Pahayag

Duterte is like an old broken record endlessly terminating the peace negotiations

Duterte is like an old broken record repeating ad nauseam his termination of the GRP-NDFP peace negotiations. As far as the NDFP is concerned, Duterte formally killed the peace negotiations on November 23, 2017 with his Proclamation 360 terminating them.

Since then, what Duterte has been doing is merely driving more nails into the coffin of the peace negotiations under his regime. He needs the continuance of the armed conflict as the excuse to impose on the people a de facto martial law nationwide and eventually a full-blown fascist dictatorship through charter change to a bogus kind of federalism.

Instead of peace negotiations at the national level by the duly-authorized panels of the GRP and the NDFP, what Duterte wants is fake localized peace negotiations staged and controlled by the military and military-occupied Office of the Presidential Adviser for the Peace Negotiations (OPAPP).

In these fake negotiations, people are gathered by local officials and misrepresented as surrenderers and the military officers collect the reward money for the fake surrenderers. This racket is the essence of the so-called whole-nation approach whereby the civilians are subjugated and humiliated by the military for purposes of psywar, mass intimidation and listing of prospective targets of the Duterte death squads.

As far as the NDFP is concerned, the GRP-NDFP peace negotiations can be resurrected in the future by a new GRP administration. The Duterte regime is not eternal. It can be finished with the success of the oust movement, with the end of his term in 2022 or with his certain overthrow as he forces his way to a fascist dictatorship.

In the meantime, the revolutionary forces and the people need to defend themselves actively and advance their revolutionary cause by all possible forms of resistance. By terminating the peace negotiations and brutally carrying out an all-out war against the people, Duterte gives the revolutionary forces and the people no other choice but to wage and intensify the people’s war.

The conditions for waging the armed revolution are favorable because the broad masses of the people detest and want to get rid of a regime of greed and terror that is generating an unprecedented economic and financial crisis. The tyrannical, treasonous, murdering and corrupt rule of Duterte and the rapidly worsening economic crisis combine to constitute a perfect storm conducive to waging the people’s war. ###

Duterte is like an old broken record endlessly terminating the peace negotiations