Treachery amid talks

The communist New People’s Army (NPA) and its political affiliates the Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP) and the National Democratic Front (NDF) must have overestimated its appeal to the public when it chose to stage an ambush that killed a police chief and five of his men in Guihulngan City, Negros Oriental, last Friday morning.

The ambush done in broad daylight and with the communist rebels atop a hilly portion of the road, which gave them a strategic advantage, came amid President Rodrigo Duterte’s decision to cancel the peace talks with the CPP-NPA-NDF due to their constant attacks in the countryside despite appeals for them to cease offensives.

The charade that is being put up by the communists during the peace talks is a tired, recycled script that goes something like this: this is our demands, accept them or else, we represent the Filipinos and so on ad nauseam.

They don’t negotiate, they demand based on their erroneous, arrogant and misguided belief that they are in a position of strength and they have the support of Filipinos who are dissatisfied with the current system of government.

Rather than engage in a debate over ideology which would be a protracted and ultimately futile exercise, it’s time for government to seriously assess if pursuing the peace talks with the communists is worth it or had been a colossal waste of time and resources.

At a time when the country’s police and military are waging war against the terrorists, these communist rebels exploit the situation in an attempt to stretch thinly the ranks of the Armed Forces and the police in a hackneyed effort to pressure government to be more accepting of their demands.

Again, they don’t speak for the entire Filipino people who want peace but not at the cost of bending over backwards to the communists whose sole agenda is to rule the country and whose leadership continue to direct their rebellion in the air-conditioned comfort of the host government’s apartments.