Peace talks’end

THIS is an unfortunate development but this is not something that is totally unexpected. President Duterte announced recently the permanent end to the peace talks with communist rebels, a pronouncement that National Democratic Front of the Philippines (NDFP) consultant Jose Ma. Sison said has become repetitive.

The talks have actually ended months ago with the government already going after the NDFP consultants, some of whom were released from detention as a sign of goodwill. The task of re-arresting them now would already be doubly difficult because those consultants are surely now in the embrace of the NDFP’s underground network.

The thinking that Duterte would be the president that could come up with a negotiated settlement of the longest rebellion waged in Asia in modern times is obviously wrong— but that view is based on hindsight. The Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP) has committed tactical errors a number of times and its support of the Duterte candidacy in 2016 is one.

A number of progressives actually supported the candidacy of Grace Poe but Sison, who is based in Netherlands, got more enamored with Duterte, his former student. There were stories that Duterte, when he was mayor of Davao City, had contacts with the left in his jurisdiction. Sison himself had that much publicized online chat with then candidate Duterte in 2016.

But that, again on hindsight, was an un-Marxist basis for supporting the Duterte candidacy. A better appraisal would have been based on the manner Duterte run Davao City. Was the substance of his leadership revolutionary, or even just progressive? In that appraisal, I say Poe would even come out as a bit more progressive than the now president.

A negotiated political settlement of the long-drawn conflict between the government and the revolutionary left is the dream ending to this rebellion. Under the right circumstances, that dream could still be made real. If this happened in countries with Marxists leading their rebellions, like El Salvador and Nicaragua, why couldn’t it be done in our country?

But that requires of leaders something more than just contact with each other. That requires something substantial, which is an understanding of the roots of the conflict and of what it takes to address those roots. The communist viewpoint is a radical one, thus only a president with at least a progressive viewpoint could meet the communists at the mi ddl e.

Could Grace Poe have been it? We can’t say for sure. But Poe would have been a better negotiator considering her liberal leanings. President Duterte, we now know based on hindsight is conservative and has the mindset of a strongman, a leader who is prone to use force in resolving conflicts.

So for now, things are back to where they started before Duterte became president in 2016. Government troops and the NDFP are again battling it out in the field. In this war, the rebels are not winning and neither has the government the upperhand. But there will be losers: the people who will be caught in the crossfire and the partisans of both si des.

Sad.