Statement of the Government Peace Negotiating Panel for Talks with the Communist Party of the Philippines-New People's Army-National Democratic Front of the Philippines (CPP-NPA-NDFP)

The NDFP Chairman Luis Jalandoni asserts that compliance with the Joint Agreement on Safety and Immunity Guarantees (JASIG) is key to the resumption of the peace negotiations. The GPH asserts that the key to the resumption of the negotiations is compliance with the terms of the Oslo Joint Statement (OJS) which the GPH and NDF Panels signed on 21 February 2011 following our first round of formal negotiations.  With regard specifically to the JASIG, the OJS stated that:

“Based on the Joint Notes dated January 18, 2011, the GPH shall continue to work on appropriate measures to effect the expeditious release of all or most of the fourteen (14) NDFP listed JASIG consultants and personalities before the second round of formal talks, subject to verification as provided in the JASIG Supplemental Agreement dated June 26, 1996, or on the basis of humanitarian and other practical reasons. The NDFP added four (4) names (Danilo Badayos, Leopoldo Caloza, Alan Jazmines and Ramon Patriarca), whose release shall be subjected to the same process.”

Therefore, we agree that the JASIG is important but we assert more strongly that JASIG compliance requires verification without which the process lacks integrity.

The JASIG is a sacred agreement that the GPH signed in good faith. However, like other agreements the GPH and the NDF have signed, its implementation requires good faith. The JASIG includes guidelines on who are covered by safety and immunity guarantees and in what way they are covered. It provides these guarantees not for just anyone on the CPP/NPA/NDF side, but only for individuals they had originally listed as participants in the peace negotiations.

Furthermore, according to the JASIG rules, the real identities of those using aliases could be verified by opening a safety deposit box in a bank in Utrecht, The Netherlands, where a sealed envelope with photographs of these persons was deposited.

In the past, going by pure faith and goodwill, the GPH Panel took the NDF's word when it alleged that captured party members were NDF consultants who must be released under the JASIG, without resorting to the safety deposit box to verify its claims.

However, last year, the GPH and NDF Panels agreed to activate this JASIG verification mechanism, in accordance with the terms of the 21 February 2011 Oslo Joint Statement. The GPH was concerned about the possibility of spurious NDF claims of JASIG coverage.

We all know what happened during the verification procedure which was participated in by representatives of the NDF and GPH Panels and witnessed by the RNG Third Party Facilitator and the Archbishop of Utrecht.  It was discovered that the NDF had violated the JASIG rules by placing floppy discs with encrypted photographs in the safety deposit box, instead of hard copies of the alias holders’ pictures. Worse, the floppy discs could not be opened, allegedly because these had been corrupted over time. The undeniable outcome was failure because the NDF could not produce any of the needed photographs for the verification procedure.

This sorry situation has resulted in unverifiable aliases. While the GPH remains faithful to its commitment to release all verifiable JASIG-covered NDF consultants, it has no choice but to extend JASIG protection only to the persons in the JASIG list using their real names and  those other NDF consultants who have been duly identified.

The NDF has made the release of its alleged consultants a precondition for the resumption of the talks.  However, the GPH cannot blindly extend JASIG coverage to just anyone that the NDF alleges is covered, especially since the NDF has consistently claimed highly-placed captured party members to be covered by aliases in its JASIG list, without offering any proof.

The GPH asserts that a sacred commitment such as the JASIG must be honored with faithful compliance. Unfortunately, the NDF has been cavalier about its own commitment to the JASIG.