Philippines: Condemn Duterte’s arbitrary termination of GRP-NDFP peace negotiations and declaration of all-out war

From Democracy and Class Struggle/ Communist Party of the Philippines:

The Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP) joins the Filipino people in condemning GRP President Rodrigo Duterte for arbitrarily terminating the GRP-NDFP peace negotiations.

Duterte has gone berserk and upturned the entire peace process facilitated by the Royal Norweigian Government. He has wasted the achievements attained in peace talks over the past few months. He has crushed the people’s aspiration to carry out peace negotiations as a means of resolving the roots of the ongoing civil war.

The CPP denounces the arrest last Monday of NDFP peace consultant Ariel Arbitrario in Davao City, together with two workers activists. The CPP assails the Duterte order to rearrest and detain all JASIG-protected NDFP consultants, particularly those who were released last August for the talks. He has ordered as well the arrest of those who had been ordered released by the courts long before Duterte became GRP president.

Not only will rearresting the NDFP consultants be a gross violation of the JASIG, it will also be the height of treachery and will prove him incapable of respecting agreements.

Furthermore, rearresting NDFP consultants on Duterte’s orders, even when there are no outstanding court orders, will be tantamount to flaunting the law and exercising despotic authority.

The besieged NDFP consultants can avail of the security of the NPA and enjoy the freedom in the guerrilla zones.

Duterte is proving to the NDFP and the people how difficult it is to conduct serious negotiations with a doublespeaking thug who only recognizes his own rules. He is presenting himself a charlatan who does not know the true meaning of just and lasting peace.

Contrary to his claim of “having done everything”, Duterte has in fact done very little to advance peace talks. Indeed, he released 18 NDFP consultants, because otherwise he would have no one to talk to. But, as Duterte is now proving, the consultants were never completely free as they constantly were under threat of rearrest the moment the peace talks did not go along his whims. He has also failed to release all political prisoners, a promise he has repeatedly made.

Duterte has chosen to terminate peace talks when he could no longer use it to compel the CPP and NPA to a prolonged ceasefire that has left the people defenseless against AFP military operations. The termination of the CPP and NPA ceasefire signals the revolutionary forces will not accept pacification or surrender. The thug that he is, Duterte will not have any of the CPP’s assertion of its revolutionary integrity.

The revolutionary forces denounce Duterte for regarding the CPP, NPA and NDF as “a terrorist group.” In doing so, Duterte has effectively joined the US imperialists in its terrorist-tagging just a few days after his negotiating panel agreed to ask the US to remove the CPP, NPA and Prof. Jose Ma. Sison from its list of so-called “foreign terrorists.”

Indeed, Duterte appears to have acceded to many of the US plans including that of building military facilities inside AFP camps in line with EDCA and carrying out 256 war exercises with the VFA. He is now proving his anti-US rhetoric of the past months as a completely hollow enticement for Filipino patriots.

The Filipino people must prepare against Duterte’s all-out war declaration. Judging by his record in his Oplan Tokhang, Duterte’s all-out war is bound to set his fascist dogs in the AFP in a wild spree of human rights abuses against the people and gross violations of civil liberties. The abuses perpetrated by the AFP over the past months are set to worsen. The people must be ready to vigorously oppose any scheme to impose martial law or martial law-style rule and rehabilitate and reinstate the Marcoses to power.

Duterte’s declaration of an all-out war is an empty taunt. All past reactionary regimes have dreamt of defeating the NPA and the people’s war. All have failed.

The New People’s Army is ever ready to face Duterte’s all-out war. The AFP is overstretched. It could not even defeat the NPA in Eastern Mindanao despite its all-out offensives of the past four years. It will fail stem the nationwide growth of the NPA. Duterte’s all-out war will be completely frustrated. The NPA and the revolutionary movement will definitely outlast the Duterte regime.

The workers, peasants and ordinary toiling people continue to suffer oppression and exploitation. Their clamor to wage and intensify the people’s war continues to grow.

Over the past months, Duterte’s reckless demagoguery has painted himself into a corner, antagonizing the people with the killing spree in his so-called war against drugs and perpetrating such anti-people policies of contractualization, cheap labor, landgrabbing and so on. He has now antagonized all peace-loving sectors of the Philippines. Not for long, he will only have the AFP’s fascist dogs for company.

The Party calls on the Filipino people to build a broad united front to demand peace talks and vigorously oppose countryside militarization and extrajudicial killings in the “anti-drug war” and all-out war and resist the worsening tyrannical rule under Duterte.

Ka Oris of the New People's Army on the Termination of Unilateral Ceasefire