Joma Sison gives up on talking peace with Duterte

MANILA, Philippines — Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP) founding chairman Jose Ma. Sison is giving up on the possibility of talking peace with President Duterte.

Sison said Duterte should undergo psychiatric examination while his “parrot,” presidential spokesman Harry Roque, should have his head and mouth examined.

“At this juncture, I must say that it is too difficult or impossible to have any kind of serious conversation or negotiations anywhere with someone already crazed by power, Fentanyl and the drive for fascist dictatorship,” Sison said in a statement posted at the website of the National Democratic Front (NDF) yesterday.

Sison said Duterte is making scapegoats out of the CPP and New People’s Army (NPA) to justify martial law and military campaigns in the countryside.

“Duterte is either ignorant or merely contemptuous of the peace process. His complaints or allegations against the CPP and NPA can be easily submitted by his negotiating panel to the Joint Monitoring Committee created under the Comprehensive Agreement on Respect for Human Rights and International Humanitarian Law,” Sison said.

He said Duterte has a problem on his “mentality and behavior.”

Sison said Roque should have his head and mouth examined “for presuming that out of his own bloated sense of self-importance dependent on a nutty sh**hole he can evaluate and downgrade others who are very much beyond his sphere of psychopancy. He should realize by this time that human rights associations and activists are contemptuous of him as the servant of a monstrous human rights violator,” Sison said.

Sison said he is glad that Duterte, through Roque, has made himself clear that he never had the intention of meeting him.

“When I first read the report on Duterte´s interview with MindaNews I had some misgivings that he did not mean what he said because of his notoriety for saying one thing and then saying the opposite within a short period and also because of his arrogance and anger in setting some absurd preconditions,” he said.

Sison said his friends and lawyers reminded him of Duterte’s “treacherous character.”

“(There are) his previous threats to kill me and warned me against my meeting him in any place under his full control and under conditions of his proclaimed all-out war policy, martial law, termination of the peace negotiations and designation of the CPP-NPA and their suspected supporters as terrorists,” he said.

Tiamzons ordered re-arrested

Sison said he earlier suggested a neutral venue abroad for the one-on-one conversation with Duterte. 

“I cannot submit myself to the disposition of anyone that boasts of himself as a murderer with impunity at the age of 16 and as an instigator of mass murders that have already offended the Filipino people and other peoples of the world,” he said.

Sison earlier welcomed the gesture of Duterte for a one-on-one talk regarding the possibility of resuming peace negotiations.

He proposed that the meeting be held in a neighboring country.

Sison made the statement after Roque had said Duterte is open to having a private conversation with him.

Roque, however, added the President is not committing to the possibility of reopening the peace talks with the CPP-NPA.

Duterte ordered the cancellation of peace talks with the communist rebels, citing the treacherous attacks on government forces while holding negotiations with the NDF.

The NDF is the umbrella organization representing the CPP-NPA in the peace talks with the government.

Duterte ordered the military to arrest all communist rebels who were granted provisional freedom to participate in the botched peace talks as consultants.

The government, through a Supreme Court resolution, allowed the release of the rebel leaders to participate as consultants of the NDF in the peace talks in Norway.

One of the conditions was that once their participation ceases or the peace negotiations are terminated, the bail bonds shall be “deemed automatically canceled.”

This developed as the Manila regional trial court (RTC) yesterday ordered the re-arrest of couple Benito and Wilma Tiamzon, the suspected top leaders of the NPA.

Manila RTC branch 32 Judge Thelma Bunyi-Medina granted the motion for reconsideration filed by the Department of Justice to cancel the P100,000 bail of the Tiamzons and another rebel leader, Adelberto Silva.

The court said the Tiamzons were allowed to post bail only so they could participate in the peace process.

The Tiamzons were among those charged with murder in connection with the discovery of a mass grave in Leyte where victims of a communist rebel purge were buried in the 1980s. – Marc Jayson Cayabyab, Christina Mendez

Related video: