Sison recommends unilateral ceasefire as response to UN call

Communist leader Jose Maria Sison on Tuesday said he is recommending a unilateral ceasefire as a response to the call of United Nations secretary general Antonio Guterres for a "global ceasefire between warring parties" amid the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) threat.

Sison, founder of the Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP), is the chief political consultant of the National Democratic Front of the Philippines (NDFP), which is negotiating peace with the Philippine government.

"As Chief Political Consultant, I am advising the negotiating panel of the NDFP to recommend to its principal, the NDFP National Council, the issuance of a unilateral ceasefire declaration by the Communist Party of the Philippines to the New People’s Army in order to respond to the call of UN secretary general Antonio Guterres for a global ceasefire between warring parties for the common purpose of fighting the COVID-19 pandemic," Sison said in a statement.

"The NDFP and the broad masses of the people themselves need to refrain from launching tactical offensives to gain more time and opportunity to fight the COVID-19 pandemic and to look after the health and over-all welfare of the people in both urban and rural areas," he added.

Sought for comment, presidential spokesperson Salvador Panelo said, “It is about time they join the collective efforts of the nation to fight the spread of the coronavirus.”

Panelo earlier slammed Sison’s “insensitivity” following the rebels’ refusal to reciprocate the government’s ceasefire declaration.

According to the self-exiled leader, the world must know that the NDFP has been informing, training and mobilizing the people against the disease long before the Philippine government imposed "repressive measures" to fight COVID-19.

Sison had earlier expressed doubts on the unilateral ceasefire declared by the Duterte administration as he believes that the "militarist lockdown" would only "intimidate the people, suppress democratic rights, commit human rights violations, prevent the working people from going to their workplaces, and immobilize the health workers."

The Philippine government has decided to declare a unilateral ceasefire as it wants to focus more on the containment of the disease which already killed 33 individuals.

Latest data from the Department of Health stated that there were already 501 confirmed cases in the country.

Meanwhile, Sison said members of the New People's Army would continue to be vigilant in case government forces will launch offensive attacks against them.

"Said enemy forces have persisted in launching tactical offensives and bombing of communities in the countryside as well as campaigns of red tagging, abductions and murder in the urban areas," Sison said.

"It is therefore understandable why the NDFP has desisted from reciprocating the false unilateral ceasefire declared by the GRP last March 15, 2020," he said.

Sison further mentioned that the NDFP decided not to reciprocate the unilateral ceasefire of the government because the group does not want to make it appear that it is condoning the "criminal culpabilities" of the Duterte administration such as supposedly allowing the spread of the disease and allegedly having no plans against COVID-19.

Sison also claimed that President Rodrigo Duterte had used COVID-19 as an "excuse for grabbing unnecessary emergency powers and huge amounts of public money to carry out repressive measures and feed bureaucratic and military corruption."

"While committed to their unilateral ceasefire declaration, the NPA and revolutionary forces can remain vigilant and militant in arousing, organizing and mobilizing the people not only against the COVID-19 pandemic and the far deadlier Duterte virus of tyranny and corruption," he said. --with Virgil Lopez/KBK, GMA News