COMMUNIST rebels should explain their continued attacks on government forces despite their commitment to reach a ceasefire agreement, an adviser for the government negotiating panel said Tuesday.
“We will have to keep on telling them and asking them why, in spite of their pronouncements, clashes still happen on the ground. They have to be the one to answer that,” said Commission on Higher Education Commissioner Prospero De Vera, who concurrently advises the government peace panel.
Reiterating earlier pronouncements that the New People’s Army rebels were “opportunists”— Presidential Spokesman Ernesto Abella said there were no instructions from the President to discontinue the peace negotiations.
“We ask the NDF to call on their armed comrades on the ground… to respond in kind and show genuine sincerity on the confidence- building measure initiated by both the government and their side,” Abella said.
“We want a firmer response,” he added.
De Vera insisted that while there is an advantage to continuing the peace talks “because we should never lose hope that a peace agreement can be signed”—it must always be within the parameters of having a conducive environment for peace talks.
“That’s why in the last round, in the fifth round, the President instructed the peace panel not to continue with the negotiations because the environment for conducive negotiations was not present,” he said.
At least 50 members of the NPA ransacked a police station in Maasin, Iloilo province on Sunday morning, taking away several firearms from the police station including eight M16 rifles, four Glock 9mm pistols, five handheld radios, a base radio, and two laptops. The rebels also took P25,000 from the police station and a patrol car.
This, despite the calls by communist leaders in Oslo to the NPA asking them to refrain from launching new offensives against government troops as it renewed calls for a ceasefire to focus on the ongoing crackdown against Islamic State-inspired groups.
In a related development, Regional Peace and Order Council-VI chairman and Guimaras Gov. Samuel Gumarin said that they agreed that the police on duty during the NPA raid be retrained to “evaluate their capacity in implementing security preparations against insurgents.”
They will be joining the 67 other policemen in the Western Visayas Region who will undergo training as part of efforts in countering NPA attacks in the region.