Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte called off a weeklong cease-fire after communist guerrillas killed a government militiaman and failed to declare their own truce by a Saturday deadline he had imposed.
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Duterte lifted the ceasefire following the failure of the Communist leaders to meet the deadline he had set at 5pm on Saturday for them to reciprocate his gesture and to explain the ambush by NPA rebels that killed a militiaman and wounded four others in Davao del Norte, Mindanao on Wednesday.
The CPP said that its leadership has, since June, prepared a draft for a unilateral ceasefire in anticipation of peace talks with the Duterte administration.
The government has been attempting to forge peace with the rebels since 1986, but the on-and-off talks have faltered many times since. The CPP, however, said that the continuing offensives of the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) prevented it from declaring the ceasefire sooner.
It also expects the government to make good its promise to release all their peace consultants and political prisoners.
He said their report stated hat the CAAs “who were already several days out of their camp on security patrol when the ceasefire was declared, were on their way back to their patrol base in compliance to the President’s declaration of ceasefire when ambushed by elements of the NPA”.
The tough-talking president said he demanded an explanation from the communists about the attack and asked them to punish the rebels behind the assault like what the military does to erring soldiers.
Dureza said in a statement that the rebels announcement through the media was “belated, but still strategic” and was an “awaited decision”.
The communists’ armed wing, the New People’s Army, is believed to have fewer than 4,000 gunmen today, down from a peak of 26,000 in the 1980s, according to the military.
Sanchez said that government forces have continued to undertake combat operations, surveillance, reconnaissance, intelligence and psychological warfare in civilian communities, and alleged that troops were protecting “illegal activities such as drug trade and logging and mining pay-offs”.
“I will see if I will also be happy to reinstall the ceasefire”, he said.
President Rodrigo Duterte also said Monday a top rebel couple would be released from detention in another move to bolster the resumption of peace negotiations on August 20-27 in Norway.
It said that the CPP Central Committee had been “refining its draft interim ceasefire declaration as a way of further promoting the NDFP-GRP peace negotiations and reciprocating the July 25 ceasefire declaration by GRP President Duterte”, since Monday.
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Duterte said he would ask for the advice of peace process advisers Jesus Dureza and Silvestre Bello III. “The peace talks will go on as scheduled”. Its Southern Mindanao Regional Command claimed the government’s unilateral ceasefire was “non-existent” as it also blamed the AFP as “sabotaging” the ceasefire.
