Asia Times: Communist pullout from talks, threats: just noise?



	June 04, 1999	atimes.com

Southeast Asia

Communist pullout from talks, threats: just noise?
By Ivan Gan

MANILA - By withdrawing from long-drawn peace talksto settle a three-decade old insurgency, the communist movementin the Philippines is once again testing the mettle of thegovernment.

After about a year of talking to the government of PhilippinePresident Joseph Estrada, the National Democratic Front (NDF)announced it was pulling out of the talks on May 30.

It accused the government of ''treason and betrayal'' bycompromising national interest through the May ratification of the VisitingForces Agreement (VFA), which allows large-scale military exercisebetween the Philippine and American armed forces.

For the Netherlands-based NDF, the agreement allows U.S.military forces ''the license to occupy all or any part of thecountry for any length of time, to commit crimes with impunityagainst the people."

The VFA was ratified by the Senate on May 27, despite searingopposition by Catholic leaders, activists, some constitutionalexperts and environmental groups.

But critics say the NDF, the umbrella group of leftistorganizations in the Philippines, was just looking for an excuseto pull out of the talks - which had not been going far anyway.

This is just the latest breakdown in the talks, which hadcollapsed with the government of Corazon Aquino and were left unfinishedby that of Estrada's predecessor, Fidel Ramos.

Given the much-diminished military strength of the NDF'sfighters, as well as its political influence, through the years,many think the NDF pullout was more noise than anything else.

But ''fighting will probably be intensified in the coming weeksand months,'' NDF panel chair Luis Jalandoni warned at a pressconference at the organization's headquarters in Utrecht, theNetherlands. He said ''81 guerrilla fronts'' in the country wouldescalate the ''people's war for national liberation."

To that, Armed Forces chief General Joselin Nazareno said:''They can always air their threats like that but I doubt it canbe done."

From a peak of 26,000 armed regulars who are members of theNDF's fighting arm, the New People's Army (NPA) now numbers 5,000or fewer, military estimates say.

Peace talks between the NDF and the Estrada government alsostalled in February, when Estrada suspended them in the wake ofthe NPA's kidnapping of two military officers, including ageneral. The talks resumed after the NDF released the officers.

As in the kidnap case, chances are that the latest bout ofsabre-rattling by the NDF will draw a blank - judging from thereaction of the Estrada administration.

During his weekly radio program last week, he said thegovernment will bring ''the full force of the law'' to bear uponthe rebels if they persist in their insurgency.

''The NDF or NFA has no more issues to go against thegovernment because my government is all-out pro-poor. All ourpriority projects are pro-poor,'' argued Estrada, attributing theNDF's tough stand to the lack of an agenda against hisadministration.

The head of the government's peace panel, Howard Dee, dismissedthe menacing stance by the NDF leaders as a ''swaggeringexercise."

''Failing to extract from the government the recognition of itsclaim to a sovereign and belligerent status, the NDF has decidedto terminate the peace talks,'' he added.

In recent years, the government and NDF had been discussing alist of demands that dealt with procedural matters for talks,including safety guarantees for NDF leaders, and substantiveissues addressing the leftist movement's demands for reform,ranging from genuine land reform to constitutional changes.

The two sides had dwelled mostly on procedural issues. In thewake of the breakdown, the Estrada government has terminated theJoint Agreement on Safety and Immunity Guarantee (JASIG), whichprovides communist leaders involved in peace talks immunity fromarrest, and nullified all their safe conduct passes.

Even as the NDF vows to take its cause to the battlefields, itstwo senior leaders, Jalandoni and Jose Maria Sison, who foundedthe Communist Party of the Philippines in 1969, say they will onlyresume talks after Estrada's term ends in July 2004.

Many people - even those who belittle Estrada's claim of running a pro-poorgovernment - dismiss the NDF's threats and point out that thedays of frequent clashes between government soldiers and NPAguerrillas have long gone.

But in a recent editorial, the Manila Times said: ''Thethreat of a resumption of bloody hostilities by NPAs cannot besimply overlooked."

''Soldiers have expressed unease with the negligible, if still,amazing, resurgence in the manpower and firepower strength of whateveryone had thought was a spent rebel force,'' it added.

Some say that the VFA might well serve as the focal point ofcommunist activity, since the presence of the U.S. bases beforehad led to the assassination of American soldiers around thefacilities.

Still, U.S. Ambassador Thomas Hubbard says he is confident thatmilitary exercises between the Philippine and U.S. troops will becarried out as scheduled, in spite of threats by the NPA to attackAmerican personnel.

Church groups add that, although not on the scale of theeighties, the conflict continues to produce civilian casualties.Bishop Ernesto Salgado, who chairs the Episcopal Commission onIndigenous Peoples (ECIP), says Filipino children are oftenhelpless victims in the conflict.

According to the United Nations International Children's Fund(UNICEF), the victimization of children is increasingly rampant,with NPA activity spreading to tribal areas.

Now, politicians are urging government negotiators to talkinstead to the breakaway factions of the NDF, wracked by splitsthat emerged with different approaches to the Philippines'problems.

The local leftist movement was not immune to the ideologicalquestioning that occurred among similar movements around theworld, after the collapse of the Soviet Union and the changes inEastern Europe after the Cold War.

Philippine governments have so far limited themselves todealing with the NDF, but Senator Rodolfo Biazon said that thegroup's pullout would ''provide another mechanism that would allowrecovery of the rebels who would like to return to the folds ofthe law."

Said Sen Franklin Drilon: ''We cannot allow a few communistsliving abroad to dictate whether the Filipino people should livein peace or remain constantly exposed to the horrors of war."

(Inter Press Service)

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