Kodao Productions
November 22, 2017

The National Democratic Front of the Philippines (NDFP) Negotiating Panel said President Rodrigo Duterte has chosen to go against the people’s clamor for just peace in cancelling “planned meetings” between the Left and the Manila-based government.

Reacting to the Office of the Presidential Adviser on the Peace Process (OPAPP) announcement of the cancellation earlier today, NDFP chief negotiator Fidel Agcaoili told Kodao what was apparently cancelled are further meetings between the parties and not the peace negotiations itself.

“At any rate, the people are clamoring for a just peace and not the peace of the grave in the struggle for national and social liberation against foreign domination, landlordism and corruption,” Agcaoli said.

“The Duterte regime has chosen to go against such clamor. This is its own lookout,” he added.

In his announcement, Presidential Adviser on the Peace Process Jesus Dureza said there will be no peace negotiations until an “enabling environment conducive to a change in the government’s position becomes evident.”

“We will closely watch the developments,” Dureza said.

The GRP and the NDFP recently held bilateral technical meetings in the Philippines on social and economic reforms in their bid to finalize agrarian reform and rural development agreements.

The parties agreed to free land distribution to landless and poor farmers in Rome, Italy last January as part of their agrarian reform agreement package.

The formal peace negotiations between the NDFP and the Duterte government that started in August 2016 however failed to sustain its fast pace after their six-month long reciprocal unilateral ceasefire declarations were cancelled following complaints of violations by the Armed Forces of the Philippines.

The scheduled fifth round of formal talks in The Netherlands last May also failed to start after the GRP failed to secure a bilateral ceasefire agreement with the NDFP. # (Raymund B. Villanueva)