The Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP) today expressed doubts
on whether newly installed President Benigno Aquino III has any
serious intention of resolving through peace negotiations the root
causes of the ongoing civil war. The CPP noted how he completely
failed to address the issue in his inaugural speech yesterday.

“Neither has Aquino declared in any of his previous policy statements
and speeches any intention of resuming the peace negotiations,” the
CPP said. “The only thing the new reactionary president has done
related to the peace talks is to appoint as Presidential Adviser on
the Peace Process, Teresita Deles, a pseudoprogressive who once held the same position in the previous regime before parting ways with Arroyo. Deles was no help at all to the peace process, as all the
government peace panel under her did was try to induce the
revolutionary movement to disarm and surrender,” said the CPP.

The CPP added that “The Filipino people would have wanted Aquino to reverse his predecessor’s policy of fooling around with and eventually abandoning the peace negotiations as a means of resolving the raging armed conflict. With the US-designed Oplan Bantay Laya spanning the entire nine and half years of its rule, the puppet Arroyo regime relied on fascist brutal force and vicious psywar to suppress the revolutionary armed movement, wage a campaign of impunity against social activists and critics, and terrorize the masses.”

The CPP said further that “It would appear that the new puppet regime is under the direction of its US imperialist master to adhere more closely to the US Counterinsurgency Guide, belittle peace negotiations and use it only as a tactic to inveigle the revolutionary movement to surrender. The US government is more interested in seeing the new US-Aquino regime intensify its counterrevolutionary war of suppression, coupled with deceiving the people through psywar and shallow political gimmickry.”

Formal peace negotiations between the Government of the Republic of the Philippines and the National Democratic Front of the Philippines
(NDFP) achieved significant progress during 1992-1998 under the Ramos regime. This period saw the signing of The Hague Joint Declaration in 1992 and the Joint Agreement on Safety and Immunity Guarantees (JASIG) in 1995, and the completion of the Comprehensive Agreement on Respect for Human Rights and International Humanitarian Law (CARHRIHL) which was signed by Ramos’ successor Joseph Estrada as soon as the latter assumed the presidency in 1998. Peace negotiations have since been practically stalled.

The CPP said that “The US-Arroyo regime practically ignored previous
agreements and erected so many stumbling blocks in the peace process during its nine and half years of rule. In league with the US
imperialists, it waged an all-out campaign to tag the CPP, the NPA and NDFP senior political consultant Jose Ma. Sison as ‘foreign
terrorists.’ It fabricated more than a thousand charges against NDFP
peace consultants and progressive leaders and social activists, and
illegally arresting and detaining many of them. It plotted with US
intelligence agents and the Dutch police for the filing of trumped-up
murder charges, to cause the arrest and detention of Comrade Sison in The Netherlands. It carried out the abduction, enforced disappearance and extrajudicial killings of several NDFP peace negotiation consultants and staff. All this, in violation of the JASIG, CARHRIHL and other previous peace aggreements.”

“The NDFP maintains a policy of remaining open to peace negotiations
with the reactionary Philippine government as long as the latter
reciprocates such openness, commits to upholding all previous
agreements in the peace process, and engages without preconditions in negotiation to address the problems which are at the root of the ongoing armed conflict,” declared the CPP.

“The revolutionary forces have already declared their readiness to
engage the Aquino government in formal peace negotiations. With the
intensification of the civil war in the coming years, the US-Aquino
regime is bound to face a mounting demand to pursue the peace process. The ball is now in the hands of Aquino,” the CPP said further.