By Manuel T. Cayon & Rene Acosta
MANILA and Davao City—The relationship between presumptive President Rodrigo R. Duterte and top leaders of Asia’s longest-running revolutionary movement continues to warm up, as both bared progress in ticklish issues of peace and political prisoners.
On Thursday the Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP) said it welcomed the plan of Duterte to release all political prisoners as a confidence-building measure to the resumption of peace talks between the government and the rebels.
“Duterte’s plan to release political prisoners will certainly be a cordial act that will surely help invigorate peace negotiations between the GRP [government of the Republic of the Philippines] and the NDFP [National Democratic Front of the Philippines],” the CPP said in a statement.
Duterte, a self-admitted socialist, said he could release all the political prisoners once the talks start in a bid to encourage the rebels to return to the negotiating table.
The incoming president also said he is amenable to giving key communist leaders, including CPP Cofounder Jose Maria Sison, who is in exile and whom he had asked to return to the country, seats in his government, proving his determination to strike a political solution with the Left.
This was the latest signal the incoming administration is reaching progress in ending the country’s decades-old insurgency problem.
Talks with Agcaoili
THE CPP statement comes two days after Duterte confirmed he had talks with NDFP leader Fidel Agcaoili. He said he and Agcaoili, also representing the NDFP in peace talks, talked about the framework of negotiations.
While Duterte declined to disclose the details of the framework, the supposed handpicked chief negotiator Silvestre H. Bello III earlier intimated that the NDF has a new framework to offer with the government.
According to Bello, said to have been appointed by Duterte as labor secretary, the framework was presented by Sison in a back channel discussion with former government negotiator Hernani Braganza. Bello said discussion happened sometime in December last year.
The new framework, he said, calls for a simultaneous discussion of the three remaining substantive issues: socioeconomic reforms, political and constitutional reforms, and end of hostilities and disposition of forces.
Duterte did not give the details further if this was the framework his administration would adapt in the peace talks. The existing negotiation tract, to note, requires first an agreement on each issue before going to the next agenda.
Duterte said he would ask the NDFP to release all its captured government personnel before the talks. “I think there are still troops under you. Can I still go to you and ask for their freedom?” Duterte asked Agcaoili.
According to Duterte, he believes two policemen are held by the CPP’s armed wing, the New People’s Army (NPA), in Misamis Oriental. He added one soldier is also with the NPA in Agusan.
“Maybe I will pay you a visit and to ask their freedom so that when the talks will be conducted, there would be no more problem,” Duterte told Agcaoili.
Prisoner release
THE CPP said it may release the policemen and soldiers if Duterte would also release detained consultants of the NDFP as an initial move before he would free all the other political detainees, since these consultants are advisers to the panel of negotiators from the Left.
“While the revolutionary forces are amenable to incoming GRP President Duterte’s plan to effect the release of all prisoners once talks are resumed, he can also take the option of ordering the release of key peace consultants of the NDFP prior to formal resumption of talks, especially those who will be playing a critical role in preparations and actual negotiations,” the CPP said.
According to observers, one of the reasons the talks between the government and the NDFP took a back seat was the arrest of NDFP consultants and the unheeded demand for their release.
The government claimed the arrested consultants were held on ordinary crimes. The NDFP maintained these consultants were given immunity from arrest for being members and advisers to the NDFP panel, as spelled out by an agreement with the government.
The CPP explained the release of nearly 600 political prisoners, including the 18 peace consultants of the NDFP would also be an “act of justice,” as they have been “detained unjustly as a result of the offensive of trumped up charges unleashed by the military and police over the past several years.”
The CPP pointed out that “most of the political prisoners being detained by the AFP [Armed Forces] and PNP [National Police] are peasant activists, as well as organizers among workers, urban poor, youth and women, who have been charged with unbailable crimes, such as illegal possession of firearms and explosives, murder and others.”
The CPP had also asked Duterte to stop the government’s scheme of “filing trumped up charges against activists in the legal arena that makes a mockery of the GRP’s justice system.”
“Over the past years, there has been a growing number of aboveground activists who have been harassed by military and police intelligence operatives. Not a few of them have chosen to go underground and join the revolutionary armed struggle or seek refuge in areas under the sway of the NPA,” it said.
Sison’s return
DUTERTE told reporters in a news briefing late Tuesday night he could not “extend the invitation and guarantee [Sison’s] safety here because I am not yet the president.”
“But in God’s good time, maybe time would come that we would stop talking being ‘Left’ or being ‘Right,’” he said. “And maybe we would stop talking about the Moro, the lumads and the Christians. We can simply call ourselves Mindanaoans.”
Duterte said his administration would also assure the Moro National Liberation Front (MNLF) that the government has not forgotten them. “Maybe I would go to Jolo [to meet MNLF Chairman Nur Misuari].”
“They said we have snubbed them,” he said. “But no, this visit should show them that I am interested.”