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Press Statement
21 August 2008
ARROYO REGIME RENDERS IMPOSSIBLE
FORMAL TALKS BETWEEN GRP AND MILF
By Prof. Jose Maria Sison
Chief Political Consultant
National Democratic Front of the Philippines
Contrary to the propaganda issued by the psywar experts of the Arroyo
regime, I am not in any position to issue orders to the New People's Army
(NPA) to undertake tactical offensives in sympathy with the Moro Islamic
Liberation Front (MILF). My role as NDFP chief political consultant is
assisting peace negotiations and not issuing military orders to the NPA.
In a recent interview, I merely commented as follows: that there is a
longstanding alliance between the National Democratic Front of the
Philippines (NDFP) and the MILF and that the leadership of the Communist
Party of the Philippines (CPP) and command of the NPA which are both based
in Philippines have issued declarations (through
www.philippinerevolution.net) that NPA tactical offensives are in the
interest of the Filipino people and are also in sympathy with the Moro
people and MILF who are under attack by the armed forces of the GRP.
It is the Arroyo regime that is accountable for the escalation of the
armed conflict in Mindanao and in the entire Philippines. It agreed with
the MILF to formally sign the Memorandum of Agreement on Ancestral Domain
(MOA-AD) in Malaysia on August 5. But long before the Supreme Court issued
the temporary restraining order, the regime all along had the malicious
intent of withdrawing from the scheduled signing and had already mobilized
and deployed military forces for large-scale offensives against the MILF.
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The Arroyo regime's multiple
acts of betraying the MILF have rendered impossible the opening of formal
talks of the GRP and MILF. By announcing that it wants to review, further
negotiate and revise the MOA-AD, the Arroyo regime veritably tells the
MILF to bend and break by giving up what it has gained on paper through
many years of informal talks and indefinite ceasefire. The clear message
of the regime to the MILF is to keep the ceasefire and never to expect the
signing of the MOA-AD.
The regime is using against the MILF the same stratagem (devised by
Arroyo, General Ermita and NSA Gonzales) that it is trying to use against
the NDFP. The GRP negotiating panel agrees to a draft and then freezes it
with demands for revision, while requiring the MILF to submit to informal
talks and prolonged ceasefire or, in the case of the NDFP, while
pressuring it to submit to indefinite ceasefire that lays aside the
substantive agenda and amounts to capitulation and pacification.
Apparently, by pretending for a while to be for MOA-AD and then backing
out, the Arroyo regime has calculated that it shall have inflamed the
armed conflict in Mindanao to the point of justifying martial law and
charter change in a bid to prolong itself in power. Blinded by hubris, the
regime misses the fact that it is besieged by a severe economic and
financial crisis, that the MILF can fight back effectively within its own
territory and that it is self-defeating for the regime to fight on two war
fronts, one against the MILF in Mindanao and another against the NDFP in
the entire country.
The reactionary armed forces have been overstretched and fatigued by so
many years of Oplan Bantay Laya. In recent months, even former GRP
president Fidel V. Ramos has observed this fact. The concurrent military
offensives of the the Bangsamoro Islamic Liberation Army (BILA) and the
New People's Army have the potential of breaking the backbone of the
reactionary armed forces and encouraging the reasonable elements therein
to support the ouster of the fake president and serious negotiations with
the MILF and NDFP. ###
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