The Communist Party of the Philippines blasted on 25 January the Executive Order 158 of President Rodrigo Duterte calling for ‘localized peace talks’, declaring that this “promotes a fake peace and will completely shut the doors to serious peace negotiations.” CPP Chief Information Officer Marco Valbuena asserted that Duterte’s directive aims “to kill the people’s resistance to land grabbing, low wages and the expansion of plantations and mining companies” and is a “counterinsurgency weapon to conduct psychological warfare and intelligence operations against the people and the people’s army.”
Duterte signed EO158, “Strengthening the policy framework on peace, reconciliation and unity, and reorganizing the government’s administrative Structure for the purpose” on 27 December 2021. It called for ‘localized peace talks’ and replaced the Office of the Presidential Adviser on the Peace Process with the Office of the Presidential Adviser on Peace, Reconciliation and Unity.
Despite the rhetoric, Valbuena said, the EO “does not address the problem of systematic oppression and exploitation” in Philippine society. “It serves only to sugarcoat the relentless drive to terrorize the people by establishing so many military camps and detachments to surround and control civilian villages, forcibly recruit people to paramilitary groups, conduct night raids against people’s homes, incessantly harass people to ‘admit’ and ‘surrender’ to being New People’s Army supporters and target for extrajudicial killing those who refuse to cooperate and give up their principles.”
Valbuena called on the Filipino people, “especially advocates of a just and lasting peace, to reject and denounce” EO 158.
Prof. Jose Maria Sison, NDFP Chief Political Consultant and CPP Founding Chairman, likewise criticized Duterte’s directive as “a pack of lies and false promises.” He declared that Duterte is spreading “the false promise of addressing and resolving the root causes of the armed conflicts, and of transforming Philippine society by staging fake localized peace talks.”
He explained that, in reality, ‘localized peace talks’ is aimed at approaching suspected revolutionaries, including their families and friends, and offer them bribes like the Community Support Program and the Barangay Development Program. Those who accept the bribes, he said, “are publicly presented as surrenderers and made to participate in psychological warfare, intelligence and combat operations.” He said military officials can also kill those who already ‘surrendered’ in order to receive higher cash rewards, like how Duterte’s police forces kill ‘drug personalities’ in their ‘war on drugs’.
He concluded that there is no way for the Filipino people and their revolutionary movement to achieve just peace “but to wage the revolutionary struggle for national and social liberation more resolutely and fiercer than ever before.”