|
Sometime
in January, BusinessMirror special correspondent Imelda V.
Abaño, who attended an international water conference in
the Netherlands, sought and got an appointment with Jose
Maria Sison, exiled communist leader based in Utrecht.
Sison, who turned 69 on February 8, is the founding
chairman of the Communist Party of the Philippines and its
military wing, the New People’s Army (NPA), set up in the
late 1960s. He went into exile in the Netherlands after
the breakdown of peace negotiations with the post-Marcos
government in 1986. Currently described as the chief
political consultant of the National Democratic Front,
Sison was classified in 2002 by the United States and the
European Union as a “person supporting terrorism,” a tag
that he and the similarly tagged NPA have sought to be
lifted.
Sison, who
is living in
Utrecht
with wife Julie de Lima, holds office at the NDF head
office also in Utrecht. Following are the highlights of
that one-on-one interview:
Many
Filipino people are interested to know the real condition
of Prof. Jose Maria Sison now, after living in
self-imposed exile in the
Netherlands since 1987.
I am
looking fine. I have so far adjusted myself here. I have
applied for another application for residency after the
Dutch rejected my application for political asylum. But
the Dutch government has never expelled me because under
Dutch law, if your life is at risk you cannot be sent out
even to a third country. But I have to be extra careful
now because of assassination attempts, especially after my
release from Hague detention last November 2007. I suppose
I am under surveillance and maybe now, you are also under
surveillance.
You
mentioned about your detention in a Dutch prison, you were
arrested in August 2007 here in
Utrecht for
allegedly having ordered the killing of former NPA
commanders Romulo Kintanar and Arturo Tabara and you were
released after a month. What is the status of the case
now?
I had
nothing to do with the killings. The malicious charge of
inciting to murder is a pure political fabrication of the
Arroyo regime in a scheme to suppress my freedom of
thought and expression, and to pressure the Negotiating
Panel of the National Democratic Front (NDF) of the
Philippines to capitulate. It is the fake president Gloria
M. Arroyo and her top political and military henchmen who
should be called to account and imprisoned for gross and
systematic human-rights violations. The District Court of
The Hague decided to release me from detention on
September 13, 2007, due to lack of direct and sufficient
evidence. Then, upon the appeal of the prosecution, the
Court of Appeals decided to uphold the decision of the
District Court about the lack of prima facie evidence and
ruled further that the charge against me has a political
context within which the testimonies of witnesses against
me are unreliable. Anyway, they threaten to apply to me
the charge of inciting to commit murder; then they have
alternatively accused me of war crimes because the level
of proof there is supposed to be lower. Let’s see if this
case will drag up to middle of 2008.
What is
the status of the peace talks between the NDF and the
Arroyo administration? [If the talks are suspended] What
will make the NDF return to the negotiating table?
There is
no word yet from the GRP. I think the Arroyo
administration is still busy making propaganda, destroying
the revolutionary movement. With the ongoing peace talks
of the government with the MILF [Moro Islamic Liberation
Front], I do not know if they will also use as an excuse
that they are still busy with the MILF. But I have to say
that the NDF is open and willing to have exploratory talks
first. It must be conducted according to the framework set
by the Hague Joint Declaration, and in accordance with the
Joint Agreement on Safety and Immunity Guarantees; the
negotiators, consultants and other individuals in the
panel must not be listed as “terrorists.” So in short, the
GRP must ask the United States and European Union as well
to remove me, the CPP and the NPA from their lists of
“terrorists.” Social, economic and political
reforms…that’s the way to address the armed conflict. If
GMA is not willing to talk to the NDF, it’s okay. ’Di
bale sandali na lang naman si GMA, e [Never
mind, I think her time is short now]. We’ll wait and see.
With that,
do you think President Arroyo will be able to finish her
term in 2010?
It remains
to be seen. For sometime, even if I was hearing that the
military rank and file have swung, 80 percent have swung
[toward] the military leaders under detention [Trillanes
and Lim]. Well, the troops are not immune to the working
economic situation. GMA takes advantage of the fact that
the military officers, as in the time of Cory, are afraid
to confront and/or to take over the person and authority
of the sitting women president. They [military] do not
dare to take her authority as a sitting president. They
should not at all be bound by loyalty to the illegitimate,
criminal and immoral Arroyo regime. Talagang bumaba ang
kalidad ng pulitika sa Pilipinas. Yung utak ni GMA
sa politika ay puro [The level of politics under GMA
has sunk so low. Her mind contemplates nothing but]
complete puppetry, sa economics, neoliberalism.
The President should make sure that she leaves a good
legacy in the last two years. Baka nga ’di na n’ya
matapos ang term nya, e [She might not even finish her
term].
Where do
you think will President Arroyo position herself with the
coming new United States President this year?
If GMA
makes it up to 2009, she’ll fade away. And even if the new
US President will be reversing some of its policies or
acts of Bush, GMA will not care anymore.
What then
is your message to GMA?
After all
the wrongs that you’ve done, mind the legacy that you are
leaving behind. The choice is hers, really, whether to
destroy the revolutionary movement or come to her senses
and seriously use the peace negotiation to find ways of
addressing the roots of the armed conflict.
The Arroyo
administration’s target is to eliminate the communist
insurgency by 2010. Please comment on this.
The
CPP-NPA is unbeatable. [Do you think] armed revolution [is
limited to] guerrilla fronts only? I think the guerrilla
fronts will continue to increase and probably every
guerrilla front will be concurrent with the congressional
district of the ruling system. It is not a fantasy to
create provincial and regional forces with [the present]
120 to 130 guerrilla fronts and still growing. The
government is not capable of destroying the movement and
that was proven in [its] track record from the Marcos
regime until today. They cannot destroy the NPA because
the cause is just and the ruling system is in crisis, and
we are going to have more serious crisis because everybody
accepts the recession is coming down and the growth, at
the least, will be severely affected. The Philippine
economy is going to worsen and social crisis will worsen.
The people will see that they are getting less income and
they are not getting jobs, the cost of basic commodities
is rising and in the end, people will become discontented.
So the revolutionary movement is [growing].
What is
your reaction to Arroyo administration’s tapping the
services of Fr. Romeo Intengan to forge a covenant among
political parties for a so-called moral revolution against
corruption?
Father
Intengan is unfit. Even if he is a priest he has been
quite immoral. As a matter of fact, he together with
National Security Adviser Norberto Gonzales, they go
around lecturing to officers that it’s alright to kill
officers or leaders of NPA. And according to the statement
made by NDF human-rights committee chairman Fidel Agcaoili,
the two are the masterminds in holding the anticommunist
seminars among military and police officers that equate
progressive legal activists with the underground NPA,
thereby turning these unarmed civilians into targets for
assassination.
What is
your message to the Filipino people?
Ipagpatuloy na lumaban. Ipagtanggol at isulong ang
karapatan nila. Isulong ang kilusan para sa bansang
pagpapalaya, pagkakaroon ng kaunlaran at demokrasya at
hustisya
[Continue the struggle. Defend the people’s rights.
Promote the movement for national freedom, progress,
democracy and justice].
How about
to the politicians, what is your message to them?
The basic
problem of the
Philippines
is economic, political, social, cultural and moral. They
have become so grave that really, to deal with them they
have to assert patriotic and progressive principles and
policies. You have a regime that is full-blast on
neoliberal globalization and starting this year, the
economic problems will become grave.
Are you
coming home?
I am
coming home in due time. I have reached such an age [of
68] that I am considered retired and I could stay in the
Philippines. The best way to go back to the Philippines is
for the peace negotiations to succeed. Yes, that would be
the best way. |
