Statement of the GPH Panel for Peace Negotiations with CPP/NPA/NDFP - "The NDFP is wrong."
THE NDFP IS WRONG
The NDFP is wrong. They are the ones delaying the peace negotiations, not the GPH. They have continued to demand releases of their alleged Consultants before proceeding to all important talks on substantive reforms.
Last June, the NDF unilaterally postponed the agreed-upon bilateral talks of the Reciprocal Working Committees on Social and Economic Reforms (RWCs-SER), wrongly saying that the release of their alleged NDF Consultants was not complied with. They conveniently hid the fact that in accordance with the Oslo Joint Statement of 21 February 2011, releases are subject to verification. Since then, they have continued to demand releases as a precondition to any resumption of talks. The RWCs-SER have been unable to meet, their resumption held hostage to NDF demands.
In accordance with the agreed schedule and process to accelerate the negotiations recorded in the said Oslo Joint Statement, we were supposed to first have a series of three bilateral meetings (one in June and two in August) of our RWCs-SER to focus solely on completing a common tentative draft of the Comprehensive Agreement on Social and Economic Reforms (CASER) so that this could be submitted to the Panels by September. The second round of formal negotiations would then be convened so this common tentative draft CASER could be discussed and finalized by the Panels.
Now the NDF proposes to move directly into the second round of formal negotiations even without a CASER draft to finalize. In fact, they offer an agenda that subsumes abbreviated RWCs-SER discussions that cannot realistically produce a common tentative draft CASER and which is loaded with many other issues as well. Furthermore, this proposal is yet again preconditioned on their demand for releases of their alleged Consultants.
We responded by saying that we should first hold the RWCs-SER discussions and complete the common tentative draft CASER as per our agreement to accelerate the process, without any preconditions for releases. These are clear arrangements in the said Oslo Joint Statement to which we had both given our imprimatur and which they now violate with impunity.
In the meantime, the Government has already released five of their priority alleged consultants. The verification process referred to in the Oslo Joint Statement was held last 26 July 2011 in Utrecht, The Netherlands, and failed. This verification process is the mechanism whereby the identities of the alleged NDF consultants using pseudonyms in their Documents of Identification (DIs) are matched with separate photographs sealed and locked in a safety deposit box in a Netherlands bank. After two postponements, the NDF finally relented to this verification. But the NDF was unable to produce the required photographs. The safety deposit box contained diskettes in which they had ostensibly encrypted the photographs and which they claimed they could not extract. This was in clear violation of the JASIG Supplemental Agreement which required separate photographs and not encrypted pictures in a diskette. The end result being then that none of their alleged consultants could therefore be verified. If none could be verified, there was no obligation on the part of government to release and that should any be made, the same was part of government’s confidence building measures. The failure was theirs and theirs alone. They unfortunately responded by abducting 4 BJMP personnel and kidnapping Mayor Dano and two of his security escorts as well as escalating the levels of violence in Mindanao and Masbate.
Our negotiations have already gone 24 years and only one of four substantive agreements has been signed. Let us now talk about CASER. Unfortunately, however, it seems the NDF is giving primacy to prisoner releases over and above the completion of substantive agreements that address the root causes of the armed conflicts.
Finally, the Chair sees no reason to respond to the personal attacks of Mr. Fidel Agcaoili.
