By LUIS G. JALANDONI
Chairperson, NDFP Negotiating Panel
The highest officials of the Arroyo regime, especially executive secretary Eduardo Ermita, chief of staff Mike Defensor and presidential adviser Jesus Dureza, have repeatedly declared that there is no need to resume the formal talks between the GRP and NDFP negotiating panels but that the office of the presidential adviser on the process will coordinate with local units of the GRP to stage localized negotiations with elements that they hope to attract from the local forces of the revolutionary movement.
By LUIS G. JALANDONI
Chairperson, NDFP Negotiating Panel
The highest officials of the Arroyo regime, especially executive secretary Eduardo Ermita, chief of staff Mike Defensor and presidential adviser Jesus Dureza, have repeatedly declared that there is no need to resume the formal talks between the GRP and NDFP negotiating panels but that the office of the presidential adviser on the process will coordinate with local units of the GRP to stage localized negotiations with elements that they hope to attract from the local forces of the revolutionary movement.
The Arroyo regime merely parades its stupidity by presuming that they can induce the well-disciplined and highly conscious revolutionary forces well-steeped in the principle of democratic centralism to allow themselves to be fragmented by so-called localized peace negotiations and to expose themselves to the bloodthirst and treachery of the regime’s Oplan Bantay Laya. Time and again, the revolutionary forces have firmly rejected these GRP schemes.
The officials of the Arroyo regime, from Gloria M. Arroyo down, should know that the Communist Party of the Philippines, the New People’s Army and NDFP are ever vigilant to the malicious view of the Arroyo regime that all the previous formal negotiations and solemn agreements between the GRP and NDFP are nothing but a preparation and inducement for the revolutionary movement to capitulate outrightly or through indefinite ceasefire or to fragment through localized negotiations.
The NDFP knows well what constitutes serious peace negotiations for the benefit of the people. That is why it has been able to work for and make twelve good agreements with the GRP, from The Hague Joint Declaration onwards. But it also knows the history of the GRP and other reactionary governments that upset serious negotiations and then use brute force to “strengthen” their bargaining position (as publicly revealed by former GRP negotiating panel chairman Silvestre Bello) in a vile attempt to pressure or overwhelm the revolutionary movement.
We know from history how the GRP engaged the old revolutionary movement in an amnesty agreement in 1948 and then scuttled the agreement by trying to murder all the revolutionary leaders who surfaced. Still afterwards, the agents of the GRP went to the field to induce local cadres and commanders to negotiate surrender by telling them that if the central revolutionary leaders had been willing to negotiate why not the local leaders too.
We also know from recent history how the GRP fooled the leadership of the Moro National Liberation Front in 1996 onwards. Once more the GRP is trying to deceive and trick the Moro Islamic Liberation Front. But we are informed that the MILF is acutely alert to GRP treachery. The GRP is trying to put one over the MILF on the issue of ancestral domain and related issues.
If the Arroyo regime continues to have a malicious view of peace negotiations, it will be further confronted by intensified resistance of the people and their revolutionary forces in all regions of the country, including those of the Bangsa Moro. The GRP should not imagine that it can win across the negotiating table the military victory that it cannot win in the battlefield. The GRP should show good faith and seriousness in peace negotiations by negotiating with the NDFP at the national level and by addressing the roots of the armed conflicts through social, economic and political reforms for the benefit of the people, especially the toiling masses.
