Gov’t, NDF-CPP-NPA will try again next week

IN about a week, representatives of the Philippine government and the National Democratic Front-Communist Party of the Philippines-New People’s Army (NDF-CPP-NPA) will meet again in Oslo, Norway, to resume the peace talks that were abruptly stopped last February, over a disagreement on the NDF demand for the release of some 400 prisoners.

Since that breakdown on February 10, the Armed Forces of the Philippines public affairs chief, Col. Edgard Arevalo, said 14 soldiers have been killed, 36 have been wounded, and three abducted. The NPA, on the other hand, has suffered 23 men killed, 19 arrested, and 87 surrendered. Civilians have also suffered from the breakdown – a bus and a delivery van were burned down by the NPA and 357 civilians have fled their homes in the renewed fighting.

Sometime after the breakdown of the official negotiations, informal talks were held in Utrecht, Netherlands, to try to salvage the agreements that had already been reached on a number of socio-economic and political-legal issues.

President Duterte said he would allow the resumption of the talks if the NPA would release all the military and police personnel it is now holding, desist from burning down any more assets of extortion victims, stop laying landlines, and stop demanding revolutionary tax. Last Monday, the Communist rebels responded they were prepared to release seven prisoners and asked the military to assure the safety of the government’s own prisoners.

It has been 49 years since the NPA began its rebellion against the Philippine government and while there were some talks in the past, they all broke down over seemingly irreconcilable positions on many issues. President Duterte was counting on his long association with his former Lyceum professor Jose Ma. Sison, founding chairman of the CPP, when he initiated peace talks immediately after his inauguration last June.

There are fears that some NPA rebels in the field may not be ready to give up the fight. The political leaders in the NDF and the CPP will have to ensure that the three organizations are united in their purposes and in their desire for peace and accept the compromise agreements that are being forged in the peace talks.

The two sides will try again in the first week of April and their immediate goal is to forge a bilateral ceasefire. From this initial step in the renewed talks, the two sides should be able to find agreement on the basic issues that divide them. They should realize by now that some concessions must be made if a final agreement and peace are to be achieved.