For the nth time, Reds willing to talk peace

MANILA, Philippines — The Communist Party of the Philippines-National Democratic Front (NDF) is open to talk peace with the government, CPP founding chairman Jose Ma. Sison said yesterday.

In a statement posted on the NDF website, Sison said he is ready to reciprocate the pronouncement of President Duterte that he is open to conduct peace talks with the NDF.

“Enemies need peace negotiations before they can become friends or partners for the sake of the Filipino people who desire social, economic and political reforms as basis for a just and lasting peace,” Sison said.

He said peace negotiation is a standing policy of the NDF despite his being locked in a verbal tussle with Duterte for the past several years, particularly in 2018.

“I welcome the statement of Duterte that he is still open to peace negotiations even as there is still an exchange of hostile words in the mass media and of bullets in the battlefield,” Sison said.

He said it is a consistent policy of the NDF to be open to peace negotiations with the Duterte regime despite the determination of the NDF to seek the ouster of this regime.

“It is for the benefit of the people that the peace negotiations resume and stop the Duterte regime from proclaiming martial law nationwide – from calling off or rigging the May 2019 elections to pursuing the scheme to imposing a fascist dictatorship on the Filipino people though charter change for a bogus kind of federalism,” Sison said.

He said the NDF presumes that when peace negotiations resume, the way is open to the forging of agreements on social, economic and political reforms that are desired and needed by the people.

Sison commented on the alleged failure of the government to destroy the revolutionary movement and the possible ouster of Duterte.

He said that in the last quarter of 2017, Duterte’s ranking military officials were claiming that they would destroy the CPP and its armed wing the New People’s Army (NPA) by the end of 2018.

“They utterly failed. They have moved their goal to the middle of 2019. They will certainly fail again. It is pure hallucination for them to imagine that they can easily destroy an armed revolutionary movement that has grown in strength by fighting a 14-year fascist dictatorship and the strategic plans of military suppression by a series of pseudo-democratic regimes,” he said.

“The reactionary military and police are in a more difficult situation than ever before. Their strength is limited and insufficient to destroy the revolutionary movement,” he added.

Sison said the reactionary government is bankrupt and offending the people by raising taxes that “are wasted on military expenditures, bureaucratic corruption, overpriced infrastructure projects and foreign debt service.”

He said the military and the police are ineffective against the revolutionary movement as “they serve the interests of a tyrannical regime and the exploiting classes of landlords and bureaucrat capitalists.