duterte, however, said the government should not close all the doors to peace.
Senate President Aquilino Pimentel III, a top official of Partido Demokratiko Pilipino-Lakas ng Bayaban party which carried Mr. Duterte in the 2016 presidential election, said if official channels for talks with rebels had been closed there should be an effort to open unofficial ones.
“If the official door to peace talks is closed, we have to open unofficial doors,” said Pimentel in a radio interview on Friday.
He said the Senate or senators could serve as a bridge for peace.
“That openness must be there but I’m not saying that we’ve already established a connection,” Pimentel said.
He said he understood Mr. Duterte’s anger over soldiers and policemen getting killed outside of combat.
Feeling betrayed
In his speeches on Friday, the President tried to explain his decision to end the talks.
“Even if we talk for a thousand years, we can never reconcile our values,” said Mr. Duterte, who gained national prominence as mayor of Davao City for receiving captives freed by communist rebels operating in Davao.
He said he could not agree to a coalition government with the rebels. But Sison, self-exiled founder of CPP, said Mr. Duterte was lying about the coalition government.
Sison said talk about a coalition government came from Mr. Duterte, not the rebels. But Mr. Duterte said he studied the papers being discussed in the negotiations and felt that they all led to a coalition government.
The President said he was left with “no choice” but end the talks when rebels persisted in attacking government targets, collecting revolutionary taxes and attacking companies that refused to come across.
Inner conflict
Sison, however, said Mr. Duterte was suffering from a conflict between what he says and what he does.
“He vowed to wage war on drugs but the problem has become far worse because his own family was involved,” Sison said.
Mr. Duterte, added Sison, vowed to wipe out corruption “but he got himself elected to the presidency by allying himself with extremely corrupt families.”
The President said he decided to end the talks because he cannot give “a portion of sovereignty which nobody can own except the Filipino people.”
Mr. Duterte did not elaborate on what he meant by sovereignty, but part of the agenda in negotiations between government and rebel representatives were proposed agreements on social and economic reforms, including a more thoroughgoing land reform program.
Part of what drove him to end the talks, Mr. Duterte said, were continuing attacks by NPA even on policemen and soldiers just “going home to their families.”
He said he was also angered by the continued collection of taxes by rebels even when “we were talking already.”
“Let’s just shoot each other,” Mr. Duterte said. —WITH A REPORT FROM CARMELA REYES ESTROPE