Manila: Newly-elected President Rodrigo Duterte applied as a peace consultant of the National Democratic Front (NDF), the negotiating arm of the 46-year-old Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP), which has been holding peace talks on and off with the Philippine government since 1992, officials said.

“The NDF accepted him as a peace consultant when he was vice-mayor of Davao City, from 2010 to 2013,” Rey Casambre, executive director of the Philippine Peace Centre, told Gulf News. Duterte was mayor of Davao City for more than 20 years.

“But when interior and local government secretary Jesse Robredo learnt about this, he admonished Duterte not to accept the NDF’s appointment because of conflict of interest,” said Casambre.

This incident happened before Robredo died in a helicopter crash in 2012, two years after his appointment by President Benigno Aquino in 2010.

When asked why Duterte wanted to become an NDF peace consultant, Casambre said that Duterte believed that the position would make him more effective in negotiating for the release of soldiers and policemen held hostage by the New People’s Army (NPA), the armed wing of CPP.

As soon as he was elected after the May 9 polls, and before his proclamation as president on June 30, Duterte called for the resumption of stalled peace talks between the Philippine government and NDF. Duterte also promised to release more than 500 leftist political prisoners, some of whom were NDF peace consultants.

“Informal peace talks are under way — with Duterte’s newly appointed peace negotiators, Silvestre Bello and Jess Dureza who are now holding talks with their NDF counterparts in Manila,” said Casambre.

Last May 15, Duterte asked CPP founder Jose Maria Sison, who has been living in exile in The Netherlands since 1989, to return to the Philippines. Sison was Duterte’s professor at Manila’s Lyceum University in the mid-60s.

Duterte also invited the NDF to propose left-oriented cabinet members to head the departments of agrarian reform, environment, labour, and social welfare.

In 1995, the Philippine government and the NDF signed the Joint Agreement on Safety and Immunity Guarantees (JASSIG), which gave leftist political leaders engaged in peace talks immunity from arrest. They also signed in March 1998 the Comprehensive Agreement on Respect for Human Rights and International Humanitarian Law (CARHRIHL).

In 1994, Congress passed that a law that decriminalised membership to the CPP-NPA, Since then, leftist political leaders who remained critical of the government were arrested for alleged criminal crimes. In 1972, when former dictator Ferdinand Marcos declared Martial Law, arrested leftist activists were classified as political prisoners.

In 1992, at the start of talks, the Philippine government and the NDF signed the Hague Joint Declaration and agreed on topics they should tackle during peace talks: human rights and international humanitarian law, socioeconomic reforms, political and constitutional reforms, end of hostilities, and deposition of forces.

The CPP-NPA’s strength went down to 5,000 in the 90s, from 25,000 in the 70s, the military said. But it has remained in control of majority of far-flung villages that have no government services.