Long-Term Truce is Possible If There are Basic Reforms

Prof. Jose Ma. Sison
National Democratic Front of the Philippines
Chief Political Consultant
December 21, 2004

Gloria M. Arroyo can at anytime easily obtain a long-term truce and even an alliance with the National Democratic Front of the Philippines (NDFP) if she agrees to fight for complete national independence against US domination and to carry out genuine land reform in conjunction with national industrialization.

But she can never obtain the capitulation of the NDFP through an indefinite ceasefire. It is an exercise in futility for the Government of the Republic of the Philippines (GRP) to try to make the NDFP capitulate by pressuring it with the so-called terrorist listing of the revolutionary forces by the US and other foreign governments and with the escalation of counterrevolutionary violence and threats of assassination and extradition against Europe-based NDFP panelists and consultants.

As a matter of revolutionary principle, the NDFP is for the victory of the just revolutionary cause of the people, and cannot be a party to the perpetuation of the rotten semicolonial and semifeudal system of exploitation and oppression. The NDFP is acutely aware of the fact that the people are desirous of revolutionary change in the face of the ever worsening economic and political crisis of the ruling system.

There can be no just and lasting peace for as long as the GRP seeks to preserve the unjust social system. The peace negotiations can progress steadily only if the GRP conforms to The Hague Joint Declaration. This agreement requires the GRP and the NDFP to address the roots of the armed conflict by negotiating and adopting the necessary social, economic, political and constitutional reforms.

The GRP-NDFP peace negotiations come to a standstill every time that the GRP demands an indefinite ceasefire and obscures the need for social, economic, political and constitutional reforms. The people�s war for national liberation and democracy is intensifying because the basic problems of the people are being aggravated by the US-controlled and US-directed Arroyo regime.

No amount of bad cop-good cop tactics arranged and directed by the US ambassador Ricciardone, Arroyo, General Ermita and the clerico-fascists can drive the revolutionary forces and people towards capitulation. The revolutionary forces and people are so conscious of their principles and purposes and so rich in revolutionary experience that they cannot be deceived by puerile tactics. ###

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