COMMUNIST PARTY of the Philippines (CPP) founder Jose Maria Sison on Monday, April 23, said he is willing to return to Manila for peace talks if his “comrades and lawyers are satisfied with legal and security precautions.”
This came after President Rodrigo R. Duterte invited Mr. Sison over the weekend to return home for the long-awaited peace negotiations between the Government of the Republic of the Philippines (GRP) and the National Democratic Front of the Philippines (NDFP) of which Mr. Sison serves as consultant.
“In response, I declare that I will certainly return home when a significant advance in the peace negotiations has been achieved within the framework of The Hague Joint Declaration and when my comrades and lawyers are satisfied with legal and security precautions,” Mr. Sison said in a statement.
The communist leader, who is on exile in The Netherlands, he is “confident that the GRP and the NDFP negotiating panels, consultants and drafting teams will be able to produce in the next few weeks the documents necessary for resuming the peace negotiations and making the peace process strong and stable.”
In his press briefing on Monday, Presidential Spokesperson Harry L. Roque, Jr. assured Mr. Sison that the President has given his word that “he will not be apprehended while in the Philippines.”
As for Mr. Sison’s other conditions for the GRP, Mr. Roque said: “I don’t know if he is in a position to provide for conditions. What the President said was if peace talks will resume, he is welcome to come home. The President will assure his security and the fact that he will not be arrested. Beyond that, the President has not acceded to any further terms.”
Mr. Sison also thanked the President for his expressed wish for his “homecoming and for (Mr. Duterte’s) assurances of hospitality and guarantees for his safety.”
“I have long wished that we could meet again and cooperate closely in enabling the peace process to advance from one item to another in the substantive agenda,” the communist leader said.
In the coming weeks, according to Mr. Sison, the important task for the negotiating panels is to draw up a “memorandum of agreement to respect existing agreements prior to Proclamation 360 (which terminated the peace process) and to remove the obstacles and hindrances to the participation of a significant number of NDFP negotiators, consultants and experts in the peace negotiations.”
Second is “drafting the mutually satisfactory agreements on ceasefire and amnesty of the political prisoners as well as the parts of the Comprehensive Agreement on Social and Economic Reforms (CASER) on Agrarian Reform and Rural Development and National Industrialization and Economic Development; and third, signing and approving the agreements well within the 60-day (time) frame that President Duterte has set by way of resuming the peace negotiations.”
“After the formal resumption of the peace negotiations by the negotiating panels, then the circumstances shall arise for both the GRP and the NDFP to adopt all means possible to accelerate the peace negotiations and for both President Duterte and myself to work closely together in the Philippines in order to resolve issues at an unprecedented pace and guide and inspire the home run to the most fruitful and successful destination of the peace process,” Mr. Sison said. — Arjay L. Balinbin

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