GOVERNMENT and National Democratic Front peace negotiators concluded preliminary talks in Oslo, Norway on Thursday and agreed on a five-point agenda when formal talks resume on the third week of July after being stalled since 2011.
In a joint statement, the panels said government negotiators, comprised of incoming Labor secretary Silvestre Bello III, former Agrarian Reform secretary Hernani Braganza and incoming peace process secretary Jesus Dureza, will recommend the immediate release of detained NDF consultants.
The five-point agenda includes an affirmation of previously signed agreements; and accelerated negotiation process, reconstitution of the previously signed Joint Agreement on Safety and Immunity Guarantees; an amnesty proclamation with the concurrence of Congress; and the mode of interim ceasefire.
The statement was signed for the National Democratic Front of the Philippines by its chief negotiator Luis Jalandoni, peace panel member Fidel Agcaoili, and chief political consultant and Communist Party of the Philippines founder Jose Ma. Sison.
Ambassador Elisabeth Slattum, special envoy to the Philippine peace process of the Norwegian government, also witnessed the signing, as the Royal Norwegian Government hosted the talks and acts as third-party facilitator of the negotiations.
Among the key agreements the government and NDFP have signed in the course of the often-stalled peace talks are The Hague Joint Declaration, which lays down the framework and agenda for the negotiations, the Comprehensive Agreement on Respect for Human Rights and International Humanitarian Law, and the JASIG.
Formal peace talks between the Aquino administration and the CPP-NDF-New People’s Army bogged down in February 2011 because the communist group has been insisting on the reactivation of the Jasig, a move rejected by the government after the original list, stored in an old floppy disk, got corrupted and could no longer be retrieved.
Sison had earlier asserted that the goal of the peace talks was to form a “coalition government” of the CPP and Duterte administration. This coalition would need to carry out “democratic reforms that would lead to national industrialization and genuine land reform.”