Marco Valbuena | Chief Information Officer | Communist Party of the Philippines
January 04, 2024
The Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP) denounces Marcos’ security and military officers for issuing statements yesterday misrepresenting the Oslo Joint Statement signed between the Government of the Republic of the Philippines (GRP) and the National Democratic Front of the Philippines (NDFP) as an agreement for the surrender of the New People’s Army.
These statement issued by the NTF-Elcac, the National Security Council and the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) are a devious attempt to undermine efforts to revive peace negotiations, and prevent discussions from taking place to tackle the socioeconomic and political issues that are at the root of the civil war in the Philippines.
These officials are intentionally misreading the joint statement by claiming that it was signed with the aim of “ending the armed struggle.” While the Oslo Joint Statement includes such a phrase, this is accompanied and preceded by the phrase “resolving the roots of the armed conflict.”
This entails a thoroughgoing negotiations that should be undertaken with a clear agenda. Under the The Hague Declaration of 1992, this agenda comprises (a) human rights; (b) social and economic reforms; (c) political and constitutional reform; (d) disposition of forces.
Negotiations should address the widespread problems of landlessness, poverty and hardships, political repression and tyranny, are among the issues that drive the peasant masses to take up arms and wage war to defend their interests and fight for the aspirations of the Filipino people.
Indeed, the CPP and the NDFP consider peace talks as an additional battlefield, albeit unarmed, alongside revolutionary armed struggle, to advance the people’s national democratic cause, to assert across the negotiating table the people’s demands: for genuine land reform and national industrialization, social justice and true democracy. These are the same aspirations that drive the Filipino people, especially the peasant masses, to rise up in arms and wage resistance against their oppressors and exploiters.
