(Eagle News)—Communist Party of the Philippines founding chair Jose Maria Sison on Thursday, March 14, said President Rodrigo Duterte “must be crazy or clowning” to be “reiterating the preconditions” to peace talks with Communists.
Duterte has repeatedly called on Communist rebels to lay down their arms for peace talks, which he ended in November 2017, to resume.
According to Sison, the preconditions “amount to having the armed revolutionary movement commit political suicide before even going to the negotiating table and submit itself to surrender talks and possible slaughter in the possible venue offered by Duterte.”
In the first place, Sison said “Duterte has no intention of engaging the (National Democratic Front of the Philippines) in serious peace negotiations.”
“He continues to be hell-bent on keeping the peace negotiations terminated and on imposing a fascist dictatorship on the Filipino people,” Sison said.
As such, he said his “educated guess” was that the “CPP, (New People’s Army) and the people would rather intensify their revolutionary armed struggle than submit themselves to such silly and humiliating preconditions.”
Duterte ended peace talks with the Communists citing what he said were their atrocities that included the killing of a baby.