By Prof. Jose Maria Sison
Press Statement, January 17, 2018

I am glad that Duterte, through his parrot Harry Roque, has made himself clear that he never had the intention of meeting me and was lying when he told Mindanews that he wished to meet me in particular and converse one-on-one with me in a room.

Of course, when I first read the report on Duterte´s interview with Mindanews I had some misgivings that he did not mean what he said because of his notoriety for saying one thing and then saying the opposite within a short period and also because of his arrogance and anger in setting some absurd preconditions, like the CPP and NPA humbling themselves and capitulating to his tyrannical rule.

Nevertheless, in the interest of the Filipino people and in my sincere wish to find a way for the resumption of the GRP-NDFP peace negotiations, I preferred to give importance to Duterte´s public offer of a private conversation and I agreed to meet him in a country near the Philippines.

Comrades, friends and my lawyers reminded me of Duterte´s treacherous character, his previous threats to kill me and warned me against my meeting him in any place under his full control and under conditions of his proclaimed all-out war policy, martial law, termination of the GRP-NDFP peace negotiations and designation of the CPP, NPA and their suspected supporters as “terrorists.”

I have therefore suggested a neutral venue abroad for the one-on-one conversation with Duterte. I cannot submit myself to the disposition of anyone that boasts of himself as a murderer with impunity at the age of sixteen and as an instigator of mass murders that have already offended the Filipino people and other peoples of the world.

The pompous parrot Roque also makes himself and his master look utterly stupid by insisting that the CPP and the NPA, both pillars off the people´s government, surrender themselves to the mechanisms of the reactionary government of big compradors and landlords that are servile to foreign interests.

At this juncture, I must say that it is too difficult or impossible to have any kind of serious conversation or negotiations anywhere with someone already crazed by power, fentanyl and the drive for fascist dictatorship. His main interest now in the CPP and NPA is to make them the scapegoats to justify martial rule and military campaigns of mass murder.

Duterte is either ignorant or merely contemptuous of the peace process. His complaints or allegations against the CPP and NPA can be easily submitted by his negotiating panel to the Joint Monitoring Committee (JMC) created under the Comprehensive Agreement on Respect for Human Rights and International Humanitarian Law (CARHRIHL).

The NDFP has far more serious complaints against the AFP, PNP and their armed auxiliaries and has submitted these to the JMC so as not to disrupt the negotiations on the substantive agenda of social and economic reforms; and political and constitutional reforms.

But Duterte had repeatedly rushed to the mass media to attack the CPP, NPA and the NDFP; and to declare as many as three times the termination of the peace negotiations within a short period. Since the very beginning of the peace negotiations, he has never had the intention of fulfilling his promise to amnesty and release all political prisoners in compliance with CARHRIHL.

There is something terribly wrong with Duterte´s mentality and behavior. He must be examined and treated by a team of psychiatrists as being demanded of his imperialist master and fellow shithole Trump in the United States.

It is also advisable for the pipsqueak Roque to have his head and mouth examined for presuming that out of his own bloated sense of self-importance dependent on a nutty shithole he can evaluate and downgrade others who are very much beyond his sphere of sychopancy. He should realise by this time that human rights associations and activists are contemoptuous of him as the servant of a monstrous human rights violator.

But let me give some kind of praise for Duterte and Roque. I think that the revolutionary forces and the people are thankful to them for making it absolutely clear that they are responsible for the termination of the peace negotiations and for the rising intensity of the people´s armed revolution for national and social liberation against the oppressive and exploitative state, now once more in the grip of a fascist dictatorhip.

The revolutionary forces are correct in saying that it is far easier for them to single-mindedly oust the US-directed Duterte regime than to negotiate and make a just peace agreement with it. The process of ousting the regime is a way of strengthening the revolutionary forces and the people against the entire semicolonial and semifeudal ruling system. ###