Reply to Duterte by Prof. Jose Maria Sison
NDFP Chief Political Consultant
February 23, 2018

I have been informed that the first and second batches of the so-called NPA surrenderees or rebel returnees, presented to Duterte by his military and barangay officials, are all fake. These impostors are close relatives of barangay officials and soldiers in civilian clothes. They are into the charade for the junket in Manila.

Duterte and his military psywar agents are engaged in the old and long discredited trick of conjuring the illusion of breaking up the revolutionary movement by presenting fake surrenderees and featuring them in Malacanang zarzuela ceremonies.

Duterte is daydreaming if he thinks he can entice the NPA commanders and fighters to go home and thus break up the NPA with his offer of money, housing and skills training. Revolutionaries do not join the revolution to get handouts from their enemy.. And they are perfectly well at home with the people in the guerrilla fronts to which they are assigned.

Duterte also insults the heroic Red commanders and fighters of the NPA by saying that they know nothing other than to wage war. And he also says like a crazy thug that he would like to kill them all (if they were present and) he had an armalite. He is ignorant of the tasks and functions of the NPA.

The NPA is not only a fighting force for the people´s democratic revolution but also an educational and cultural force, a force for carrying out the social and economic programs of the revolutionary movement (mass education, mass organizing, production, land reform health and so on) and enabler of the local organs of political power.

I suggest to Duterte that he reconsider his termination of the peace negotiations with the NDFP if he truly wants to have a just and lasting peace in the Philippines.Through the peace negotiations, the necessary social, economic and political reforms can be negotiated and agreed upon by the GRP and the NDFP.

But the problem with Duterte is his mania for unlimited power and wealth and his lack of sincere interest in the realization of the people´s clamor for genuine national independence, democracy, social justice, economic development, cultural progress and durable peace.

I make this suggestion about the possible resumption of peace negotiations, especially because the US is now publicly rating him as dispensable because of his perpetration of grave human rights violations and his close collaboration with China even after Trump succeeded in enticing him with the supposedly limitless contingency funds of Operation Pacific Eagle-Philippines and prodding him to take an extremely violent policy against the revolutionary movement of the Filipino people.###