By Fidel V. Agcaoili
Chairperson, NDFP Negotiating Panel
Press Statement | July 21, 2018

The claim of National Security Adviser (NSA) Hermogenes Esperon, Jr., that Prof. Jose Maria Sison is seriously ill is false.

Prof. Sison is very well and has fully recovered from his arthritis last year.

He is up and about, conducting interviews here and there with journalists, student scholars, academics and foreign solidarity friends, and issuing statements left and right especially on the brewing Duterte fascist dictatorship in the Philippines as Chief Political Consultant of the National Democratic Front of the Philippines (NDFP), as well as on significant events in the world as Chairperson of the International League of Peoples’ Struggle (ILPS).

His mind remains as sharp as ever and his analysis of political situations as incisive, brilliant and comprehensive as before.

On the other hand, Esperon remains a pathological liar. In 2006, as AFP Chief of Staff, Esperon made the ridiculous claim that the extrajudicial killings of activists were happening because of “internal purges” in the movement, even producing a document allegedly captured from a New People’s Army (NPA) camp as evidence.

His allegation was dismissed by Prof. Philip Alston, then UN Special Rapporteur on Extrajudicial, Summary or Arbitrary Executions, as “especially unconvincing” and the document presented as bearing “all the hallmarks of a fabrication and cannot be taken as evidence of anything other than disinformation.” Prof. Alston concluded that “there is no reasonable doubt that the military is responsible for a significant number of the killings and that subsequent evidence points to the continuing nature of that practice.”

But Esperon does not stop with his false claim on Prof. Sison’s health.

He even implies that the GRP administrations of Fidel V. Ramos and Joseph E. Estrada have conspired with the NDFP in attempting to topple the Manila government by signing The Hague Joint Declaration, the Joint Agreement on Security and Immunity Guarantees (JASIG) and the Comprehensive Agreement on Respect for Human Rights and International Humanitarian Law (CARHRIHL).

Such nonsense!

On the so-called localized peace talks, I strongly suggest that Esperon reads the statements of the Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP), the National Operational Command of the NPA, and the NDFP territorial units and regional commands, before he embarks on this road show meant only to line the pockets of bureaucrats, military commanders and faked surrenderers. ##