Joma Sison: Duterte never gets tired of terminating peace talks
Jofelle Tesorio, ABS-CBN Europe News Bureau
Posted at Aug 17 2018 07:37 PM | Updated as of Aug 17 2018 11:29 PM
http://news.abs-cbn.com/news/08/17/18/joma-sison-duterte-never-gets-tired-of-terminating-peace-talks
National Democratic Front chief political consultant Jose Maria Sison in Utrecht. Jofelle Tesorio, ABS-CBN Europe News Bureau
UTRECHT, The Netherlands – President Rodrigo Duterte’s latest pronouncement terminating peace negotiations with the Reds is like a broken record.
“Duterte never gets tired of repetitively terminating the GRP-NDFP peace negotiations,” said Jose Maria Sison, National Democratic Front of the Philippines chief political adviser, in a statement.
He said Duterte terminated the negotiations many times over: in November 2017 with his Proclamation 360 and in December 2017 with Proclamation 374 designating the Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP) and the New People’s Army NPA) as terrorist organizations. These proclamations, Sison added, had “the malicious intent of making it doubly sure that he had killed the peace negotiations.”
Sison’s reaction came after Duterte announced he has terminated the talks with the NPA, CPP, NDFP and Sison, accusing them of only wanting a coalition with his government.
In his speech during the launching of the Pilipinas Angat Lahat Alliance in Malacañang Tuesday, Duterte said “I have terminated the talks with the Reds — Communist Party of the Philippines with Sison because in the series of agreements before, even the time of Aquino, they entered into so many things that they scattered the privileges and power which they wanted.”
“We summed it all and it would really appear that it was a coalition government [they wanted] and I said, ‘I cannot give you an inch of that even. I cannot give you what is not mine,’” Duterte said.
But Sison denied that the NDFP and the CPP had asked to form a coalition government with the government.
“Duterte is lying. We never asked any kind of coalition government with him. To ingratiate himself with the CPP before the 2016 elections, it was Duterte who was promising in the years 2015 and early 2016 to have a coalition government with the CPP if he would be elected president,” Sison said when contacted in Utrecht.
According to him, the NDFP negotiations with GRP under Duterte or any of his predecessors never reached item No. 3 of the substantive agenda, which is about political and constitutional reforms.
“Because of his disruptive behavior in the peace negotiations, we could not reach half of the negotiations on social and economic reforms.”
Sison said that by oppressing the people, “Duterte, like Marcos, has become the chief recruiter of the NPA” and “will generate the conditions for the growth in strength and advance of the revolutionary movement.”
“He has also become the chief transport and supply officer of the NPA by sending his troops and police to the hinterlands for ambush by the NPA,” Sison added.
