NPA misplays Duterte, loses chance for peace
IF communist rebels in the Philippines actually wanted peace, their best chance of realizing it is now with the incumbent government. But after years of reaching out and with only a year left in his term, President Rodrigo Duterte has grown exasperated with the Left, and we fear the prospects of a negotiated peace may never materialize.
That assessment is admittedly disappointing, given the optimism felt when Mr. Duterte was just assembling his government. He appointed several former rebels to his Cabinet, apparently as a gesture of peace. The President's inner circle also included a former rebel, Leoncio Evasco, who served as his campaign manager and later, Cabinet secretary.
Even Jose Maria Sison, leader of the Communist Party and its military wing, the New People's Army (NPA), had said in 2016 he might end his exile during President Duterte's tenure. Mr. Sison fled to the Netherlands in 1987 when peace talks with the government then failed. He has been there since.
The two men also have a personal connection. Mr. Sison was the President's former professor in the 1960s. And when he was mayor of Davao City, Mr. Duterte was believed to have a working relationship with the NPAs operating around his hometown.
Fast forward to June 10, 2021. President Duterte announced in a televised interview that the peace talks with the Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP) were dead. Peace talks with the CPP-NPA had been on and off since 1986.
In that interview, the President said the CPP-NPA was demanding too much and that they were arrogant. That statement was unsurprising however. On November 2020, he signed Proclamation 360 that formally scuttled the peace negotiations after the rebels ignored pleas to stop attacking the military and police.
Afterwards, the President signed Proclamation 374 that branded the CPP-NPA as a terrorist group. Earlier, it had been designated as a foreign terrorist organization by the US State Department and as a terrorist group by the European Union, the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia and New Zealand.
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