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Aquino's Gamble
| Article
# : |
12203 |
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Section : |
CURRENT ISSUES
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| Issue
Date : |
2 / 1987 |
2,548 Words |
| Author
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Stephen A. Garrett
Stephen A. Garrett is professor of international policy
studies at the Monterey Institute of International Studies in
Monterey, California. |
The late British Prime Minister Winston Churchill once observed that as a general matter it is certainly better in politics to "jaw, jaw" than "fight, fight." The truth of this aphorism is currently being tested in the Philippines by the government of President Corazon Aquino, and the outcome will likely have a significant impact on the future of Aquino's regime and her attempts to transform Filipino politics and society.
At issue is the cease-fire agreement that the Aquino government signed with representatives of the National Democratic Front (NDF) on November 27, 1986. The NDF is a popular-front organization whose dominant member is the Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP). The military wing of the CPP is the so-called New People's Army (NPA), which until the cease-fire agreement had waged a 17-year military struggle to seize political power in the country. The strength of the NPA had grown alarmingly during the last years of the Marcos regime, and general estimates are that they currently field some 23,000 guerrillas and control perhaps 20 percent of the Filipino countryside. Armed forces Chief of Staff Fidel Ramos himself estimated that NPA recruits had increased by an average of 33 percent in recent years, although he claimed that this had fallen to around 3 percent since the advent of the Aquino administration.
The decision by Aquino to negotiate a cease-fire with the communist insurgents represented a calculated gamble on her part, and the difficult and protracted negotiations that led up to the final agreement were symptomatic of the difficulties she faces in attempting to "jaw, jaw" with the insurgents rather than "fight, fight." The talks extended over some four months, with frequent interruptions. The NDF insisted at first that the cease-fire had to be considered "inseparable" from parallel discussions about reforms in Filipino society. They also wanted detailed agreements concerning the rights of paramilitary forces, both in the countryside and in urban areas, as well as a de facto recognition of their status as formal belligerents under international law. The NDF's right to maintain its system of "taxation" of areas under its control was still another issue.
Eventually, the NDF gave way on all these points, and the resultant agreement stipulating a beginning of the cease-fire on December 10 and lasting 60 days was distinctly ambiguous on all the major substantive issue dividing the government and the guerrillas. Instead, the agreement spoke in very general terms of establishing "good faith and mutual trust" as a basis for "the achievement of lasting peace and a resolution of...political
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