by Diego Morra
Like the mythical Bapor Tabo of Jose Rizal, the ship of state has been rudderless, with the Marcos Jr. policy statements contradicting the situation on the ground, like when its tactician at the National Task Force to End Local Communist Armed Conflict (NTF-ELCAC), Eduardo Ano, contradicting the initiatives of Carlito Galvez, Malacanang’s peace adviser, to resume backchannel talks in compliance with the agreement with the National Democratic Front of the Philippines (NDF) in 2023 to restart informal talks that could lead to formal negotiations.
NTF-ELCAC has been at the forefront of the covert operations to throw a monkey wrench at the peace talks, starting with the declaration that “factions” within the NDF, the Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP) and the New People’s Army (NPA) are reluctant to support comprehensive negotiations, in effect asking the revolutionary movement to come clean on the peace initiative and subject it to an “election.”
“By standing for a just and lasting peace, the US-Marcos regime’s attempts to force the NDF into a trap of surrendering the armed revolution continue to be thwarted. Over the past two years, there has been no significant progress in the talks between the NDF and the Government of the Republic of the Philippines (GRP) to revive formal peace talks,” CPP stressed in its Dec. 26, 2025 statement on the party’s 57th founding anniversary.
“The main reason for the impasse in the peace talks is Marcos” insistence on scrapping all agreements made over the past 30 years of NDF-GRP negotiations, including The Hague Joint Declaration, the Joint Agreement on Safety and Immunity Guarantees (JASIG), the Comprehensive Agreement on Respect for Human Rights and International Humanitarian Law (CARHRIHL), and others. Marcos shows he does not honor the GRP’s signature, undermining the trust of the NDF and the people,” it added.
Marcos insists on a “restart” of talks within the framework of “demobilization and disarmament” of the NPA, without first resolving the basic problems of the people, which are the root of the civil war in the country. The NDF has firmly rejected this proposal. If the Marcos regime does not change its militarist stance in the talks, revolutionary forces are prepared to suspend talks with the GRP until Marcos is replaced by someone more open to resolving the basic problems of land and injustice. “With or without peace talks with the GRP, the Party is determined to wage revolutionary struggles to fight for the national and democratic aspirations of the people,” CPP argued.
Meanwhile, the Marcos Jr. administration has not reined in its dogs of war, as its minions continue to harass local politicians in Mindoro who are opposed to mining and logging operations on the island, with one former mayoralty arrested and slapped with “terrorism” charges like a Cordillera cultural worker and human rights advocate. Their experiences are as bad as what happened to Eduviges “Daisy” Macapanpan, who champions the opposition of the people of Pakil, Laguna to a dam project of Marcos Jr. crony Ricky Razon.
Macapanpan, a senior citizen, was arrested for resisting the Razon venture and defending the right of town residents to determine the fate of their natural resources, including the huge spring that Razon covets. Wait till Razon also taps another water source in Jala-Jala, Rizal purportedly located on a property of a taipan. White the state enjoys perpetual sovereignty over natural resources, the people have as much right as the state in enjoying the benefits from a country’s factor endowments. Pakil is the hometown of noted Filipino artist Danny Dalena and his equally creative children.
In one pompous declaration, the Marcos Jr. administration vowed to win the peace before the regime bows out in 2028 but instead of throwing into the midden shed of history such anomalous creations as the NTF-ELCAC, it has pampered it with a budget of P8.09-billion for next year, a huge amount that supposedly would be used for “barangay development” while billions more would be devoted to the “reintegration” of more than 1,000 former guerrillas. Both the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) and the Philippine National Police (PNP) for listing their own versions of Sara Zimmerman Duterte Carpio’s Mary Grace Piattoses and other fictive names. No wonder, the Philippine Daily Inquirer slammed the NTF-ELCAC as too huge for an overstaying agency in a regime that has bragged about snuffing out the armed struggle.
