The Communist Party of the Philippines’ criticism of President Rodrigo Duterte’s policy on the West Philippine Sea is “pathetic,” the Palace said Sunday.
The Palace also urged CPP founding chairman Jose Maria Sison to return to the country and see for himself what it described as Duterte’s independent and pragmatic policy on dealing with contested waters.
“We find it lamentable and pathetic that CPP founding chairperson Jose Maria Sison resorted to ad hominem attacks in criticizing the President’s policy on the West Philippine Sea,” Presidential Spokesman Salvador Panelo said in a statement.
But the Makabayan Bloc in Congress on Sunday slammed the government over the arrest of National Democratic Front of the Philippines consultant Rey Casambre and his wife, Patricia, as well as eight other people for murder and attempted murder raps filed in a lower court in Davao Oriental.
The arrest was “highly preposterous,” the group said and added that four of the accused were staying and working in Manila.
The group challenged the arrest and said many of the accused were elders and even suffering from ailments.
The arrest was “utterly absurd,” the group said.
Panelo said Sison based his attacks on a two-year-old article by an international political risk analyst who has worked for several projects with an institution that the communists strongly denounce, the United States military.
He was reacting to an article published on July 15, 2016, or two weeks into the Duterte presidency.
“[This] clearly proves that he [Sison] is out-of-touch of the realities in the Philippines as a result of more than three decades of high living in Europe,” Panelo said.
“We urge Mr. Sison to stop his propaganda war by long distance and to return to the Philippines and see for himself the independent foreign policy course that the President has charted, including a cautious, pragmatic and diplomatic stance on how to deal with the favorable arbitral ruling.”
Panelo then defended Duterte’s action in terms of dealing in international matters that concern the disputed waterways.
He said Duterte was in the best position to decide on the issues on the West Philippine Sea as he had a wealth of information at his disposal.
He said Sison should accept the reality that the CPP’s dream of wresting political power from the government had come to an end, stressing that the 50 years of believing in the CPP’s ideal had “only resulted in meaningless deaths and destruction to property.”
“Truly, the revolution that he has commenced half a century ago has devoured its own children,” Panelo said.
In his remarks, Sison called the President a “traitor and a dopehead” for failing to make diplomatic protests and to sue China in the courts of the US and other countries for violating Philippine sovereign rights.