19 February 2016•Update: 20 February 2016
By Roy Ramos & Hader Glang
ZAMBOANGA CITY, the Philippines
The Philippine government's chief negotiator in talks with the country’s communist insurgency slammed its negotiating arm Friday for issuing “half-truths” to cover up its “atrocities".
Alex Padilla denied comments by the chief negotiator of the National Democratic Front (NDF), Luis Jalandoni, claiming that President Benigno Aquino III had rejected in 2014 a peace deal between the government and the communist rebels.
“He’s [Jalandoni’s] not telling the whole story… There was no peace deal,” Padilla said.
He insisted that at the time, private individuals considered “friends of the process” had shuttled between the sides to “explore possible parameters for restarting the talks at the earliest possible time.”
According to Padilla, the government had been studying a proposed agreement and preparing to discuss it with the NDF when a botched raid in Jan. 2015 resulted in fatal clashes between soldiers and Muslim rebels.
The incident had put a peace process in Muslim majority parts of southern Mindanao island in risk, resulting in delays in passing an autonomy law that is presently stalled after Congress adjourned for election campaigning earlier this month.
Padilla said Friday that after the “private group” traveled to the Dutch city of Utrecht – where some Philippine communist leaders are in self-imposed exile – in Feb. 2015, they returned with a new proposal from the NDF with stronger demands.
The conditions for the resumption of peace talks included the release of hundreds of the movement’s detained leaders and members, as well as the withdrawal or dismissal of cases against their alleged consultants.
“With the NDF asserting even more than its usual demands, like many other initiatives undertaken in the past to explore the resumption of the talks, that one also did not pan out,” Padilla said.
He accused the NDF, which negotiates on behalf of the Communist Party of the Philippines and its armed wing the New People’s Army (NPA), of resorting to its strategy “to use the peace process to get as many concessions as they can from government without giving anything in return”.
He added that the government had tried to resume negotiation two more times last year “based on proposals offered by our Norwegian facilitator to the parties, but to no avail”.
Since 1969, the NPA has been waging one of Asia’s longest running insurgencies, mainly in the poorest regions of the Philippines.
The conflict has claimed around 40,000 lives, including more than 3,000 in the last eight years alone, according to government figures.
After talks had been suspended in 2005, they were revived in Feb. 2011 about eight months into Aquino’s term, which is set to end this June, before stalling again.
Late last year, Jalandoni had said peace talks could resume in May if the government would release 16 detained NDF peace consultants.
Presidential Adviser on the Peace Process Teresita Deles, however, responded by saying, “it is difficult to start with preconditions; what is more important to consider is where the talks will go.”
