The last road to peace

We write this piece fervently praying that the guns of the communist rebels will remain silent amid rising temperatures following President Rodrigo Duterte’s scuttling of peace negotiations with the Communist Party of the Philippines/New People's Army/National Democratic Front Philippines (CPP-NPA-NDFP).

We are hoping too that President Duterte would not officially issue an order declaring the leftist combined as a terrorist group, a threat he made before issuing on November 23, Proclamation 360 terminating negotiations with the rebels. 

An offensive by the NPA at this point and declaration of the CPP/NPA/NDFP as a terrorist organization are the worst-case scenarios that could derail what could be the last option to achieving peace: the Localized Peace Talks.

So far, Duterte’s threat to declare as terrorists the group led by Jose Ma. “Joma” Sison has been confined to a verbal pronouncement.

In these critical hours, an act of violence by the NPA would draw a strong reaction from the military that could altogether put a total end to any hope of resolving the 50-year-old communist insurgency.

Days after President Duterte terminated the peace negotiations in view of continued attacks by the NPA even as the peace talk was ongoing, the temperature reading is ominous, with the President threatening an all-out war if the communist rebels react with violence to his termination of the negotiation.

It is a consolation that the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) said that it would not resort to an ‘all-out’ war against the rebels despite President Duterte's termination of the peace talks.

It is also comforting that while supporting the President’s decision, military and government officials are also suggesting that government should open other windows for the continuation of the negotiations.

Senate President Koko Pimentel said “new channels” for the talks could be opened with the CPP/NDFP out of the picture. AFP spokesperson, Maj. Gen. Restituto Padilla shares the same view.

Pimentel and Padilla are referring to localized peace talks with the NPA.

But two worst-case scenarios could lead to premature abortion of localized peace talks.

One, the resurgence of attacks by the NPA and President Duterte’s declaration of the CPP/NPA/NDFP as a terrorist group.

The first could force President Duterte to declare an all-out war against the rebels.

The second could stop local government units from pursuing localized peace talks.

With the cancellation of peace talks with the CPP-NPA-NDF in the national level, the option, according to Padilla, is to hold the talks, with the NPA, at the local level with local government officials.

“If the official door to peace talks is closed, we have to open unofficial doors,” Pimentel said.

Rather than talking with Joma and his clique, the government now should instead deal directly with the NPA.

Whether the guns of the NPA were silenced due to cowardice by an order from the NDFP mafia which has been calling the shots in the peace talks, or a unilateral action on the part of the armed wing of the CPP, we do not know.

What we know is that a violent reaction by the NPA to the President’s termination of the talks would completely send whatever hope of a peace deal to kingdom come.

We suspect though that this is a unilateral action of the NPA, which by now has realized that fighting government for decades without end is a futile act. 

The NPA fighters could have realized by now that they have been used and abused by the Joma clique.

By now, it should be clear to the NPA that the Joma mafia, living in exile in Europe for decades now, is treating the insurgency as a business, and would not care about the rebel fighters for as long as monies earned from extortion and revolutionary taxation by the NPA continue to fund their lavish lifestyles abroad.

Our suspicion is that the NPA could be gearing up for another revolution -against the CPP/NDF combine - and is looking for an opportunity to break up with the CPP/NDFP.

Who knows, the rebel fighters might just be waiting for the government to start the localized peace talks.

The government should seize this opportunity and reach out to the NPA to sit down in the negotiation table, sans the CPP/NDFP.

Davao City Mayor Sara Duterte-Carpio has trailblazed localized peace talks in her city, by forming a purely civilian body to lure local rebels to the negotiating table.

She is unfazed by the President’s termination of talks with the communists, but worries that the NPA would be declared by the President as a terrorist group. The tag would legally prevent her to pursue talks with the NPA, like the other officials of local government units emulating her peace initiatives.

We believe that deep in his heart, President Duterte still believes that peace talks, not all-out war, is the answer to the communist insurgency. 

We hope that his latest statement, that “there will be more blood” in a “virulent confrontation” with communists; that peace is unreachable ´“even if we talk for a thousand years,” are mere expressions of frustration, and not elements of the coming direction of his efforts to resolve the communist insurgency. 

Before and after he was elected to the presidency, the President has always emphasized that he is a strong believer in negotiations as solution to conflicts.

His off-repeated line in fact was that he would rather “talk for a hundred years than go to war,” in order to resolve the Moro and communist insurgencies, the two demons that bedeviled the country for decades that must be solved before the nation can move forward.

He has adopted the credo in successfully dealing with the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF). He has been using this formula in tackling the communist insurgency, but the communists muddled the peace negotiations with insincerity and treachery and violence.

We believe that despite termination of negotiations with the CPP/NPA/NDFP, President Duterte is still considering an option, other than all-out war, to ending the communist insurgency.

That option should be the localized peace talks, which is the last road to peace.