Arroyo regime has failed in all its maneuvers in the GRP-NDFP peace negotiations

Since the second half of 2001, the Arroyo regime has sought to lay aside the framework of GRP-NDFP peace negotiations established by The Hague Joint Declaration and to compel the capitulation of the NDFP by escalating military campaigns of suppression against the people in guerrilla fronts and the extrajudicial killings of legal activists; and by asking the US and other governments to list the CPP, NPA and the chief political consultant as �terrorists�.

Speaker de Venecia and then OPAPP Secretary Eduardo Ermita brought to Utrecht, Netherlands on 30 November 2001 a two-page draft of a sham final peace agreement, whose main provisions required the surrender of arms by the NPA. The NDFP Negotiating Panel immediately rebuffed this demand for capitulation made under the threat of a forthcoming US blacklisting of the CPP, NPA and the chief political consultant as �terrorists�.

In succeeding years, the Arroyo regime has shifted to the tactic of seeking the capitulation of the NDFP under the guise of a permanent or indefinite ceasefire, which would take effect before any comprehensive agreement on social, economic and political reforms. But the NDFP has countered the maneuvers by consistently demanding compliance with The Hague Joint Declaration and the Joint Agreement on the Formation, Sequence and Operationalization of the Reciprocal Working Committees of the GRP and the NDFP Negotiating Panels.

The NDFP has also offered ways to accelerate the peace negotiations without violating The Hague Joint Declaration. Subsequently, it has offered the two-page draft of a concise agreement for an immediate just peace, which contains major points upholding the national and democratic rights of the people and provides for an immediate truce, pending the negotiation of detailed comprehensive agreements on social, economic and political reforms.

While seeking to violate The Hague Joint Declaration and preventing the formal talks of the GRP and NDFP peace negotiations, the Arroyo regime has been spending huge amounts of money to conjure the illusion of localized peace negotiations. In fact, these so-called localized peace negotiations are mere chattering and dining sessions among OPAPP officials, local bureaucratic personnel and paramilitary groups in the service of the AFP and PNP.

At no instance has there been any bonafide part of the NDFP participating in �localized peace talks�. The central organs of the CPP, NPA and the NDFP are firm that the GRP can properly negotiate only with the designated NDFP Negotiating Panel under Chairperson Luis Jalandoni and have condemned �localized peace talks� as a malicious scheme of the regime to split and fragment the revolutionary movement.

The Arroyo regime is condemnable for preventing the formal talks of the GRP and NDFP negotiating panels and for wasting public funds to make an elaborate pretense at holding localized peace talks. The people should demand an accounting and auditing of the funds being used by the Arroyo regime for negotiating with its own shadow. ###


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