The alleged plot to kill Communist Party of the Philippines founder Jose Maria Sison and later on overthrow President Rodrigo Duterte by the military establishment is simply “pathetic,” Malacañang said Thursday.
Communist rebels, meanwhile, attempted to restart the failed peace negotiations by offering to sign a bilateral ceasefire agreement if the government signs an agreement on social and economic reforms.
In a regular Palace news briefing, Presidential Spokesperson Ernesto Abella said that recent claims by the National Democratic Front simply has “no basis.”
“Rumors of attempts to overthrow the President has been around from day one,” Abella said.
“However, this latest twist where they include themselves is an insertion of themselves into the plot.
It’s rather pathetic, okay,” he added.
The NDF’s executive committee, however, insisted that it has factual basis in claiming a “two-staged plot” by alleged cohorts by the United States’ Central Intelligence Agency.
“The NDFP National Executive Committee has sufficient factual basis and compelling reason to expose the two-stage military plot in order to discourage and frustrate its implementation,” it said.
The NDF likewise branded Armed Forces chief Gen. Eduardo Año as a ‘‘cold-blooded, cunning butcher’’ after he assailed the communist group’s claims, asking Sison to seek psychological help.
“The NDFP (National Democratic Front of the Philippines) does not recommend psychiatric treatment to General Año because he is obviously an irredeemably cold-blooded and cunning butcher,” the NDF said.
“It is his boss Rodrigo R. Duterte who needs urgent professional psychiatric help for trusting him too much and other military officers who have consistently sabotaged the GRP-NDFP peace negotiations,” the group added.
The group added that Año “is completely unqualified to posture as an honest person and to cast invectives against Prof. Sison who is the target of the first stage of the military plot,” as they claimed that an assassination plot was launched against Sison in 1999 and 2000 during the Estrada regime. In a move to convince Duterte to return to the negotiating table, NDF chief negotiator Fidel Agcaoili meanwhile said in a television interview that they are willing to sign a bilateral ceasefire deal with the government once they agreed on agrarian reform and national industrialization.
Agcaoili said that the President knew that the NDF “will not agree to a bilateral ceasefire without an agreement on reforms,” referring to the Comprehensive Agreement on Social and Economic Reforms, which would include agrarian reform and national industrialization.
While there had been no backchannel talks since Duterte’s pronouncements last July, Agcaoili said that the communist rebels still see possible openings with the President’s decision to speak directly with leftist protesters right after his congressional address.
Duterte earlier said that his decision to end peace talks with the communist rebels was already final, as he ordered the military to be “unforgiving” to the communists following their attacks against government forces.
He likewise stressed that he would wage war against the CPP, which has been represented in the talks by its political arm, the National Democratic Front of the Philippines.