“Duterte is showing complete antipathy towards holding serious peace negotiations with the NDF, and merely wants to hold hostage and completely paralyze the talks,” the CPP said.
The CPP said Duterte wants to use the cancellation of the agreements to resume talks with the NDF to justify his total war and advance his scheme to establish “a fascist dictatorship and impose nationwide martial law.”
On the basis of the unrevoked Proclamation Nos. 360 and 374 as well as recent announcements and indications being made by Duterte himself and other GRP officials, many people expect that Duterte will make from his ¨review¨ certain conclusions and demands that he will try to impose on the NDFP and that NDFP will certainly refuse, thus rendering impossible peace negotiations between GRP and NDFP, at least for as long as Duterte is in power.
“It’s not negotiable,” he told reporters. “No way peace talks held in the Philippines can be protected and spared from sabotage by spoilers and enemies of a genuine peace process.”
Reacting to presidential spokesperson Harry Roque’s announcement Monday Duterte no longer wants a third party facilitator in the peace talks between the Government of the Republic of the Philippines (GRP) and the NDFP, Sison said the president is “willfuly and maliciously killing the peace negotiations by breaking the standing GRP-NDFP agreement on foreign neutral venue and dismissing the third party facilitator.”
Revolutionaries do not negotiate under the terms and conditions “of an emergent fascist dictatorship and in a place where mass murders are occurring with impunity,” said Sison, chief political consultant to the National Democratic Front of the Philippines (NDFP), the CPP’s political arm that is negotiating with the government.
The stand-down agreement precludes government forces and the rebels from committing “any offensive action or operation against combatants and civilians.”
Both sides will also “stay where they are” and “take an active defense mode,” according to a copy of the deal obtained by ABS-CBN News.
The agreement will then be replaced by a clearer and more binding coordinated unilateral ceasefire deal once formal talks resumed.
Sison said the thrice-cancelled fifth round of formal talks shall push through on June 28 to 30, contrary to GRP President Rodrigo Duterte’s latest statement that the negotiations would resume sometime in mid-July.
Advocate Surendra Gadling, professor Shoma Sen and activist Mahesh Raut were taken from their homes in the city of Nagpur. In a coordinated operation, the police also arrested activists Sudhir Dhawale in Mumbai and Rona Wilson in Delhi.
Latest suggestion from the GRP is to start the stand down on June 21 instead of June 14. The exact date will be known only from the joint announcement to be made by the GRP and NDFP on or about June 9.
However, the chief executive “has said worse things before and has also taken back these things,” said National Democratic Front of the Philippines consultant Rey Casambre.
