IN another sign that he is out of touch, Communist Party of the Philippines founder Jose Maria Sison said he would welcome one-on-one talks with President Rodrigo Duterte in a neighboring country to discuss the resumption of peace talks.
“In the interest of the Filipino people and for the sake and purpose of resuming the peace negotiations, I am willing to have serious conversations with President Duterte,” Sison said in a statement.
Sison was responding to a statement Sunday by Presidential Spokesman Harry Roque, who said Duterte was open to having a private conversation with Sison.
But Sison, who has lived in comfortable self-exile in The Netherlands since 1987, may be ascribing more importance and influence to himself than really exists in the communist movement that he founded 50 years ago, but which has moved on in his 30 years of absence from his motherland.
Even when peace talks were going on, none of the communist leaders—Sison included—could stop the NPA from waging war, even as they talked peace.
This situation offered only two possibilities: 1) the government was talking with the wrong leaders, because they could not control their troops on the ground; or 2) the communist leaders were untrustworthy, because they secretly approved of the attacks even while they were at the negotiating table.
That Sison would now talk about peace negotiations without addressing the reasons for their collapse again suggests the 78-year-old founder of the communist movement isn’t quite up to speed with the realities on the ground.
The Palace, however, has made it clear that the President will not resume peace talks until the communist armed wing, the New People’s Army, showed some “humility” and stopped attacking government troops and talking about power sharing.
The one-on-one talks, the Palace added, are not a condition for the resumption of peace talks, which Duterte scrubbed in November amid continued NPA attacks on state forces.
Notwithstanding the recent exchange between Duterte and Sison, nothing much has changed since then.
In December, some 50 NPA members ambushed members of the 20th Infantry Battalion who were delivering relief to victims of Tropical Depression “Urduja” in Samar.
Duterte denounced the NPA as “brigands” who no longer had any ideology, and who shot at those who were providing humanitarian aid to their fellow Filipinos.
For the last 50 years, Sison has failed miserably in bringing about the proletarian revolution he envisioned. With each passing year, and with each succeeding generation, his relevance diminishes. A one-on-one meeting with the President would serve little purpose except offer a photo opportunity to two aging leaders, only one of which wields true power in this country.