The Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP) does not agree with presidential aspirant Ferdinand "Bongbong" Marcos Jr.'s proposal to continue the local peace talks to address insurgency, claiming that it only serves "as a weapon for counter-insurgency".
Reacting to the pronouncement of Marcos Jr. during SMNI's presidential debate, CPP insisted Wednesday, Feb. 16 that "'local peace talks' is not the way."
In a statement, the CPP claimed local peace talks "are only being used to conduct psywar and intelligence operations against the people and their people’s army." CPP also said it is "opposed to formal negotiation"s between the National Democratic Front of the Philippines (NDFP) and the government.
"On the pretext of 'grassroots engagement', it aims, attacks and destroys the independent people's organizations in order to disunite the people and take away their capacity to defend their land, their rights and interests," CPP said.
Marco Valbuena, the party's chief information officer, said that the campaign only serves "superficial livelihood programs, road and housing projects".
He said these projects "are launched to conceal the fundamental problem of landlessness, uproot the people from their land, and to serve as milking-cow for corrupt military officers".
"Rampant rights violations perpetrated by military and police forces under the pretext of 'local peace' are driving more people to resist and join the NPA (New People's Army)," CPP said. The NPA is the military wing of the CPP.
On Tuesday night, Marcos Jr. said there is a need to continue the programs being conducted by the National Task Force to End Local Communist Armed Conflict (NTF-ELCAC), particularly its Balik-Loob program, as he found them to be effective. But he said the peace talks must also be expanded.
Marcos Jr., who tagged communist rebels as "enemies of the state", also said that proper distribution of wealth and providing equal opportunities or access to education are among the other solutions to contain local insurgencies.