NDFP issues outline on social justice for talks with government

By Rosemarie A. Zamora

THE NATIONAL Democratic Front of the Philippines has released an executive summary of the draft of the Comprehensive Agreement on Social Economic Reforms (CASER), completed on Jan. 12, 2017.

The proposed draft aimed to tackle long-standing social justice issues of peasant landlessness and land monopolizations, among others.

In the draft, the NDFP called for real agrarian reform which can correct “historical injustices of the peasantry” by free distribution of lands as a “key to ending rural poverty and the starting point for rapid development of the Philippine countryside.”

“The proposals of the National Democratic Front of the Philippines (NDFP) for a Comprehensive Agreement on Social and Economic Reforms (CASER) are concrete and doable steps towards liberating the Filipino people from poverty, exploitation, and underdevelopment,” the summarized draft reads.

Other key reforms proposed by NDFP are:

• Breaking land monopolies through expropriation and with selective compensation; land should be distributed for free.

• Peasant cooperatives and associations should be set up and farmers should have democratic participation in decision making.

• Domination of key capitalists should be broken and utilities should be nationalized “to ensure electricity, water, telecommunications, and transport services for the people and overall development.”

• Environmental protection policy that restricts large-scale mining and marine wealth extraction. Foreign appropriation should be banned and should be exclusively for Filipinos with preference for collective ownership.

• Policies that protect children, OFWs, women, elderly, and persons with disabilities and upholding people’s rights to basic services by providing free education, healthcare, housing, water, energy, mass transport, and communications.

• Policies to strengthen Filipino culture and promotion of arts, music, literature that would also allow to support freedom of speech, information, and expression.

• Policies to support the indigenous peoples and the Bangsamoro’s rights to self-determination, economic development, and non-discrimination.

• Policy to develop a relatively independent and self-reliant economy such as the regulation of foreign trade and investment to ensure long-term contributions to national development and establishing better ties with East Asia countries.

Sought for comment, University of Santo Tomas professor Edmund S. Tayao said, “the proposal of the NDF are well-meaning. I have to say far-reaching and really very fundamental reforms” that could solve the “elitist social economic frame” of the country, wherein a “slanted” social structure is favoring the elites.

“If you’re going to look at the agenda of the current administration and the proposal of the CPP-NDF, you will notice some convergences in fact, apart from convergences you can see [that] there is some consistency or at the very least (there are) agreements between the priority measures of the administration and the CPP-NDF,” he said in a phone interview.

Also sought for comment, Executive Director of the Institute for Political and Electoral Reform (IPER) Ramon C. Casiple said in a text message that the proposal “reflects their own revolutionary framework” that would require constitutional changes.”

Mr. Tayao, for his part, also said: “[T]here’s no problem with the program priorities of the government and the reform advocacies of the CPP-NDF. In other words, if those were the only basis I’m sure that we could have had already assigned agreement between the two parties. But the problem is more with the people behind the negotiations.”

He then cited, as an example, attacks by the New People’s Army in the countryside despite ongoing peace talks with the government.

“So, in other words, parang ang lumalabas hindi natin alam (it appears we don’t know) if the CPP-NDF and the NPA are still led by one single leadership structure. So doon nagkaproblema (So there, we find problems), essentially,” he added.

The government suspended the fifth formal talk with communist rebels last May, citing continuous attacks by NPA.

“The way I understand the President and the government, they’re waiting for, you know some good faith on the part of the CPP-NDF. In other words, a clear indication that they are really sincere in negotiating,” Mr Tayao said.