The National Democratic Front-Negros (NDF-Negros) on Thursday, May 28, rejected localized peace talks proposed in Negros Occidental.
The NDF-Negros, in its statement, said any genuine attempt at peace negotiations must be conducted on a national scale, asserting that a nationwide conflict demands a nationwide resolution.
“Their message remains uncompromising: until the state is ready to talk about land, livelihood, justice, and sovereignty, the revolutionary forces will maintain their stance, and the fire of resistance will continue to burn across the archipelago, undivided,” it said.
Bayani Obrero, NDF-Negros spokesperson, characterized the call for localized peace talks a calculated maneuver by the “reactionary state” to pacify and divide the revolutionary movement under the guise of diplomacy.
Negros Occidental officials are willing to be part of localized peace talks with communist rebels in the province, Cadiz Mayor Salvador Escalante had said on Monday, May 25.
“We are willing to sit down and be part of the peace process on the local level,” Escalante, Negros Association of Chief Executives (Negros ACE) president, said.
Escalante made the statement after Defense Secretary Gilberto Teodoro Jr. rejected peace talks on the national level.
Obrero said the proposal exposes the government’s illogical stance of treating a historic, nationwide civil war as merely a collection of disjointed, regional misunderstandings.
Obrero cited three points in opposing localized peace talks:
*The localized approach relies on the false premise that armed conflict is an isolated phenomenon. The state acts as if the starvation and measly wages endured by sugarcane workers and farmers in Negros are completely disconnected from the systemic exploitation faced by the Filipino people in Mindanao and Luzon, Obrero said.
The poor working conditions in Negros are not unique local anomalies driven by individual despotic comprador bourgeoisie and landlords, but are the direct result of national economic policies structured to commodify cheap labor for monopoly capital, he said.
*NDF-Negros maintains that the revolutionary movement’s objectives include the implementation of the Comprehensive Agreement on Social and Economic Reforms (CASER) to address the root causes of the conflict. In contrast, the push for localized talks aims for nothing less than the outright capitulation of the CPP-NPA-NDF.
“Capitulation is the dream of the oppressor, not the oppressed,” Obrero said.
*Obrero also cited government’s bloated propaganda surrounding its amnesty program and the Enhanced Comprehensive Local Integration Program (E-CLIP). He challenged the government’s sincerity, asking where this state support was before these individuals felt compelled to join the revolutionary movement.
Pitching welfare programs exclusively to those who surrender treats human rights as rewards for blind obedience rather than fundamental rights, Obrero said.
Meanwhile, Maoche Legislador, spokesperson of the Negros Island Regional Operational Command (Apolinario Gatmaitan Command) of the New People’s Army, called the National Task Force to End Local Communist Armed Conflict (NTF-ELCAC) statement that Negros is the “epicenter of spy-tagging and killings” by the New NPA “propaganda”.
Through its propaganda machines, the reactionary state is crying foul over the revolutionary movement’s actions against the 51 individuals, attempting to paint them as innocent civilians, Legislador said.
“Far from innocent, these 51 individuals were proven criminals—thieves, rapists and worst of all, active military intelligence assets planted in communities to compromise the safety of the masses and sabotage the growing resistance,” he alleged.
The People’s Revolutionary Court operates strictly in the service of the oppressed, he said.
“The NTF-ELCAC can spin all the propaganda it wants, but it cannot mask its hypocrisy,” Legislador said.*
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