Utrecht, The Netherlands- This was the enigmatic analogy of National Democratic Front (NDF) Chief Political Consultant Prof. Jose Maria Sison, of the tedious peace negotiations between the NDF and the Philippine government. Both government and the NDF have separately confirmed the resumption of the 4-year old stalled talks to be held in Oslo, Norway next month.
Sison said that if God had to take a week to build the universe, processes involving mortals specially those as important and tricky as peace negotiations must take even longer.
“God is both a concept and a reality” said Sison who as the alleged founder of the Communist Party of the Philippines is universally presumed to be an atheist.
Utrecht, The Netherlands- This was the enigmatic analogy of National Democratic Front (NDF) Chief Political Consultant Prof. Jose Maria Sison, of the tedious peace negotiations between the NDF and the Philippine government. Both government and the NDF have separately confirmed the resumption of the 4-year old stalled talks to be held in Oslo, Norway next month.
Sison said that if God had to take a week to build the universe, processes involving mortals specially those as important and tricky as peace negotiations must take even longer.
“God is both a concept and a reality” said Sison who as the alleged founder of the Communist Party of the Philippines is universally presumed to be an atheist.
In a recent meeting with peace advocates of the Global Partnership for the Prevention of Armed Conflict (GPPAC), Sison stressed that the NDF position in the negotiations is firmly aligned with its cohesive policy of ensuring political and social reforms. They are also negotiating in the context of International Humanitarian Law and other human rights statutes, said the NDF consultant. Sison said that the negotiations will only be settled if it will eventually provide “meat” for the people. Sison defined these as genuine social and economic reforms which he claims the NDF has been steadfastfly fighting for. However, political and constitutional reforms are necessary to enable the delivery of these reforms, he stressed.
{mosimage}
Peace talks between the two parties started in September 1992 following a Joint Declaration in the Hague to hold formal peace negotiations under the then Ramos administration. Subsequent talks were held in September 1994 in pursuance of the Hague declaration. A Joint Agreement on Safety and Immunity Guarantees (JASIG) was reached in 1995 and in March 1998 the Comprehensive Agreement on Respect for Human Rights and International Humanitarian Law (CARHIHL) was considered a major breakthrough in the talks.
However in 2002, the CPP-NPA was listed as a “terrorist organization” by the US and the European Union which made the talks untenable. Formal talks resumed in February 2004 in Oslo upon the hosting and facilitation of the Royal Norwegian Government. But in September 2, 2005, President Arroyo ordered the suspension of the JASIG after the NDF withdrew from the negotiating table in August 2005 citing loss of confidence in the legitimacy and durability of the Arroyo government.
The JASIG was restored last July 17 paving the way for the resumption of the talks in Oslo next month.
Asked by the GPPAC delegation how constitutional reforms will be carried out in the light of broad opposition to current moves to alter the constitution, Sison said that the NDF is not against changes in the constitution per se as long as the timing is right and it is not for the selfish interests of a few politicians or the ruling elite which is what seems to be happening in the current moves to convene a “constituent assembly” in Congress. Sison’s scenario of how the consitution can be ideally amended is for the two sides to come up with their respective drafts and then merge to create a new one.
GPPAC is a global network of peacebuilders composed of 18 regions worldwide. It was launched at the UN in 2005 in response to the call of then UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan for civil society to determine its role in conflict prevention. GPPAC has affirmed the need for a paradigm shift from reaction to prevention in dealing with potential and ongoing violent conflicts and the signal role that civil society can play in partnership and engagements with governments, multi-laterals and non-state actors.
The Davao-based regional advocacy and solidarity NGO, Initiatives for International Dialogue (IID) is the GPPAC Southeast Asia initiator. IID has been in the forefront of peacebuilding, democratization and self-determination efforts in Mindanao and other parts of Southeast Asia. IID has had continuing engagements with the Philippine government and the MILF on their own peace process along with other civil society groups and partners since the “all-out war” of then President Joseph Estrada in Mindanao in 2000. IID was instrumental in establishing the Mindanao Peaceweavers (MPW), the broadest civil society peace network in the island as well as the Mindanao Peoples Caucus (MPC), the foremost tri-people grassroots-led peace network in Mindanao that was responsible for monitoring ceasefire violations through its Bantay (Watch) Ceasefire mechanism.
Asked what he thought of UP Prof. Randy David running against President Gloria Macapagal- Arroyo if the latter decides to run for Congress in Pampanga in 2010, Sison says that the 2010 elections if it pushes through, is but an attempt to revitalize a system that is rotting anyway. Sison says that there would have been other progressive leaders like the late pre Martial Law student activist Voltaire Garcia who possessed the skills, knowhow, charm and progressive ideas who would have made an ideal president and led the country well.
President Arroyo had been reported to entertain thoughts of running for Congress in her district in Pampanga in the 2010 elections after her term ends. Observers see this as a trial balloon if moves for the constituent assembly do not prosper. Analysts believe that Arroyo’s alleged desire to run for Congress is an attempt to gain impunity from possible criminal charges that could be filed against her after she steps down from Malacanang.
Sison also said the NDF would support any group including military progressives who can implement the reforms they are fighting for. Sison claims that he knows of one military general who has been telling his troops that “the only way to beat Sison is to implement what he stands for by us”.
Alas, Sison says that notwithstanding that general, there has yet to rise in the Philippines a real progressive military leader in the tradition of the military officer Jacobo Arbenz who became President of Guatemala in 1951 with the support of the army and left-wing political parties. Arbenz was eventually ousted in a military coup supported by the U.S. government after he made agrarian reform the centerpiece of his administration.
Sharing his thoughts on the Mindanao situation, Sison thinks that the recent Memorandum On Ancestral Domain (MOA-AD) debacle was the result of a government strategy that backfired. The Moro Islamic Liberation Front’s (MILF) line on the MOA – AD is correct, he says. As a matter of principle, the NDF supports the right to self-determination of the Moro people, said Sison. As both the NDF and MILF are fighting a common enemy and the masses in the territories of each side interweave, they have to simply talk and cooperate. But they do not conduct joint operations, he emphasized.
Commenting on the recent spate of bombings in the island, Sison says it could be the move of someone or a group that wants the blame to be laid on the opposition. “There was no military target, only civilians were victims, no one is to gain”, said Sison although he conceded that it could also be the work of the Abu Sayaf who can be “crazy”.
Sison along with NDF Negotitating Panel Member and Spokesperson Fidel Agcaoili welcomed GPPAC’s visit saying it was timely as the environment for the resumptions of negotiations was ripe amidst previous efforts by elements in government to outflank the NDF.
According to Sison, the Philippine revolution that the NDF is waging is the longest running in the world at 62 years, counting its origins in 1947 when the Hukbalahap (People’s Army Against the Japanese) transformed into the HMB – Army for the Liberation of the People — when the then American colonial regime moved to annihilate them.
Sison was arrested in August 28, 2007 by the International Crime Investigation Team of the Dutch National Criminal Investigation Department on allegations that he was involved in the assasinations of former comrades Romulo Kintanar and Arturo Tabara that took place in the Philippines. He was subsequently released on September 13 after a Dutch court said it did not find sufficient evidence to keep him in custody.
Sison affirmed that it is only through painstaking mass work- arousing, organizing and mobilizng the masses through a people’s protracted war that national liberation can be attained.
( Gus Miclat is the Executive Director of the Initiatives for International Dialogue (IID). He is an Executive Committee member of the Global Partnership for the Prevention of Armed Conflict (GPPAC).)
Recent Comments