When President Rodrigo Duterte assumed office more than a year ago, one of his first acts was to reach out to the Left in the hopes of ending decades of insurgency.
He appointed known communist figures to his Cabinet and said he would resume talking to the Left, saying that he held its leader, Jose Maria Sison, in high esteem especially since the latter was his teacher at university.
In fact, the government freed at least 11 political prisoners before the 2016 peace talks—amid the communists’ demand for the release of some 400 —to show it was going into the peace talks in earnest.
For the first time, there was real hope that the communist insurgency would be quelled and lasting peace with the Reds would ensue.
The hope was short-lived.
Soon the New People’s Army began attacks in various places in the country, violating the ceasefire that would have otherwise indicated good faith. The negotiations were halted, there was an exchange of bitter words from both sides, compromising the backchannel talks earlier scheduled to save what was left of the peace process.
It soon surfaced that the Europe-based leaders talking with the government did not have much of an ascendancy over their younger, more combative members on the ground. Mr. Duterte should have paid more attention to this red flag.
The last straw was the attack on President Duterte’s security detail in North Cotabato this month. Five soldiers were wounded, and while the President was not there, he took offense at the gall of the rebels to attack the Presidential Security Group. He called off the informal talks right away.
He was so incensed that in his State of the Nation Address on Monday, he revealed Sison was suffering from colon cancer and advised him to commit suicide to save money for the Norwegian government.
In response, the communist leader said: “I pity him and I am tempted just to let him go because what he says against me is patently baseless and comes obviously from a sick mind.”
“But I still have to answer him to prevent him from misleading the public and rousing them the wrong way. At any rate, he has to look after his mental health and consult with a professional psychiatrist.”
Duterte then dared Sison to leave his comfortable life in exile in The Netherlands, return to the Philippines and fight his war here. “What kind of leader is he?” he said, to which Sison said he did not have to prove himself to anybody.
These are men we expect to be steeped in ideology, however different these might be. Unfortunately, the only thing they have been able to prove is that nobody is beyond vulnerability to petty and childish tirades. This does not buy them any more credibility.
The decision to stop the peace talks is a good one at this point. There has been too much animosity and bad faith. Now, if the leaders of both parties can just stop talking, perhaps there could be a way to pause and think exactly why none of the confidence-building measures all these years have so far worked.