This happened just two days after President Duterte declared a unilateral ceasefire with the communist rebels.
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We can say Sison knows what he’s talking about, since he used to be Duterte’s professor at the Lyceum of the Philippines.
“It is very clear that the President walked the extra mile for peace”.
Sen. Panfilo Lacson however said if the Communist Party of the Philippines is really honest in declaring a ceasefire, the organization could have announced it even after the government chose to lift it.
“I am hereby ordering the immediate lifting of the ceasefire”, Duterte said.
“Masyado namang volatile ang Presidente na bagong halal”, Sison told ANC adding that adding Duterte showed a “lack of prudence in something as sensitive and delicate as peace negotiations between two armed fighting sides”.
The AFP’s “public expression of support for the cease [-] fire declaration was not reflected on the ground”, the CPP also said, adding further that the suspension of operations ordered by the military chief, Lt. Gen. Ricardo R. Visaya, was a continuation of “civil-military” operations under Oplan Bayanihan that included “combat, psywar, surveillance and intelligence operations targeting civilian communities”.
Renato Reyes, secretary-general of Bayan (Nation), a left-wing political group, also criticized the government for imposing “unrealistic” ultimatums, saying the “peace talks are more complicated than some folks think”. It also expects the government to make good its promise to release all their peace consultants and political prisoners. He lifted the government’s unilateral ceasefire when the deadline passed without any response from the rebels.
Gen. Ronald “Bato” Dela Rosa as issuing a memorandum to all units Sunday to be on “high alert” after President Rodrigo Duterte made a decision to call off the unilateral ceasefire he declared during his first State of the Nation Address on July 25.
The New People’s Army is believed to have fewer than 4,000 gunmen, down from a peak of 26,000 in the 1980s, according to the military.
Senate Minority Leader Ralph Recto on Sunday called on the government and the NDF not to be too quick to pull the trigger of war and explore the possibility of declaring a reciprocated ceasefire.
“Why should they blame the President?”
Sison said that the New People’s Army were actually set to announce their own cease-fire on Saturday but were preempted by Duterte’s announcement. “Instead of conducting an investigation to find out what happened [in Davao del Norte], they already have a statement that the AFP violated the ceasefire which resulted to the killing of the Cafgu”, said Lacson. Six were assassinated in a single night in Manila, among them Michael Siaron, Olaires’s 29-year-old husband who was shot dead by unknown assailants on motorcycles.
“We hope that, despite this development, the scheduled formal resumption of talks on August 20 will still push through. So back to June 15 Oslo Preliminary Agreements”, Malayao said.
Both the government and the communist rebels have expressed optimism that formal peace talks to end the decades-old communist insurgency will push trough in spite of President Rodrigo Duterte’s decision to trash a week-old truce, saying they are looking forward to the August 20 Oslo meeting.
Although the now canceled cease-fire was declared on Monday, the order to suspend operations was only issued to the Armed Forces on Tuesday and to the National Police on Wednesday.
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Militant students led by the League of Filipino Students on Sunday also expressed disappointment over the lifting of a ceasefire against the communists.
