STATEMENTS & PRESS RELEASES

 

Press Statement
November 1, 2002
Patricio Ramirez
Spokesperson
Partido ng Manggagawang Pilipino

Schizophrenic and sycophantic

The regime of Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo is schizophrenic in its attitude to the peace negotiations. It says one thing but does another. It declares its desire to continue peace talks with the Communist Party of the Philippines-New People's Army and yet it pursues with vigor the blacklisting of the CPP-NPA as terrorist groups.

Contrary to Foreign Affairs Secretary Ople's assertions, a terrorist tag on the CPP-NPA will not force them to the negotiating table. It is an axiom of conflict resolution that confidence-building measures lay the path to peace and by no stretch of the imagination can the blacklisting of the CPP-NPA be such. In fact, Presidential Spokesperson Tiglao himself admits the obvious fact that it is contradictory for the Macapagal-Arroyo regime to proceed negotiations with a terrorist group.

Yet the Macapagal-Arroyo regime is not so much schizophrenic as sycophantic. It puts the interests of its American master above the welfare of the Filipino people. The interests of the Filipino people dictate that the government pursues a negotiated settlement to the armed rebellion yet the needs of the US "war against terror" pushes it to the opposite direction of blacklisting the CPP-NPA.

In return for its puppetry to the US expansionist designs packaged as "war vs. terror," the Macapagal-Arroyo regime feasts on crumbs thrown its way. It rejoices on a promise--not an assurance--that $30 million in military aid that has been cut from the US budget will still be forthcoming. It cheers a pledge that the Philippines will earn a seat at the UN Security Council that it will use as a platform to parrot the American foreign policy line

Meanwhile, we have an unsolicited advice to Joma Sison now that the European Union has affirmed the blacklisting of the CPP-NPA and he fears either an extradition or assassination. We dare him to come home and lead the revolution from the frontlines not the rearguard.

Now that the struggle against imperialist aggression has become for Sison not just a political but a personal battle, we challenge him to directly head the forging of a united front among revolutionary groups in the country against US intervention and fascist repression.

Now is the perfect opportunity for Sison to come back with the threat of immediate extradition from Netherlands on his back and the prospect of a social explosion in the Philippines on his front. At the very least he should spare himself the indignity of being extradited unceremoniously, if not the danger of being sent to the US for trial.

As his own Maoist doctrine teaches, there is no place more secure than in bosom of a guerilla front and in the midst of the peasant masses. The funds to be raised from the "Piso para kay Joma" project would be better spent strengthening the guerilla front that Sison chooses to serve as his Yenan rather than sent abroad to his shore up his finances at Utrecht.

If Sison will not come back now-given all the negative circumstances abroad and the positive factors in the homefront-then he is not coming back at all, except possibly to return on the eve of victory of his revolution if it does materialize at all.

Sison's Leninist style of leadership from abroad does not go well with his Maoist strategy of revolution. Mao had his reasons for leading the protracted war from the frontlines and Lenin his in guiding the proletarian revolution from abroad but what does Sison have as excuses for remaining holed up in Utrecht. ###