PRESS STATEMENTS & INTERVIEWS, 2001 - Present

Press Statement

In Agreement With NDFP Panel Recommendation to Put Under Indefinite Study GRP-Declared "Indefinite Recess"

17 August 2002

As NDFP chief political consultant, I agree with the recommendation of the NDFP Negotiating Panel to the NDFP National Council to put under indefinite study the "indefinite recess" that had been declared by the GRP since June 2001 in the GRP-NDFP peace negotiations.

The resumption of the GRP-NDFP peace negotiations is actually blocked by the following factors:

1. State terrorism is escalating. This is in violation of the GRP-NDFP Comprehensive Agreement on Respect for Human Rights and International Humanitarian Law (CARHRIHL). The military, police and paramilitary forces of the GRP are committing the most vicious human rights violations on a wide scale under the Macapagal policy of waging an all-out war against the people and their revolutionary forces.
   
2. The Macapagal regime insists on the line of pursuing "back channel" talks until its pipedream of NDFP capitulation is fulfilled. It is violating The Hague Joint Declaration and other GRP-NDFP agreements that must guide the peace negotiations. It has also collaborated with the US in persecuting and threatening the negotiators, consultants and staffers of the NDFP abroad. It has openly endorsed the designation of the CPP and NPA as "terrorist" organizations by the US, in violation of the Joint Agreement on Safety and Immunity Guarantees (JASIG).
   
3. The NDFP must not negotiate with the GRP while the Macapagal regime is allowing the US military forces to trample upon the national sovereignty and territorial integrity of the Philippines. The regime is collaborating with the US in its scheme of escalating military intervention and building the infrastructure for the reestablishment of the US military bases against the Filipino people and the peoples of the neighboring countries in Asia.

I share the view of the NDFP Negotiating Panel that it would be more productive to resume the peace negotiations after Macapagal ceases to be president and someone like Raul Roco or Loren Legarda assumes the presidency. The end of the current term of

Macapagal is only one year and nine months away, unless Vice President Guingona can somehow replace her earlier.

At the same time, we anticipate that the peace negotiations would completely collapse if the US would have its way in making president someone like General Angelo Reyes whom the US is now projecting as the more credible law-and-order leader in lieu of Macapagal.

She is widely expected to lose the 2004 presidential elections because of the aggravation of the socio-economic crisis, unbridled corruption, rampant criminality of the military and police officers, state terrorism and puppetry to the US. #