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Press Statement
1 September 2009
OSLO MEETING OF GRP AND NDFP NEGOTIATING PANELS
MAY BE PRECEDED BY MANILA MEETING OF THEIR RESPECTIVE LAWYERS
By Prof. Jose Maria Sison
Chief Political Consultant
NDFP Negotiating Panel
Secretary Avelino Razon, presidential adviser on the peace process, is
reported to have said that the lawyers of the Government of the Republic
of Philippines (GRP) and National Democratic Front of the Philippines (NDFP)
can meet first in the Philippines.
Indeed, they can to discuss legal possibilities, on the basis of
precedents in the time of GRP president Fidel V. Ramos and his then
secretary of justice Silvestre Bello III and in accordance with the June
15 agreement for GRP to comply with the Joint Agreement on Safety and
Immunity Guarantees (JASIG) and remove the impediments on NDFP
consultants.
But there is no substitute for the soonest possible meeting of the GRP and
NDFP negotiating panels, together with their respective lawyers, in Oslo
because it is the panels that can make agreements in writing in order to
ensure compliance with the JASIG. The previous June 15 agreement needs to
be further firmed up in detail and in writing by the panels because the
GRP has failed to comply with the JASIG.
Compliance by the GRP with JASIG is long overdue. The consultants of the
NDFP and other JASIG-protected individuals have been subjected to
extrajudicial killings, abductions, torture and indefinite incarceration
on the basis of trumped up charges of common crimes. Only a rotten
political, judicial and legal system like that of GRP can allow these
barbarities. Razon has been involved in these, especially when he was head
of Task Force Usig and coordinated with the world infamous Inter-Agency
for Legal Action Group (IALAG) whose abolition has been recommended UN
special rapporteur Philip Alston.
As regards the repeated intrigue of Razon that the revolutionary
leadership of the Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP), New People's
Army (NPA) and the NDFP is divided over the question of peace
negotiations, he should read the August 31 CPP statement in Ang Bayan (www.philippinerevolution.net)
declaring that the revolutionary leadership in the Philippines is 100 per
cent behind the NDFP negotiating panel, with Luis Jalandoni as the
chairperson and myself as the chief political consultant.
As regards my lifestyle, it cannot go far beyond borrowed money for bare
subsistence. It is incomparable to the sybaritic life of corrupt high
bureaucrats and military top brass in the Philippines and to the likes of
Gloria and Mike Arroyo who gorge on million peso banquets. I go only to
modest potlucks and barbecue gatherings.
So much for the trivialities of Razon. De facto GRP president Gloria M.
Arroyo impresses the world as lacking in the necessary leadership to
pursue the peace negotiations. The US-directed militarists like Ermita and
Razon control her in this matter and have made her to believe that they
could destroy the armed revolution of the people before 2010 through the
sheer military force of Oplan Bantay Laya or through tactics of pressure
and deception for pushing the NDFP to submit and surrender to the GRP
political and legal system.
Until now, the NDFP does not see that the Arroyo regime is seriously
interested in peace negotiations as a way of addressing the roots of the
civil war through agreements on basic social, economic and political
reforms as the basis of a just and lasting peace. Accordingly, the CPP,
NPA and NDFP are united and ready to wage a tit-for-tat struggle against
any scheme or maneuver of the Arroyo regime. Indeed, the Filipino people
have been pressing on the NPA to intensify tactical offensives on a
nationwide scale.
Just as the Arroyo regime is most interested in destroying the armed
revolution of the people, the revolutionary forces are resolutely and
courageously pursuing the people's war for national liberation and
democracy. Their armed strength has acquired the critical mass for
accelerating the advance of the people's war and building more units of
the NPA to cover 179 rural congressional districts in the next 2 or 3
years. The revolutionary forces plan to attain the strategic stalemate and
finally the strategic offensive within the next ten years. The ever
worsening crisis conditions of the world capitalist system and domestic
ruling system are favorable for waging revolution. The broad masses of the
people are demanding revolutionary change.
The revolutionary forces are also looking at the possibility within the
next ten years that patriotic and progressive forces arise within the
ruling system and make serious negotiations with the NDFP for a great
historic concord of national unity and peace to uphold, defend and advance
national independence, democracy as empowerment of the people, economic
development through national industrialization and land reform and a
patriotic, scientific and democratic culture.###
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