By Joyce Pangco Pañares
COMMUNIST Party of the Philippines founder Jose Ma. Sison scoffed at recent reports of a Cabinet post allegedly being offered to him by the Aquino administration.
Sison, in a message through the online social networking site Facebook, said a certain military group loyal to former Defense chief Norberto Gonzales, ANAD partylist Rep. Jun Alcover, and retired Maj. Gen. Jovito Palparan are the ones sowing disinformation against him.
“Return home and a Cabinet post for me? That is just psy-war intrigue spread by a military group associated with former Defense Secretary Norberto Gonzales, the butcher general Palparan, and Alcover of ANAD,” Sison said.
“I continue to be abroad in the hope that formal talks between the government and the National Democratic Front of the Philippines negotiating panels will resume in Oslo,” the CPP founder, who currently resides in The Netherlands under self-exile, added.
An unnamed military source last week said Sison will come home “very soon” as a Cabinet post has been dangled to him under the guise of “national unification.”
In August last year, the NDF called on the government to seriously consider a truce agreement and an “alliance” based on their Ten-Point Concise Agreement for an Immediate Just Peace, a 2005 proposal that has been consistently rejected by the past administration.
Government chief negotiator Alexander Padilla rejected the proposal, saying the 2005 draft agreement was tantamount to “government capitulation” to the Communist Party of the Philippines.
The second item in the CPP’s 10-point agreement calls for a “coalition government” that will empower workers and peasants by respecting their democratic rights and providing for their significant representation in the bureaucracy.
The CPP Central Committee has already issued a statement denouncing the reported Cabinet post being offered to Sison as “baseless and ridiculous.”
The CPP described the military group sowing intrigue within the Armed Forces as being opposed to President Benigno Aquino III and are “identified with the previous regime.”
“They are trying to sow dissension among military officers by circulating false and incredulous claims that the ruling Aquino clique is leaning towards the side of the CPP-led revolutionary forces,” the central committee said.
