By Luis G. Jalandoni
Chairperson, Negotiating Panel
National Democratic Front of the Philippines
3 March 2008
Gregorio Honasan is reported to have made personal attacks against Professor Jose Maria Sison in interviews with the Philippine Daily Inquirer and DZBB by accusing him of having issued orders from an airconditioned home in The Netherlands for the Filipino people to rise up against the Arroyo regime and by demanding that Prof. Sison should return home to lead the protest mass actions.
Honasan’s attack against Prof. Sison is totally baseless. It is a matter of public knowledge that the inter-faith rally of last Friday was generated by a broad united front of ecumenical forces, including religious and secular patriotic and progressive forces, especially the youth. These forces achieved a high level of united purpose by consensual agreement or under a roundtable type of leadership.
They agreed and acted to mobilize the tens of thousands of demonstrators not because of some orders from anyone from abroad but because they were acutely conscious of giving way to the people’s outrage over such grievous crimes of the Arroyo regime as massive corruption and plunder, gross human rights violations and servility to foreign interests.
We in the National Democratic Front of the Philippines believe that the broad united front of legal forces and the broad masses of the Filipino people are determined to continue launching protest mass actions until the Arroyo regime is ousted or becomes incapable of choosing in 2010 a successor to protect the bureaucratic loot of the Arroyo clique and shield it from criminal prosecution.
Having been a rabid anti-communist military officer, Honasan should know better than to demand the return of Prof. Sison to the Philippines under the current circumstances. He should be aware of the gross and systematic violations of human rights, including the extrajudicial killing and forced disappearances of NDFP consultants Prudencio Calubid, Leo Velasco and others. Moreover, it is the NDFP Negotiating Panel that has requested Prof. Sison to stay in The Netherlands for the purpose of peace negotiations upon the change of regime on the GRP side.
Until some months before the May 2007 elections, Honasan decked himself out as oppositionist to the Arroyo regime. Suddenly for strange reasons, he was received by Ms. Arroyo in Malacañang and he ran as an “independent” senatorial candidate with the blessings of the Arroyo regime. Since the time that he flipped to the Arroyo camp, Honasan has always found ways of defending the fake president and attacking her opponents.
By LUIS G. JALANDONI
Chairperson, Negotiating Panel
National Democratic Front of the Philippines
3 March 2008
REFERENCE:
Ruth de Leon
Executive Director
NDFP International Information Office
Tel.+31-30-2310431
Fax +31-84-7589930
Email: [email protected]
