Consultants of the Communist Party of the Philippines-National Democratic Front face arrest with the termination of the peace negotiations, Presidential Peace Adviser Carlito Galvez Jr. said.
With the dissolution of the government negotiating panel, Galvez said the Joint Agreement on Safety and Immunity Guarantees is also considered automatically revoked and the arrest warrants on CPP-NDF consultants with pending cases “have become active.”
“The safe conduct pass is being issued to allow the movement of NDF consultants and as a goodwill of freeing the arrested top-level CPP-New People’s Army cadres. This is to create an enabling environment before the formal peace talks,” he said in a statement.
“With the termination of the talks with the NDF and the dissolution of the negotiating panels, the safe conduct pass is automatically revoked,” Galvez added.
President Rodrigo Duterte on Thursday said he is permanently terminating peace talks with Utrecht-based communist leaders as the government will instead pursue localized negotiations.
Galvez said for the longest time, communist rebels have been using the peace talks “as a ploy to free their high value individuals and recoup their lost grounds.”
Duterte, he said, has set “clear preconditions” for the localized peace talks—that the negotiations must be conducted in the country, and that local CPP-NPA commanders must be involved.
“If (CPP founding chairman Jose Ma. Sison) does not want to talk peace, we have no problem that. In the first place, he is already irrelevant. Joma does not have control over the forces on the ground,” Galvez said.
Sison, however, said localized peace talks will not result in genuine negotiations.
“These will be a charade or a sham, staged and controlled by the military and the military-controlled Office of the Presidential Adviser on the Peace Process. They are fake peace talks,” Sison said.