No doubt that the Reds do not want peace

If it took me sometime to give my full support to Davao City Mayor Rodrigo “Digong” Duterte during the presidential campaign of 2016, it was due to his links with the Reds. However, my good friend, Jess Dureza explained to me in January 2016 that if there is any presidential candidate that the communists held in high esteem, it was Mayor Duterte. Let me point out that in my 30-year career in journalism, I have always been against communism for obvious reason I don’t need to explain to my readers who already know me well enough. Both my mentor, the late Max Soliven, and me were staunch anti-communists.

But I took the advice of Jess Dureza who later became presidential adviser on the peace process and the rest as you know is history. Mayor Duterte won the presidency hands down with an overwhelming majority. So when he formed his Cabinet, he put a lot of leftists in Cabinet positions, which alarmed many ant-communists who warned me that Pres. Duterte was forming an alliance or worse a coalition government with the Reds. But I wasn’t alarmed simply because Jess Dureza told me that Duterte could never become a communist.

Fast forward a year and a half in the Duterte Presidency when the peace talks with the Reds have all but collapsed! But as we all know, the communist propaganda machinery always blamed the President… and I’m not just referring to Pres. Duterte, but to all the presidents before him for their “insincerity” during the peace talks.

Perhaps it is high time that Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP) Chairman Jose Maria “Joma” Sison begins to realize that thanks to the social media networks, the majority of Filipinos have already realized that the communists do not really want peace with the Philippine government. Their goal and objective has always been and will always be to install a communist government in the Philippines, come hell or high water! So we are fully behind the President as he declares a full-scale war against the Reds.

I have always believed in the dictum of the late President Ramon Magsaysay who said that in fighting the communists, “You find them, you fool them, you fight them and then you finish them… then offer them the hand of peace!” This is the four “F’s” doctrine of Pres. Magsaysay who was successful in neutralizing the threat of the Hukbalahap.

But while communist propaganda painted an ugly scenario about the Filipino soldier, however despite the call of Pres. Duterte to prepare for a violent war against the Reds, we learned that the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) last Saturday threw its support behind the proposal for a localized peace talks with the communist rebels.

The AFP statement from Chief of Staff General Ray Leonardo Guerrero declared, “The AFP supports the decision of the President to cancel talks with the CPP, NPA and NDF, and to go ‘all out’ against the NPA terrorists. The AFP also support the peace initiatives by our local elected officials including programs that seek to integrate NPAs back to the mainstream of society.” This statement proves that the Filipino soldier really wants peace despite the Filipino soldier who has been ambushed, shot, killed, mined or kidnapped by the blood thirsty NPAs!

Also last week, AFP spokesman Maj. Gen. Restituto Padilla Jr. said that peace talks led by local government units (LGUs) could be the “bright spot” in the peace process. He declared, “We will continue to campaign, together with the LGUs, to pursue peace talks because even though the formal talks at the national level have ended, our LGUs and our forces will be joining to give a chance to those on the mountains to go back to their normal lives.” As the old saying (although it is not biblical) goes, “When God shuts down the door, he opens a window!”

Let us hope and pray that the ranks of the NPAs would dwindle and become a spent force when the LGUs and the AFP convince those armed rebels to give up their futile fight. Thank God that in the year 2004, when Cebu had its first female governor under then Gov. Gwen F. Garcia, she declared the province of Cebu free from insurgency and we have been insurgency free since then… even if on May 22, 2014, CPP chairman Benito Tiamzon and his wife, Wilma Tiamzon, CPP-NPA secretary general were arrested in Aloquinsan, Cebu. They were living in San Fernando 30 kilometers South of Cebu City enjoying the peace that reigned in Cebu province!

While Pres. Duterte signed Proclamation No. 360 declaring the termination of peace talks with the Reds, it falls short of his earlier threat to declare the CPP/NDF/NPA as a terrorist group, something that we feel he should have already done because even the US calls the NPAs terrorists who kill the Filipino soldier under the guise of a revolution which it is not!