Arroyo regime’s impediments to peace talks must be removed — NDFP

(Utrecht, 18 October) Citing a dozen policy measures made by the Manila government to sabotage and stall peace negotiations since the end of 2001, NDFP chief negotiator Luis G. Jalandoni yesterday reiterated their call to the Arroyo government to first comply with existing peace agreements in order to pave the way for the resumption of formal peace talks.

Jalandoni, Chairperson of the Negotiating Panel of the National Democratic Front of the Philippines (NDFP) talking peace with the government of the Republic of the Philippines (GRP), issued the statement on 17 October enumerating the “complete list of impediments which the Arroyo regime has put up to stop the peace negotiations” and which “should be done away with in order to clear the way for the resumption of formal talks in the GRP-NDFP peace negotiations”. He said that demanding the elimination of these roadblocks are not “preconditions” but “a mater of compliance with existing agreements between the GRP and the NDFP.

Topping Jalandoni’s list of impediments is the Manila government’s demand for an indefinite ceasefire as a precondition for the resumption of peace talks. He says that this is just a veiled attempt to force the surrender of the armed revolutionary forces and flagrantly violates the Hague Joint Declaration inked by the two sides in 1992.

The 1992 agreement binds both the Manila government and the armed revolutionaries to address the root causes of the armed conflict by forging social, economic, political and constitutional reforms through peace negotiations. The Hague Joint Declaration also stipulates that there should be no precondition imposed on either side which would violate the inherent character and purpose of the negotiations.

Jalandoni reiterated that the Arroyo regime is sabotaging peace talks through, among others, the launching of military campaigns of suppression in the countryside which has resulted in the displacement of more than a million civilians; the murder, abduction and torture of more than a thousand legal opposition activists; the “terrorist” listing of the Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP), the New People’s Army (NPA) and NDFP Chief Political Consultant Prof. Jose Maria Sison by foreign governments; the murder and abduction of NDFP consultants and staffers; and the political persecution of NDFP personnel, including filing false charges against Jalandoni, Sison, NDFP Political Consultant Vicente Ladlad and members of the NDFP Reciprocal Working Committee on Socio-Economic Reforms Rafael Baylosis and Randall Echanis.

He added that if the Arroyo government continues to renege on the peace agreements, “preparations can still be made for clearing the way for the peace negotiations after the current regime is changed”.

REFERENCE:
Ruth de Leon
Executive Director
NDFP International Information Office
Tel.+31-30-2310431
Fax +31-84-7589930
Email: ndf@casema.nl

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