PNoy ‘hallucinating’ over Joma’s return

Double talk. Bayan Muna president Satur Ocampo accuses President Benigno Aquino of endangering the peace talks.

A LEFTIST leader accused President Benigno Aquino III on Sunday of “hallucinating” on the whereabouts, ideology and political plans of Communist Party of the Philippines founder Jose Maria Sison and said the “double-talk” would damage the peace process.

“Never had Joma indicated any interest to join any government after Marcos, or to run in any electoral exercise after such governments,” said Satur Ocampo, Bayan Muna president and a co-founder of the National Democratic Front, the umbrella group of communist organizations.

“He might well be hallucinating,” Ocampo said of Mr. Aquino, who had said Friday that Sison, who is in self-imposed exile in The Netherlands, could run in the 2013 elections.

“I wonder where he got such an idea.”

Ocampo also slammed President Aquino for engaging in peace talks while launching his own counterinsurgency program, Oplan Bayanihan, aimed at thinning the ranks of the New People’s Army.

“The peace talks have stalled since June 2011 but he hasn’t lifted a finger to prod it,” Ocampo said.

“Instead, he pursues the counterinsurgency drive … with the questionable goal to reduce the NPA to irrelevance by 2013.”

House Deputy Minority Leader and Zambales Rep. Milagros Magsaysay, meanwhile, twitted Mr. Aquino for acting like a spokesman for the communists. She also said it was premature for him to talk about the elections when his administration had not done anything substantial to address the country’s pressing problems.

But an administration ally, Ifugao Rep. Teddy Brawner Baguilat Jr., defended Mr. Aquino, saying his statement was a way of luring Sison to return and give up the armed struggle to join the political process.

“It was actually a harmless, off-the-cuff speculation,” Baguilat said.

Military officials said it would be better for Sison to join the elections than continue waging an armed struggle that had already lasted for 43 years, the longest communist insurgency in Asia.

Deputy Chief of Staff for Civil-Military Operations Rear Admiral Miguel Jose Rodriguez said Sison’s return would be “a good sign” and could end the armed struggle.

“Their entry into politics is democracy in action and people can judge them by their votes rather by fear of being liquidated by hit squads,” Rodriguez said of the communists.

Brig. Gen. Rolando Tenefrancia, head of the Armed Forces’ Civil Relations Service, said he also saw nothing wrong if Sison ran in 2013.

“Under our democratic processes anybody can run in any elective position for as long as they are qualified under our existing laws,” he said.

“If he [Sison] is qualified under our laws, it is better for him to be aboveground and go through the legal process than be underground and pursue armed struggle.”

Tenefrancia also said the NPA, although still a force to reckon with, had seen its numbers decline over the years from a peak of 24,000 combatants in the 1980s to about 4,000 now.

Anti-communist leader Rep. Pastor Alcover, who claimed last week that Sison was already in the country, said his running in 2013 was preparation for the dropping of all criminal charges against him or some form of Executive clemency.

The Palace denied his claims. –Maricel Cruz and Florante S. Solmerin, Manila Standard Today