ZAMBOANGA CITY, 14 May 2005 — Senior military officials yesterday urged President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo to reject any attempt by politicians to revive the peace talks between the government and communist rebels.
And in a parallel move, some lawmakers slammed suggestions to give amnesty to military officers who led the failed July 2003 Oakwood mutiny.
Politicians on Thursday suggested that the government reopen the peace talks with the rebels in an effort to end more than three decades of communist insurgency in the country.
The outlawed Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP) and the National Democratic Front of the Philippines (NDFP) and their armed wing New People’s Army (NPA) suspended peace talks with the Arroyo government in 2002 after the United States listed them as foreign terrorist organizations on Manila’s recommendation.
Aside from the United States, the European Union, Canada and Australia also blacklisted the CPP-NDF and the NPA and froze its assets abroad.
Rep. Satur Ocampo, of the party-list Bayan Muna, said he and several congressmen will travel to the Netherlands next month to meet with CPP leader Jose Maria Sison and convince the rebel leader to resume the peace talks with Manila.
Sison is living in self-imposed exile in the Netherlands since 1987 and direct operations of the 7,500-strong NPA forces from there.
Ocampo said he was responding to a challenge by House Speaker Jose de Venecia for the leftist members of Congress to help revive the peace talks.
The suggestion to revive the peace talks coincided with the ongoing military offensive in the southern Philippines, where security forces have captured four major NPA bases and seized tons of explosives and arms cache since last month, one military official said.
“The rebels would only use the peace talks to reconsolidate their forces and recruit. They would negotiate peace, but at the same attack military forces, kill civilians and politicians oppose to them. Previous peace talks had failed because the CPP-NDF and the NPA have one thing goal and that is to overthrow the government and install a communist state,” he said.
‘Let Them Face the Music’
In Manila, some members of the House of Representatives’ committee on justice said they were not in favor of proposals to give in to the leniency plea of 96 junior officers who led the failed July 2003 Oakwood mutiny.
“Justice must be served as a lesson to other military adventurists and destabilizers,” said Reps. Exequiel Javier (Lakas-CMD, Antique) and Antonio Cuenco (Lakas-CMD, Cebu City), both members of the House committee on justice which yesterday opposed the granting of any amnesty to the Oakwood mutiny leaders.
Javier said the Magdalo officers’ apology to President Arroyo might help lower their sentence but would not force Congress or Malaca?ang to decree a general amnesty for them.
Javier and Cuenco also doubted that the military court would accede to the leniency plea of the Magdalo officers despite having led the Oakwood mutiny and “created chaos.”
“While plea bargaining is an open legal option for the Magdalo officers, they should not expect their penalty to be as light as the other mutineers who were earlier reinstated but demoted in rank by the military court,” said Javier.
On Wednesday, the military tribunal ordered the release of 184 enlisted men who participated in the failed rebellion after mutiny charges against them were dropped. The soldiers had pleaded guilty to charges of disrespect and insubordination and were sentenced to a year of hard labor, demotion by three ranks and forfeiture of two-third of their basic salaries for three to six months.
Javier said the Magdalo officers had “bigger responsibilities” than the 184 enlisted men who were allegedly just misled into joining the Oakwood mutiny.
“Disregarding their sworn duty and putting national security at risk is no joke. They should learn to accept the consequences of their wrongdoing,” Javier said.
Reps. Vincent Garcia (NPC, Davao City), vice chair of the House committee on national defense, and Douglas Cagas (NPC, Davao del Sur), vice chair of the committee on good government, warned that the verdict of the five-man military tribunal on the enlisted men might send a wrong signal to the men in uniform and the people they had sworn to protect.
Bayan Muna Rep. Satur Ocampo said the “absence of actual shooting” could be considered as a mitigating circumstance to warrant their release.
Ocampo, however, clarified that the release of the mutineers should be accompanied by honest-to-goodness and top-to-bottom reforms in the armed forces. (With a report from Inquirer News Service)
