President Duterte has just over a month to go in his six-year term. He could help much in enabling the succeeding administration to resume the GRP-NDFP peace talks, by removing a number of obstacles that his presidency has put in place.
NDFP Negotiating Panel interim chairperson Julie de Lima said Loida Magpatoc is a member of the NDFP Reciprocal Working Committee on Social and Economic Reform and should be immune from arrest.
“It is important that peace talks continue as this is one of the avenues to resolve the roots of armed conflict.”
Church leaders expressed alarm and concern at the deteriorating prospects for peace as shown by the Rodrigo Duterte government’s demonization of human rights.
“Ka Fidel V. Agcaoili, my counterpart in the peace table in our efforts to try to end the decades-long armed conflict with the CPP-NPA (New People’s Army)-NDF, was a man of honor and conviction.” — government negotiator Silvestre Bello III
Over the last four years of Rodrigo Roa Duterte’s presidency, we may have gotten used to seeing, hearing, or reading about how he has tended to say one thing and, in the same instance, he walks back on that statement and states the opposite. This happened again last Tuesday during his weekly late-night televised address…
Jose Maria Sison said the NDFP is not assured and satisfied that the ceasefire announcement is based on national unity against Covid-19, the appropriate solution of the pandemic as a medical problem and the protection of the most vulnerable sectors of the population, including workers, health workers, those with any serious ailments and the political prisoners.
By DEE AYROSO
Peace talks comes primarily because in the country’s hinterlands, a people’s army, guided by a communist party, is building organs of democratic political power. And in various sites, the communist bid for land redistribution, national industrialization, and a participatory planned economy through socialism is paralleled by organized, institutionalized and legitimate endeavors pursuing the same vision. This is enough for a government that is provisionally hijacked by compradors and imperialists to talk peace and reforms.
“Even after they argued that the warrant was outdated and showed the dismissal order, they were taken to Camp Caringal where the Criminal Investigation and Detection Unit and the District Special Operations Unit desperately scrambled to add charges.”
Scores of NDFP consultants were killed in police raids. The others were charged with common crimes to hide the political motive behind their arrest and detention and to portray them as ordinary criminals. Their lawyers have maintained that the evidence against them were planted.