Manila
The Philippine government and communist rebels said Friday that formal negotiations to end a lengthy insurgency could resume shortly, though the rebels’ armed wing announced it was beefing up its guerilla campaign.
Peace talks regarding one of the world’s longest-running insurgencies, which have been on-and-off since the 1980s, may resume as early as the second half of January, Communist Party of the Philippines founder Jose Maria Sison said in a video message on Facebook.
Back-channel talks to “prepare the agenda” for formal negotiations have been ongoing since September and agreements on a ceasefire and social and economic reforms may be finished before President Benigno Aquino steps down in 2016, said Sison, who is in exile in the Netherlands.
“It is possible that the formal peace talks between the two negotiating panels will resume again in January after the visit of the Pope,” Sison said, adding the talks will start in “mid-January”.
Pope Francis will arrive on January 15 and will leave on January 19. President Benigno Aquino declared these four days as a non-working holiday.
“If the Aquino regime and the Office of the Presidential Adviser on the Peace Process (OPAPP) hold the negotiations properly, it is possible that the comprehensive agreement on economic reforms and the agreement on truce and cooperation will be forged before the end of the president’s term [in 2016],” Sison said in a podcast in Filipino.
Sison also demanded for the release of 500 leftist leaders who were arrested despite the immunity they enjoy as peace consultants of the National Democratic Front (NDF), the negotiating arm of the CPP and its military arm, the New People’s Army (NPA).
Sison rejected the government’s demand to hold peace talks for the forging of a continuous ceasefire between the Philippine government and the NDF, adding, “The request of the Aquino administration for a [continuous] ceasefire and surrender of the revolutionary forces is a big hindrance [to the continuation of peace talks on substantive issues that have yet to be resolved].”
Both the government and the CPP-NPA have unilaterally declared their respective ceasefire from December 19 to January 19.
“A special team” representing members of the Philippine government and the NDF have been holding exploratory talks since last September for the resumption of formal talks that were stalled since 2011, said Sison.
President Aquino sent Hernani Braganza, former mayor of Alaminos, Pangasinan (northern Luzon) to the Netherlands in late 2013, and has continued intermittent talks with Sison and NDF leader Luis Jalandoni up to 2014, a source told Gulf News.
Confirming the resumption of talks between the two parties, Teresita “Ging” Deles, head of OPAPP, told GMA online, “Friends of the peace process have been shuttling between two parties to explore possible parameters for restarting talks at the earliest possible time.”
