Alliance News

December 05, 2010

Reactionary PH Congress leaders urges talks w/o conditions to sabotage peace talks-AJLPP

Los Angeles- The Alliance-Philippines (AJLPP) based in the United States scored the apparent moves to sabotage the peace talks by Congress leaders in the Philippines.

Saying that to avoid hitches in the resumption of peace talks, the government and the communist-led National Democratic Front of the Philippines (NDFP) should not impose difficult preconditions, a former AFP chief of staff said Sunday.

The Alliance said with the adamant anti-peace talks rhetoric of Senate President Juan Ponce Enrile and the militarist like Biazon who are opposed to the talks, how can we achieve peace? People who have bloods in their hands must not be permitted to sabotage the talks” The AJLPP said.

No Preconditions?

Muntinlupa Rep. Rodolfo Biazon, chair of the House defense committee, reminded both camps that negotiations in the past had been stalled by “impossible preconditions.” Biazon has a part of the GRP peace panels and have not done anything but to wreck and sabotage the peace talks ever since.

“Both sides must refrain from putting in very difficult preconditions. They mess things up,” said Biazon, who served as a consultant to the National Unification Commission that oversaw the peace process in the 1990s. “We start afresh. No preconditions.”

Another die-hard anti-communist,Marcos loyalist Senate President Juan Ponce Enrile is skeptical that the new round of talks would turn out differently from past negotiations that had failed. Enrile said CPP founder Jose Maria Sison was continuing his old style of making “unreasonable demands” before going to the negotiating table.

Enrile, the defense secretary when Sison founded the CPP before martial law, said on dzBB radio that while the rebels demanded the release of political prisoners before a peace negotiation, “are they willing to dismantle the New People’s Army peacefully or surrender their firearms to a third party country?”

Militarists Biazon’s Old Songs against the talks

The government and the NDFP are expected to resume formal negotiations in Oslo, Norway, in February next year after a five-year hiatus. Both camps earlier agreed on a 19-day cease-fire this Christmas season starting Dec. 16.

Biazon, a former senator, said the fact that President Benigno Aquino III did not mention any precondition “augurs well for the negotiations.”“I think Noynoy (Aquino’s nickname) is very receptive to it,” he said.

Biazon said the Morong 43’s case should not be mixed up with the talks. “That is going to require judicial process. Compared with the political process, judicial process is rigid. In a political process, there can be compromise,” he said.

On the other hand, house Minority Leader Edcel Lagman also welcomed the two camps’ return to the negotiating table. “Any negotiation for peace and reconciliation will always be supported by the minority. That’s for national interest,” he said.

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