Gov’t on new peace talks: neither here nor there?

Not surprising at all, Vice President Sara Duterte early this week assailed the agreement between the government and the National Democratic Front of the Philippines to return to peace negotiations.

The accord, signed in Oslo, Norway on Nov. 23 and made public early December, was “an agreement with the devil,” she said, urging Marcos Jr. to reconsider it.

Immediately, however, Sara’s nemesis, Speaker Ferdinand Martin Romualdez, countered that the GRP-NDFP accord was “a moral imperative.” The House supermajority gave him full backing. 

NDFP negotiating panel member Coni Ledesma, asked by ANC to comment on Sara’s denunciation, dismissed the latter’s tantrums. What’s important, Ledesma said, is that the Marcos Jr. administration initiated the move to resume the GRP-NDFP peace talks.

Acknowledging the support to the government initiative of presidential peace adviser Carlito Galvez Jr. (a retired AFP chief), Ledesma promised, “We will do our best to make the talks succeed.”

Sara issued her message to Marcos Jr. on the fifth anniversary of the National Task Force to End Local Communist Armed Conflict (NTF-ELCAC), to which she had been appointed co-vice chairperson.

Promptly, the NTF-ELCAC secretariat sought to allay the negative impact of Sara’s pugnacious statement, lamely saying that her statements shouldn’t be misconstrued as being against Marcos Jr.’s policy on peace. At the same time, the secretariat displayed its own pugnacity by claiming that the positive developments on peace-building would “never stymie” the momentum of the task force’s counterinsurgency drive against the CPP-NPA.

Meantime, the Office the Presidential Adviser on Peace, Reconciliation and Unity (OPAPRU), headed by Galvez Jr., doubled down on its stance that the agreement to go back to peace negotiations entails a new process – not a continuation of previous peace talks.

“The talks are new, no preconditions. We are not referring to anything previously discussed before. This is new. It’s not what’s called resumption of talks, it’s new. All details, what must be discussed, will be done so in the next meeting.”

That’s what presidential assistant and OPAPRU official Wilben Mayor asserted Wednesday