PRESIDENT Rodrigo Duterte took the peace talks as his bargaining chip to communist rebels Thursday, strongly demanding from them they should accept all his preconditions or he would once again call off the ongoing negotiations.
Amid the scheduled return of the peace talks with the communists next month, Duterte reiterated that while he was willing to talk in pursuit of peace, he needed to see the sincerity of the rebels leading the longest-running communist insurgency in Asia.
“To me this is very important and I have said it before, I would not want to overemphasize it. It might irritate the old ones…” Duterte said.
“And if you don’t accept my—the conditions that I have imposed—I am sorry I cannot deal with you anymore,” he added.
Duterte particularly stressed the issue of revolutionary taxes being levied upon the people by the rebel group’s armed wing, the New Peoples’ Army and their usual threats of militarization allegedly perpetrated by government forces.
“One is…they have to stop…The forced taxation must stop. Second is that they have been talking about their territory, that the soldiers of this Republic cannot enter into territories they claim which is theirs,” he added.
Duterte told communists that “certain conditions” they gave to him “are no longer negotiable.”
National Democratic Front senior adviser Luis Jalandoni said the communist rebels would unlikely stop collecting revolutionary taxes despite calls by Duterte.
Jalandoni said the Communist Party of the Philippines-New People’s Army “will be firm in saying that that is the function of the revolutionary movement and government.”
“We cannot promise [to stop collecting it] because it is a function of the revolutionary government in providing services to the people under their influence,” he said in a television interview.
The revolutionary leader claimed asking for revolutionary taxes from companies is not extortion.
“It cannot be called extortion because, first of all, it’s to provide the needs of the people, provide the services and then it’s through the process of negotiation to find an agreeable middle point that both sides could agree on,” he said.
The fourth round of peace talks between the government and the communists will push through on April 2 to 6 at the seaside town of Noordwijk in the Netherlands.
The continuation of the drafting of three substantial agenda — social and economic reforms, constitutional and political reforms and end of hostilities – were among the issues left hanging after Duterte decided to terminate the peace talks amid the breakdown of their respective unilateral ceasefires early February.
