National Democratic Front of the Philippines
Negotiating Panel
Press Statement
By Fidel V. Agcaoili
Spokesperson of NDFP Panel Negotiating with the GPH (GRP)
19 May 2012
We in the Negotiating Panel of the National Democratic Front of the Philippines (NDFP) deplore recent statements made by GPH President Aquino against the NDFP and its Chief Political Consultant Prof. Jose Maria Sison. He made such recent statements in an interview with Radyo Bombo and this has been further circulated by certain newspapers.
Aquino practically accuses the NDFP of insincerity as the obstacle to peace. He exposes himself as the hypocrite who pays lip service to peace but is in fact obsessed with carrying out a brutal war under the US-instigated Oplan Bayanihan. He is not at all interested in serious peace negotiations but only in demanding the surrender and pacification of the revolutionary forces and people.
What is more insincere, hypocritical and deceptive than Aquino and his military minions calling their psywar, intelligence and combat operations “peace and development operations”. He used the formal talks in Oslo last year to start attacking the The Hague Joint Declaration as “a document of perpetual division” and to trash the other agreements, like the Joint Agreement on Safety and Immunity Guarantees (JASIG) and the Comprehensive Agreement on Respect for Human Rights and International Humanitarian Law (CARHRIHL), as worthless.
He condones the violations of JASIG and the CARHRIHL by the Arroyo regime. He refuses to investigate the extrajudicial killing, torture and illegal detention of JASIG-protected consultants of the NDFP. He keeps in prison more then 350 political prisoners, who have been accused of being rebels and yet charged with common crimes in violation of CARHRIHL and the Hernandez political offense doctrine.
We have already received reliable information from palace insiders that Aquino plans to terminate negotiations with the NDFP next year or earlier, especially if he succeeds in controlling all three branches of the government and in making a peace agreement with the MILF. We are not surprised that he has started to attack our chief political consultant Prof. Sison who has tried hard to find ways of facilitating and accelerating the peace negotiations and instituting truce or long-term ceasefire on a mutually acceptable basis.
It is now clear to the NDFP that it is not only OPAPP secretary Ging Deles and GPH negotiating panel chairman Alex Padilla who are blocking the regular track of peace negotiations but it is Aquino no less who is blocking both the regular track and the special track which offers the possibility of truce and alliance on the basis of a general declaration of common intent for the benefit of the people. ###
