Key posts reserved for rebels

DAVAO CITY, Philippines – Communist chieftain Jose Ma. Sison is welcome to return to the country, and incoming president Rodrigo Duterte is reserving Cabinet posts for members of rebel groups.

Duterte yesterday said he is keeping the Department of Agrarian Reform (DAR), Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR), Department of Labor and Employment (DOLE), and even the Department of Social Welfare and Development open to the Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP), Moro Islamic Liberation Front and other rebel groups. 

“I have kept open DAR, DENR, and DOLE (for them) because they said they are the most oppressed. Those are the only departments I can concede to them, provided they are qualified educationally,” Duterte said at a press conference here. 

At the same time, Duterte said Sison, founding chairman of the CCP, will be welcome to return home after nearly three decades in exile and participate in peace talks.

Sison wrote in a Facebook post last week that he hoped to come home following the landslide victory of Duterte, with whom he has maintained ties while living in the Netherlands.

“I do not begrudge the NPAs (New People’s Army) in looking for firearms. But when I reach my oath-taking... they must realize I am the government and I am the enemy but I offer my hand in peace and we can talk,” he said.

Duterte on Sunday said Sison’s return to the Philippines would be important in helping to end the rebellion.

The insurgency is one of Asia’s longest and has claimed an estimated 30,000 lives since the 1960s.

“Yes, he is welcome. I am happy with the statement that he is coming home. I would very much want to talk to him about resolving the insurgency problem,” Duterte told reporters in Davao where he has served as mayor for most of the past two decades.

Sison, now 77, fled to Europe soon after peace talks failed in 1987.

The communists’ armed wing, the NPA, is believed to have fewer than 4,000 soldiers, down from a peak of 26,000 in the 1980s, according to the military.

However, it retains support among the deeply poor in the country.

Last Saturday, communists killed three soldiers in central Luzon, according to the military, in the first outbreak of deadly violence between the two sides since Duterte’s election win.

Duterte is due to be sworn into office on June 30.

Incumbent President Aquino revived peace talks soon after taking office in 2010 but shelved them in 2013, accusing the rebels of insincerity in efforts to achieve a political settlement.

The talks got bogged down after the communists demanded the release of scores of their jailed comrades whom they described as “political prisoners,” which the Aquino government rejected.

Duterte, who was Sison’s student at a Manila university in the 1960s, said he was even willing to comply with the communists’ demand to release their captured members.

“If I am satisfied we are dealing in good faith, I will consider releasing all political prisoners,” he said.

CPP growth seen

Meanwhile, the CPP executive committee released a document yesterday claiming to see the growth of communist insurgency under the incoming administration as the rebels raised the possibility of forging an alliance with Duterte’s government “within a framework of national unity, peace and development.”

The rebel document titled “Prospects under a Duterte presidency” dated May 15 said Duterte’s mettle is about to be tested.

“If Duterte fails or refuses to heed the people’s clamor, he is bound to end up a mere historical anomaly and suffer the same fate as the Estrada regime,” the CPP document said, referring to ousted president Joseph Estrada.

“The Filipino people are ever ready to intensify the people’s war to advance the revolution and mass struggles to amplify their democratic demands,” the CPP said.

The document said the NPA must continue to carry out the tasks set forth by the CPP central committee to intensify the people’s war by launching more frequent tactical offensives and seizing more arms from the enemy.