MALACAÑANG, ignoring Sen. Antonio Trillanes’s warning against resuming talks with communist rebels, on Monday affirmed its readiness to reopen negotiations for a lasting cease-fire with Communist Party of the Philippines-New People’s Army-National Democratic Front leaders.
But President Aquino’s chief Spokesman, Secretary Edwin Lacierda, clarified that the government panel would sit down for a new round of peace negotiations with the CPP-NPA-NDF, “only if they are time-bound and doable.”
“We have always said we are open to resuming talks, provided that we avoid the mistakes of the past,” Lacierda told Palace reporters at a news briefing on Monday. “And, I think, that’s not an unreasonable request,” he quickly added.
And, even if the resumption of peace talks with the rebels do not quickly materialize, Lacierda said the Aquino administration would simply continue to do its mandate to serve the people.
“As far as we are concerned, our burden is to uplift the concerns of every Filipino,” Lacierda said, adding that “our concern is to make sure that the welfare of every Filipino, whether you’re a rebel, whether you’re a civilian, or whether you’re a law-abiding citizen is taken care of.”
He said this simply means that, “If they [CPP-NPA leaders] are not willing to talk peace, we are going to continue to go and go to areas where we can help the people [with the] poverty-intervention programs that we have, other alleviation measures that we can do to help the poor.”
At the same time, Lacierda assured that the Armed Forces will, likewise, proceed to enforce the government’s Internal Security Plan to protect unarmed civilian communities from rebel forces.
He noted that both the government and the rebels are “coming from a situation where there are no peace talks…so we’re status quo right now.”
But Lacierda also admitted that “there are friends of the [peace process,] who are channeling back and forth to see if there is a possibility of restarting the peace process.”
“We’d rather have peace than war. And we have proven our sincerity insofar as starting a peace dialogue,” Lacierda added. “We’ve proven that in [the talks with the] MILF [Moro Islamic Liberation Front]. But we don’t want to go back to the situation where the talks with the CPP-NPA-NDF would not be time-bound and are not doable. So those are the things that we’re looking for.”