NDFP: Duterte should assert authority over military

Fidel Agcaoili, (right) the spokesman of the National Democratic Front of the Philippines and Fr. Joel Tabora SJ., talk about the prospects for peace between the Philippine government and the New People’s Army on June 8, 2016, in Davao City. (Photo by KARLOS MANLUPIG/  INQUIRER MINDANAO FILE PHOTO

The National Democratic Front of the Philippines on Sunday urged President Rodrigo Duterte to assert his authority over the military to achieve lasting peace.

NDFP panel chairperson Fidel Agcaoili said that Defense Secretary Lorenzana and the military continue to look at the Communist Party of the Philippines/New People’s Army/NDFP as “enemies of the state.”

“For one thing, it is the AFP (Armed Forces of the Philippines) that is on the offensive with its continuing counter-insurgency program….They are not for peace. They are for continuing the war against the revolutionary forces and the people,” he said in a statement.

He pointed that out that peace talks are held precisely to find a political solution to address armed conflict. There needs to be drastic change of the status quo through social, economic and political reforms.

“Lorenzana and the war hawks are not for a political solution to the armed conflict but for surrender of the revolutionary forces without the needed reforms to change the status quo,” Agcaoili said.

He said that some of the “war hawks” in the government side have “narrow thinking and are incapable to comprehend that there is a need for political solution to the armed conflict.

Last week, Duterte said there will be no peace deal with the communists if the rebels continue to kill state security forces.

Agcaoili said that peace is not just absence of fighting but a lasting peace based on social justice, human dignity, eradication of poverty, assertion of national sovereignty, and independence from foreign domination.

In the next round of talks from May 27 to June 1 in the Netherlands, both negotiating panels from the government and the NDFP will discuss the Comprehensive Agreemeent on Social and Economic Reforms (CASER), which tackles foreign policy, agrarian reform, among other things.

Agcaoili said that the CASER is the “meat” of the peace negotiations. “Only then will there be discussion on the final end to hostilities.”/rga