Ouster of Duterte CPP’s top priority
Credit to Author: DEMPSEY REYES| Date: Wed, 02 Jan 2019 17:23:54 +0000
THE TOP priority of the Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP) this year is the ouster of President Rodrigo Duterte, exiled communist leader Jose Maria “Joma” Sison announced on Wednesday.
Sison, founding chairman of the CPP based in The Netherlands, however, the left open the door for the resumption of peace talks between the National Democratic Front of the Philippines (NDFP), the CPP’s political arm, and the Duterte government.
“The NDFP is authorized to be open to peace negotiations with the current and prospective regime of the reactionary government but its principal work now is to work for the ouster of the Duterte regime,” Sison said in a statement.
“We expect that the Filipino people and their revolutionary forces will win ever greater victories in the next year and thereafter,” he added.
Sison said the NDFP must “further strengthen” its organization as the “most consolidated realization” of the CPP and be able to cooperate with all its possible allies “to isolate and oust the Duterte regime from power.”
The New People’s Army (NPA), the CPP’s armed wing which the military has dismissed as a spent force, will increase attacks on government troops in the countryside, he said.
“The successful NPA offensives in guerilla warfare based on an expanding and deepening mass base will serve to strengthen the revolutionary movement by seizing arms from the enemy forces and will expose the lies of the enemy which misrepresent the character and status of the people’s army and seek to mislead the people,” Sison stressed.
“The intensified offensives are meant to develop a fully armed company per guerilla front and fulfill the maturation of the strategic defensive and proceed to the strategic stalemate in a few years’ time,” he added.
‘Crisis will worsen’
Sison claimed the socioeconomic and political crisis facing the government “will worsen and that the Duterte regime will not solve” it.
The Duterte administration, he added, “will further inflict grave social and economic suffering” on the Filipino people.
The President is “not interested in serious peace negotiations” to address the root cause of armed conflict between the military and the NPA guerillas, Sison further claimed.
“He (Duterte) has issued proclamations and executive orders in order to terminate peace negotiations and further render them impossible during his rule,” Sison said.
“What he wants is the impossible, which is the surrender of the revolutionary movement of the people,” he added.
The defense and military establishments have been vocal in supporting the move to terminate the peace negotiations.
Defense Secretary Delfin Lorenzana and Sison had engaged in a word war, with the former calling the latter an “armchair general,” a description slammed by the communist leader by stressing that the CPP Central Committee oversees the NPA.
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