No ceasefire? No surprise—CPP

The Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP) said it is not surprised with President Rodrigo Duterte’s announcement that he will not declare a ceasefire with the New People’s Army this Christmas and new year season.

Responding to Duterte’s late Monday address, the CPP information officer Marco Valbuena said Duterte’s decision “comes as no surprise,” adding the President’s policies had always been shaped by military generals obsessed with prolonging the civil war in the Philippines.

“They [the generals] are addicted to war because of the profits they pocket from it,” Valbuena said in a statement.

The Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) said they are not recommending the declaration of the traditional Yuletide season ceasefire with the NPA this year.

Nor would the military recommend that the government declare ceasefires with the NPA ever again, AFP spokesperson Maj. Gen. Edgard Arevalo said.

Duterte said, “There will be no ceasefire ever again under my term ..For all intents and purposes, that ceasefire is dead. That’s gone. That has been long gone.”

Duterte again devoted a part of his address Monday assailing the Communists and vowing to destroy them.

He said that if he compromised with the Communists, the military and the police may assassinate him for being a traitor to the republic.

“I cannot compromise anything in this government. It’s either I will be impeached or the military and the police will shoot me,” Duterte said.

“And if I give you a power to share in the — a power-sharing, that’s a very, very serious thing. You can get assassinated for it,” he added.

‘Who ingratiated himself with whom?’

In a statement, National Democratic Front of the Philippines chief political consultant Jose Maria Sison belied Duterte’s allegation, saying it was Duterte who kept blabbering about joining a coalition government with the CPP.

Sison said it was Duterte who ingratiated himself with the revolutionary movement as a Davao City mayor and when he was seeking the support of the legal democratic forces when he ran for the presidency.

“At no time has the subject of coalition government ever been taken up with Duterte or any of his predecessors as president in the course of the peace negotiations. The people’s revolutionary government based in the countryside can very well exist and develop without him and his likes,” Sison said.

“Duterte is lying about being offered a place in what he imagines as invitation to a coalition government. He could not even qualify as NDFP consultant when he offered himself to become one,” Sison said.

Duterte applied to become an NDFP consultant but was ordered to withdraw by the Benigno Aquino administration’s interior and local government secretary Jesse Robredo. # (Raymund B. Villanueva)