3-year timeline to end insurgency bound to fail- Sison

By Vince Angelo C. Ferreras
COMMUNIST Party of the Philippines (CPP) founder Jose Maria C. Sison said the timeline of the military to end communist insurgency in the country is bound to fail.
“The scheme will surely fail from day to day, week to week, month to month and from year to year as the NPA will intensify tactical offensives and mass work. The same military and police of the same exploiting classes cannot accomplish in 3 years what they failed to accomplish in 50 years,” said Mr. Sison in a statement on Wednesday, Jan.9.
Defense Secretary Delfin N. Lorenzana said on Tuesday that the military is aiming to end the insurgency in the last three years of President Rodrigo R. Duterte.
Mr. Sison noted that the government was not able to terminate their presence in the country during the first three years of Mr. Duterte as the president.
“The Duterte regime has reset by three years the deadline for its scheme to destroy the New People’s Army,” said Mr. Sison.
He added, “In the next three years, Duterte himself will have difficulty surviving politically. These are lame duck years for him, during which infighting among his followers will be debilitating and challenges will rise from within the ruling system as well as from the revolutionary forces.”
Mr. Lorenzana also told reporters that the government is willing to resume the peace talks as long as it will be held here in the country as the communist leader is currently based at Utrecht, Netherlands.
In response, Mr. Sison said: “The demand that the peace negotiations be held in the Philippines is calculated by the Duterte regime to put the NDFP negotiating panelists, consultants and resource persons under the regime’s surveillance, control, duress and manipulation, reducing the peace negotiations to the status of the fake localized peace talks.”
“The problem with the Duterte regime is that it thinks peace negotiations are merely for the surrender and pacification of the revolutionary forces and that the sincerity of the NDFP is merely the willingness to surrender to the unjust ruling system of big compradors, landlords and corrupt bureaucrats like Duterte,” said Mr. Sison.