By Jose Maria Sison
NDFP Chief Political Consultant
January 7, 2019
It is correct for NDFP to be ever willing to negotiate peace with the Government of the Republic of the Philippines (GRP) in order to stress the fact that the Duterte regime has been responsible for all-out war since 2016 and for the termination of the peace negotiations since 2017 and has no real intention to engage in these because these would block the Duterte scheme of declaring martial law nationwide, rigging the May 2019 elections if at all held and imposing a fascist dictatorship on the people through charter change to a bogus kind of federalism.
The burden of proving that Duterte is willing to engage in peace negotiations belongs to him, not the NDFP. He is still engaged in self-contradictory statements like being willing to negotiate but dictating preconditions that render negotiations impossible. He has also to prove that he is in command of his own wits and his own subordinates like Lorenzana because they are increasingly exposing themselves as hypocrites combining a bit of peace pretense and obsession with all-out war against the people and the revolutionary forces.
In any case, the crisis of the already rotten ruling system and the treasonous, tyrannical, brutal and corrupt Duterte regime are generating the favorable conditions for the people’s war for the people’s democratic revolution. Thus, the broad masses of the people are waging all forms of resistance. So long as the Duterte regime engages in all-out war against the national and democratic rights and interests, it is just for the Filipino people and their revolutionary forces to resist in every possible and necessary way.
The previous scheme of the Duterte regime to destroy the revolutionary movement before the end of 2018 has already proven to be a complete failure. The reactionary armed forces, police and auxiliary forces have failed to destroy even a single guerrilla front anywhere in the Philippines and not even in Mindanao where martial law has been imposed. They can keep on moving their goal for destroying the revolutionary movement but the Filipino people and the revolutionary forces will keep on advancing in struggle and celebrating their victories from month to month and from year to year until the tyrannical and corrupt Duterte regime is gone.
It is foolish and self-defeating for the Duterte regime to wage an all out war and commit barbarous acts of state terrorism against the people and all democratic forces, whether these are engaged in armed struggle or not. The people’s war in the countryside is advancing while the broad united front and democratic mass movement in the urban areas are rising up to oust the Duterte regime.
The Duterte regime needs the peace negotiations more than the NDFP does even if only as a futile tactic to confound the opposition and confuse the public. But the NDFP is highly principled and competent to stand firmly for the national and democratic rights and interests of the people in the exploration of peace negotiations, actual peace negotiations and otherwise. ###
