Two Proposals for a Just and Lasting Peace

PRESS STATEMENT
27 July 2010

**Two proposals for a just and lasting peace**

By Prof. JOSE MARIA SISON
Chief Political Consultant
NDFP Negotiating Panel

The Negotiating Panel of the National Democratic Front of the
Philippines (NDFP) has repeatedly declared its readiness to resume
peace negotiations with the Government of the Republic of the
Philippines (GRP) under the Aquino II administration. It has also
signalled its willingness to receive in The Netherlands or Norway a
senior emissary or a team of emissaries of said administration to
discuss the possible course and perspective of the GRP-NDFP peace
negotiations.

On my part, as Chief Political Consultant of the NDFP Negotiating
Panel, I have long proposed the resumption and acceleration of the
GRP-NDFP peace negotiations, especially with regard to social and
economic reforms, in accordance with The Hague Joint Declaration and
subsequent major agreements.

I have also gone so far as to propose a concept of immediate truce
and alliance on the basis of a mutually acceptable declaration of
principles and policies upholding national independence and democracy,
confronting the basic problems of the Filipino people and adopting
effective measures of social, economic and political reforms. It is
unjust for anyone to expect that the revolutionary forces and the
people to simply cease fire and surrender to a rotten ruling system
that shuns patriotic and progressive demands and refuses to engage in
basic reforms.

I hope that the Aquino II administration can consider seriously the
two proposals for the benefit of the people. Like the NDFP, I welcome
any serious step of said administration towards the attainment of a
just peace and national unity by addressing the roots of the armed
conflict and arriving with the revolutionary forces and the people at
agreements on basic social, economic and political reforms.

I urge the Aquino II administration to override such
counterrevolutionary notions as those previously spelled out by its
officials that the military can get anything it wants despite the
severe economic crisis and bankruptcy of the reactionary government,
that the revolutionary forces and people surrender and that they can
be destroyed and pacified in the next three years.

I challenge the Aquino II administration to reject the US
Counterinsurgency Guide and take the path of seeking a concord of just
peace and national unity with the NDFP by addressing the roots of the
armed conflict and forging agreements on social, economic and
political reforms. It is malicious and unjust to construe the people’s
resistance to injustice, oppression and exploitation as the problem
rather than as the consequence of foreign and feudal domination.

Such monstrous problems as foreign monopoly capitalism, domestic
feudalism and bureaucratic corruption are the longrunning and current
causes of underdevelopment, unemployment, poverty and misery. All
well-meaning forces and people must unite and work together to
confront and solve these problems and work for a new and better
Philippines that is truly free and democratic, socially just,
progressive and peaceful.