DUTERTE’S EXECUTIVE ORDER NO. 158
IS A PACK OF LIES AND FALSE PROMISES
By Jose Maria Sison
Chief Political Consultant, National Democratic Front of the Philippines
January 26, 2022
In the very title of his Executive Order 158, issued on December 27, 2021, GRP President Rodrigo Duterte dishes out the glittering but mendacious generality of “strengthening the policy framework on peace, reconciliation and unity”. In fact, he means the contrary.
His most important premises in the “whereases” are the following: 1. to achieve the pacification of the Filipino people’s new democratic revolution and the struggle for self-determination by the Moro and other minorities and preserve the rotten semicolonial and semifeudal ruling system and its brutal and corrupt state; and 2. to spread the false promise of addressing and resolving the root causes of the armed conflicts and transforming Philippine society by staging fake localized peace talks.
He assumes falsely that he has succeeded enough at attacking and destroying the armed revolutionary movement of the people and that his objective is merely to engage in mopping up operations by seeking the further fragmentation and capitulation of remnant groups and individuals at the grass roots level through the staging of “localized peace negotiations. He makes the false promises of addressing the legal status and security of former rebels; ensuring the protection of non-combatants and providing community-based assistance services.
The main purpose of the executive order is to create the Office of the Presidential Adviser on Peace, Reconciliation and Unity (OPAPRU) as a psywar and intelligence tool of the presidential commander-in-chief and the reactionary military, police and paramilitary forces. OPAPRU performs the previous roles of OPAPP in conducting propaganda and dialogues and promising dole-outs. In fact, it is an enhanced tool of armed counterrevolution within the framework of escalating state terrorism against the people and their revolutionary forces.
What the executive order deliberately and maliciously fails to mention are the following:
1. The Duterte regime’s scheme of “localized peace talks” and using the OPAPRU for the purpose is within the framework of permanently ending the GRP-NDFP peace negotiations, designating the CPP, NPA and the NDFP as “terrorist” organizations and subjecting the people and their revolutionary forces to state terrorism under the mislabelled Anti-Terrorism Act, the Anti-Terrorism Council and the National Task Force-Elcac.
2. The main objective of Duterte regime in using fake localized peace talks is to approach suspected revolutionaries (including relatives and friends) as individuals and groups, offer them dole-outs under such scams as E-CLIP, Community Support Program and Barangay Development Program. Those who fall for the bait are publicly presented as surrenderers and made to participate in psywar, intelligence and combat operations. At will, as in Oplan Tokhang, the military handlers can kill the surrenderers to get higher rewards for fake battle casualties.
3. By permanently foreclosing the GRP-NDFP peace negotiations within the framework of the The Hague Joint Declaration of 1992, the Duterte regime has scrapped all the solemn joint GRP-NDFP agreements that have been made through sporadic peace negotiations since 1995 by the GRP and NDFP negotiating panels duly-authorized at the highest and most responsible level.
4. The fascist regime spreads the lie that the aforesaid peace negotiations in a foreign neutral venue have been useless and fruitless and conveniently lays aside the fact that so-called localized peace talks through the National Unification Commission since September 1992 has a longer period of failure to fool the armed revolutionary movement than the GRP-NDFP peace negotiations.
5. The GRP-NDFP peace negotiations started only in 1995 and produced more than 10 major agreements, including the Comprehensive Agreement on Respect for Human Rights and International Humanitarian Law, within three years. But the post-Ramos regimes under constant pressure from military hawks have limited peace negotiations to a total of no more than two years despite the passage of decades since 1995.
6. The insistence of the Duterte regime and its military minions on “localized peace talks” is maliciously intended to put the NDFP negotiating panelists, advisors, consultants,resource persons and staff personnel under the control and surveillance of the GRP intelligence agencies and subject the NDFP to projected abductions, torture and murders as in 1987 after the ceasefire talks and ceasefire agreement between the Aquino regime and NDFP in 1986 and 1987.
7. Despite the far more limited exposure of NDFP negotiators and related people in peace negotiations with the GRP abroad from 1995 onwards, the Duterte regime has been able to trace, abduct, detain, torture and murder more than sixteen senior consultants and staff personnel of the NDFP negotiating panel in the Philippines. It is obvious that the whole scheme of “localized peace talks” is nothing but a tactic to entrap the revolutionaries in triad operations of psywar, intelligence and combat in the armed counterrevolution.
8. For malevolent dramatic effect, the Duterte regime has shown a penchant for tracing and murdering NDFP senior consultants, who are in their seventies and are unarmed and defenseless in their homes. It wants to show off that its all-out war policy is succeeding even as as the armed revolutionary movement is rapidly growing in strength and advancing due to the people’s desire for revolutionary change and the rapidly worsening crisis of the ruling system as a result of the traitorous, tyrannical, terrorist and thieving policies and actions of the Duterte regime.
The Duterte regime is already in the throes of its few remaining months of its legal term of office, It has issued Executive Order No. 158 obviously to guide the Marcos-Duterte tandem which it expects to install as successor regime through electoral fraud and terrorism. What the incumbent regime is doing is trying to ensure is that state terrorism and plunder will continue and even escalate further.
It pretends to be unaware that the rapidly worsening crisis of the domestic ruling system and the world capitalist system is exceedingly favorable for the people’s democratic revolution in the Philippines and that foreclosing genuine peace negotiations within the framework of The Hague Joint Declaration gives notice to the Filipino people and their revolutionary movement that there is no way for them to achieve just peace but to wage the revolutionary struggle for national and social liberation more resolutely and fiercer than ever before.
Thus, the broad masses of the people are awaiting the revolutionary counter-offensives as the fitting response to the brutal campaigns of so-called focused military operations of the counterrevolution. The enemy forces are still to receive the hardest blows under the revolutionary policy of centralized and unified ideological and political leadership and decentralized operations, including the guerrilla strategy and tactics of inflicting countless wounds on the enemy through extensive and intensive tactical offensives on a nationwide scale.###