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Friday, March 29, 2024

Joma told: Get elected to be respected

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President Rodrigo Duterte on Friday said his former professor, Communist Party of the Philippines founder Jose Maria Sison must first win an election to gain his respect.

Speaking before troops at the Camp Peralta in Capiz, Duterte scored his mentor who called him a butangero or thug after he lifted the government’s unilateral ceasefire with the CPP.  

“Sison is fooling people and during interviews he drools,” Duterte said of his former mentor.

“He talks as if he knows governance when he has never captured a village, he attacks like a bandit yet he cannot win an election,” the President said.

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Jose Maria Sison

“The Communists are speaking like they are a force to reckon with even they cannot even occupy a barangay,” he added.  

In a television interview last Saturday, Sison slammed the President for being “ill-tempered” and for acting like a bully and treating the communists like his personal servants.

“Duterte is too quarrelsome and he is too confrontational. If he does not want peace, then so be it,” Sison said via phone patch from Utrecht.  

“That [unilateral ceasefire] is hollow, empty. It does not mean anything,” he added, saying the CPP was poised to announce a reciprocal truce at 8 p.m. last week but it was overtaken by the President’s retraction.  

Duterte lifted the ceasefire after the CPP failed to comply with his 5 p.m. deadline on Saturday July 30.  

The President said that while the CPP has the tactical advantage in the mountains, government forces “cannot be vanquished.”

“They brag as if they have already gained power,” Duterte said. He assured government soldiers that he will not forsake them.  

The government is scheduled to resume its peace talks with the communist rebels on August 20 in Oslo, Norway.

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