ENDORSEMENT, SINCERE? Negrense military officer who has reached the pinnacle of his career in soldiery having been appointed (probably grudgingly by PGMA), has endorsed the resumption of peace talks and saying victory in the battlefield for government troops may not be possible.

Talk in government and military circles is that the top honcho in the military along with the now retired former AFP Chief, Gen. Alexander Yano, were professional soldiers and not part of the cabal of the present regime. His being a professional soldier accounts for Ibrado’s endorsement of peace talks which is to be resumed by August in Norway as the host country. Only the approval by the GRP of the NDF demand for the release of its leaders who have been arrested and detained but who are part of the negotiating group, bars any return to the negotiating table.

It cannot be denied that each side in the talks have their own deeply-kept motives which are not very difficult to fathom.
For the NDF which represents the revolutionary movement in the country, its sincerity in achieving peace but with social and necessary changes in the economic field as well as the other aspects of the national life is their objective.

GRP SIDE AGENDA. If the government truly represents the people, its agenda should not be questionable, but the present president Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo is at the moment, being swamped under a serious doubt of suspicion more so on the CON-ASS issue, being that majority believes she is intent on prolonging her rule through the change in government which she hopes to achieve through CON-ASS to allow her to run for prime minister under a possible change in the system of government, but which is militantly opposed by the people.

Along with the peace talks proposal are agenda including a ceasefire but which the rebels insist must only be shortlived, or not long-term as it was during the period peace negotiations were conducted between the NDF and the GRP; Could it not be a part of PGMA’s and her political allies’ tactics to neutralize the revolutionary movement while facing her other opponents on the extra-legal and legal battlefield? It is, in a manner of speaking, also akin to splitting one’s adversaries. But peace talks have always been a question of talk, talk, talk, fight, fight, fight. This was so in the Vietnam War where battles and major wars were raging when Armistice was signed by the United States and Vietnamese representatives in France.

Indeed, even before he assumed his present post and when the foremost hawk, then AFP Chief now retired, Gen. Hermogenes Esperon held his post, Ibrado and his group were known as doves with the former group known as hawks.

For many people who have spoken in surveys after surveys, and who want PGMA out even now or at best on June 30, 2010 when her term ends, what has kept her government from unraveling was and is the support of the military and the PNP. What is clear is that without these armed services, she could not stay a day in power.

A POSSIBLE EXPLOSION. At the moment, people’s anger against perceived manipulations at authoritarian rule, and the prolonging of her rule through CON-ASS, is rising. For candidates who make the mistake of identifying themselves with PGMA, such could be a kiss of death. This was clearly the case when several senators identified themselves with the ruling administration in the 2007 senatorial elections. They fell by the wayside.

The peace talks could create the impression that PGMA is a peacemaker and not a violator of human rights recognized by the United Nations for the grim act of the killing and extrajudicially of more than 1,000 people, more than 1,000 cases of torture and the worse case of graft and corruption including plunder of the people’s money.

She has stressed and impetuously that she does not want to act like or be a lameduck on the way to her departure next year reinforcing this with bellicose declarations during her SONA speech. The president needs very good reading like “Waltzing with a Dictator,” a book written by American authort Ray Bonner whom we met briefly in Bacolod after the First SONA Revolt.*