Even before the emergence of a people’s army, the toiling masses of workers and peasants suffer the daily violence of exploitation by the exploiting classes of big compradors and landlords.

Whenever they exercise their right to speak and assemble, the toiling masses face the threat and actual use of violence of the state apparatuses (the army, the police, the prisons and the courts). The reactionary state is institutionalized violence.

The New People’s Army (NPA) under the leadership of the Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP) arose long after the fact of people’s exploitation and oppression by the big compradors, landlords and corrupt bureaucrats. The people’s armed revolutionary movement is resistance to the prior unjust violence of the reactionary state.

The assertion of Duterte and his spokesman Panelo that the CPP and NPA promote violence and imply that they are the source of violence is utterly wrong. The US-Duterte regime is the main source, promoter and perpetrator of violence in the Philippines.

The NDFP, in representation of the CPP and NPA and other revolutionary forces, has been open to peace negotiations with any reactionary government willing to engage in peace negotiations.

Like all previous ruling cliques of the reactionary government, the Duterte ruling clique has delayed or stopped the peace negotiations whenever they cannot obtain the surrender and pacification of the armed revolutionary movement or whenever they can no longer tolerate the people’s demands for basic social, economic, political and constitutional reforms.

The US-Duterte regime is responsible for the termination of the peace negotiations and the continuance of the armed conflict between the reactionary government and the revolutionary movement.

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The National Executive Committee of the National Democratic Front of the Philippines (NDFP) has received reports from several sources in the reactionary Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) that military officers who are assets of the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and are close to AFP chief of staff Eduardo Año are engaged in a two-stage plot to assassinate Jose Maria Sison, NDFP chief political consultant, and subsequently to overthrow President Rodrigo R. Duterte.

The first stage of the military plot is to send a hit team to The Netherlands in order to assassinate Sison, with the verbal approvals of Duterte and Año, before or after the proclamation of martial law nationwide. The rationale of the assassination is to demoralize the revolutionary forces and possibly sow confusion and pandemonium among them. The head and members of the hit team are made to appear as entirely renegades or dropouts from the New People’s Army even as they are handpicked mainly from the special forces of the AFP and secondarily from the former Alex Boncayao Brigade.

The second stage of the military plot is a coup to overthrow Duterte for having collaborated with the communist party and the NPA for decades, betraying the alliance with the US and veering towards China and Russia, playing favorites with certain military and police officers, subverting the professional standards of the military and police forces,, corrupting and criminalizing them in the commission of extrajudicial killings and failing to solve the problem of illegal drugs despite the crude and flagrant violations of human rights.

The NDFP is of the view that, even while the two-stage military plot, especially the first stage, needs further verification, the plot must be immediately exposed in order to discourage its implementation. There is high probability that the hit team for assassinating Sison is already operational. Thus, Sison has already started to take security precautions, such as letting volunteers guard him and take photographs of those in his vicinity at home or in public places.

The NDFP has taken note of previous statements of the President that he is in danger of being ousted by a coup and that he is therefore trying to avert this by appointing more military officers in his cabinet and other high civilian offices. The NDFP admonishes him to end his all-out war policy against the revolutionary movement, to desist from proclaiming martial law nationwide and to withdraw from involvement in the plot to assassinate the NDFP chief political consultant.

The NDFP reminds him to engage seriously and sincerely in peace negotiations, comply with the Comprehensive Agreement on Respect for Human Rights and International Humanitarian Law by releasing all political prisoners and address the roots of the civil war through mutual agreements on social, economic and political reforms in order to lay the basis for a just and lasting peace.

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