Communist Party of the Philippines founder Jose Maria Sison

Communist Party of the Philippines founder Jose Maria Sison has admitted that the leaders of the National Democratic Front negotiating panel based in Utretch do not have control over the rebels’ movements despite the ongoing peace negotiations between the government and the communist rebels. Sison made the statement as President Rodrigo Duterte met with top leaders of the Communist Party of the Philippines Benito and Wilma Tiamzon on Tuesday night who decried the alleged surveillance attempts by the military who visited the displaced farmers encamped in Mendiola in Manila. “Last night’s incident (May 9), where NDFP Peace Panel member Benito Tiamzon and peace consultant Wilma Austria-Tiamzon were tailed by motorcycle-riding men after the two leaders visited the protesting MARBAI farmers in Mendiola, is a blatant violation of the Joint Agreement on Safety and Immunity Guarantees,” Bagong Alyansang Makabayan secretary- general Renato Reyes said. “The surveillance appears instigated by the AFP in another attempt to undermine the ongoing peace talks. We condemn such harassment.” In a roundtable interview with the newspaper Manila Bulletin, Sison said the leaders of the CPP based in the Philippines were the ones who were giving orders to the NDFP Negotiating Panel and to their armed wing, the New Peoples’ Army. “The collective leading organs of the CPP, NPA, NDFP, which are based in the Philippines, are the principal of the NDFP Negotiating Panel. They give orders and instructions to the NDFP Negotiating Panel,” Sison said.“No one in Utrecht can give orders to the CPP, NPA, NDFP [National Democratic Front of the Philippines] in the Philippines,” he added. Should the forces in the Philippines decide to “disengage from the peace negotiations,” Sison said, “there is nothing the NDFP Negotiating Panel can do” in the eventuality that these things happened. A younger generation of cadres recently took over the CPP’s central committee when it disclosed that it held its Second Party Congress last October more than 48 years after the rebel group’s founding. Sison added that “no one in Utrecht has ever claimed to control the revolutionary forces and people in the Philippines.” Government negotiators led by Peace Process Secretary Jesus Dureza had earlier said while the fifth round of talks with the communists would push through in The Netherlands from May 27 to June 1, he said he was dismayed by the recent attacks by the NPA that led him to question their sincerity in pursuing peace negotiations with the government.