(Eagle News) — Communist Party of the Philippines founding chair Jose Maria Sison on Thursday, July 5, said President Rodrigo Duterte was “driving another nail to completely shut down” peace talks by demanding that they be held in the Philippines.
“He knows fully well that the demand to hold talks in the Philippines is unacceptable and unworkable for the (National Democratic Front of the Philippines), unless he thinks the NDFP will be negotiating only to surrender the Filipino people’s aspirations and give up all its revolutionary principles,” Sison said.
According to Sison, Peace Secretary Jesus Dureza’s statement that “Duterte’s doors” for resuming the peace talks were still “open” was an “outright lie.”
It noted that Dureza did “not make any mention at all of the fact that Duterte issued Presidential Proclamation #360 last November 23, 2017 which formally terminated peace negotiations with the NDFP.”
He said the proclamation “has never been rescinded.”
A few weeks ago, Sison added that “Duterte also derailed efforts to resume talks by cancelling its scheduled resumption.”
“This is a desperate PR stunt to obscure the fact that the GRP has repeatedly terminated the talks and make it appear that it is the NDFP which closed its doors,” Sison said.
“By completely shutting the door to the negotiations, Duterte is laying down the conditions for imposing martial law or a general crackdown, use the terror proscription against the CPP and (New People’s Army) against his critics and dissenters against his tyranny, and push charter change for pseudo-federalism to perpetuate himself in power,” he added.
