GRP-NDFP Peace Talks Doomed?
Unless the Macapagal-Arroyo
administration complies with agreements it signed with the National
Democratic Front of the Philippines (NDFP), there is no way by which peace
talks between the two parties will resume.
By Bulatlat
Unless the Macapagal-Arroyo
administration complies with agreements it signed with the National
Democratic Front of the Philippines (NDFP), there is no way by which peace
talks between the two parties will resume.
The Netherlands-based
NDFP through its information director, Ruth de Leon, thus clarified April
2 in the wake of reports and feelers that the government of Macapagal-Arroyo
is seeking the resumption of peace talks with the underground Left.
President Gloria
Macapagal-Arroyo recently replaced Silvestre Bello III as chief of the
government negotiating panel with the appointment of Nieves Confesor,
labor secretary under President Fidel V. Ramos.
The government and
its armed forces also stand accused of being behind the series of summary
execution and abduction of political activists and personalities
associated with the Left – now numbering 33 since January this year. The
underground Left’s New People’s Army (NPA) remains the country’s top
national security threat, defense officials say.
The government, the
NDFP’s De Leon said in a statement emailed to the Philippine press, “is
responsible for having cumulatively built obstacles to the resumption of
formal talks in the GRP (for Government of the Republic of the
Philippines)-NDFP peace negotiations.”
In connivance with
the U.S. and other foreign governments, she said, the Macapagal-Arroyo
government has refused to remove the NPA and NDFP chief political
consultant Jose Maria Sison from the list of “foreign terrorists” in
violation of the principle of national sovereignty in The Hague Joint
Declaration, the safety and immunity guarantees in the Joint Agreement on
Safety and Immunity Guarantees (JASIG) and the basic democratic rights and
the Hernandez political offense doctrine in the Comprehensive Agreement on
Respect for Human Rights and International Humanitarian Law (CARHRIHL).
Contrary to a
commitment it made in 2001, the government has refused to release
political prisoners. It has also stepped up human rights violations, De
Leon said, “at the expense of suspected revolutionaries, legal
personalities and organizations and the broad masses of the people.”
Hit
list
Included in the
military hit list, she said, are Sison, senior legal adviser UN ad litem
Judge Romeo T. Capulong and nominees to the NDFP section of the Joint
Secretariat of the Joint Monitoring Commission under CARHRIHL.
The NDFP information
director also called the new GRP peace panel as “a phoney negotiating
panel headed by Nieves Confesor of the hang-Flor Contemplacion
notoriety.”
“This panel is phoney
because its sole objective is to prevent the resumption of formal talks by
preconditioning these with the pacification and capitulation of the NDFP
through a demand for ‘indefinite ceasefire,’” De Leon said.
Peace talks between
the two sides were supposed to resume after the May 2004 presidential
elections. The talks could not take off however following the NDFP’s
protest over the government’s refusal to honor the February 2004 Oslo
accord to work for the removal of Sison and the NPA from the “terrorist
lists.”
“The NDFP calls on
the GRP to comply with The Hague Joint Declaration and all other
agreements it has signed in the process of peace negotiations with the
NDFP,” the NDFP’s De Leon said. “The GRP should not obstruct, delay or
prevent the resumption of formal talks by trying to inveigle the NDFP into
accepting capitulation and pacification under the guise of prolonged or
indefinite ceasefire or to convert the peace negotiations into ceasefire
negotiations which obfuscate and lay aside the people's demands for
social, economic and political reforms.”
The NDFP includes the
Communist Party of the Philippines and NPA which have waged an armed
struggle against the U.S.-backed Philippines government since 1968. Peace
talks began in 1986 following the fall of the Marcos dictatorship and,
following a long suspension, resumed in 1992. Bulatlat
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