Duterte plans crackdown vs. rebels, sympathizers
President Rodrigo Duterte plans to order the arrest of all individuals sympathetic to the communist insurgents even as rebel negotiators expressed hope that the government’s announcement on the termination of the peace talks is not final yet.
In a speech Wednesday in Camp Fort Magsaysay in Nueva Ecija, Duterte accused the communists’ “legal fronts” of conniving with the rebel group to undermine the government.
“Your legal fronts, -- I know, do not fool me -- you are helping each other, conspiring to topple or whatever (my administration),” Duterte said, apparently addressing the rebels.
“We will treat you as a criminal. Period. And we will arrest everybody connected (to you), including legal fronts. File a case, launch a revolution, do what you want, I don’t care,” he added.
Duterte’s statement came after Presidential Adviser on Peace Process Jesus Dureza announced earlier in the day that the government would no longer pursue peace talks with the communists on the President’s order.
Dureza said the government would not resume the peace negotiations unless an “environment conducive to a change in the government’s position becomes evident.”
The National Democratic Front of the Philippines (NDFP), on the other hand, was hopeful that Duterte’s decision to cancel the peace talks is temporary and that he was just ranting in anger, particularly over the killing of a four-month-old baby in a recent New People’s Army (NPA) attack in Bukidnon.
Duterte had also said NPA rebels would be tagged as terrorists and criminals for staging gruesome attacks.
“We are hopeful that all these rants of the President in the last few days are just that -- that he is expressing his anger and would return to trying to talk with us to achieve basic social and economic reforms in the country,” NDFP chief peace negotiator Fidel Agcaoili said in a television interview Thursday.
As of Thursday morning, the government has not served to NDFP negotiators a formal notice of the termination of the talks.