New panels to be created for localized peace talks with Reds — Palace

Localized panels will be formed following the dissolution of the government panel negotiating for peace with the communist rebels, Malacañang said Thursday.

Citing information from Presidential Adviser on the Peace Process Carlito Galvez Jr., presidential spokesperson Salvador Panelo said sectoral representatives, local government units and the military will make up the panels for localized peace talks with the communists.

Panelo could not say when the panels will be constituted and begin their work.

President Rodrigo Duterte on March 18 terminated the appointments of the five-man government negotiating panel led by Labor Secretary Silvestre Bello III on the ground that the talks were already canceled since November 2017.

Apart from Bello, the other members of the panel were former Pangasinan congressman Hernani Braganza, former Commission on Elections commissioner Rene Sarmiento, human rights lawyer Angela Librado-Trinidad and former state prosecutor Antonio Arellano.

Reacting to the Bello-led panel’s dissolution, Communist Party of the Philippines founding chairman Jose Maria Sison said they had anticipated it because the talks were already terminated.

Sison also accused Duterte of having no interest in the peace negotiations because “he has always schemed to use the armed conflict as an excuse for carrying out martial law nationwide and for railroading charter change to a bogus kind of federalism in order to realize and impose fascist dictatorship on the Filipino people.”

The CPP leader added Duterte’s objective was to establish a “fascist dictatorship, with the absolute power to plunder the country and terrorize the people with red-tagging, psywar and mass murder.”

Panelo disputed Sison’s claim.

“He read it wrongly,” the Palace official said, as he reiterated the government’s plan of holding localized peace talks.

The President earlier set out a new strategy in addressing “local armed communist conflict” as provided under Executive Order 70, which he signed on December 4 last year.

The EO provides that the whole-of-nation approach aims to address the root causes of insurgencies, disturbances and tensions such as poverty, historical injustice, social inequality and lack of inclusivity.

It also ordered the creation of a national task force to address the communist insurgency. — RSJ, GMA News