Sara rejects peace negotiations with Reds

MANILA, Philippines — Vice President Sara Duterte warned the Marcos administration against the call of a progressive lawmaker to consider resuming peace negotiations with communist groups, saying it was doomed to fail.

In a statement issued yesterday, the concurrent education secretary slammed House deputy minority leader and ACT Teachers party-list Rep. France Castro for her proposal to reopen peace negotiations between the government and the National Democratic Front (NDF).

“May I respectfully warn the Marcos administration not to fall into this trap,” she said.

“Castro’s assertion that the peace negotiations would address the root causes of the armed conflict was ludicrous. Instead, it would only give legitimacy to the absurdity of the terrorism perpetrated by the armed wing of the NDF, the NPA (New People’s Army). Negotiating with the NDF is always doomed to fail,” she added.

Duterte’s statement is the latest in her word war with ACT Teachers party-list and its affiliate organization, the Alliance of Concerned Teachers (ACT).

On Wednesday, she challenged the groups to denounce recent NPA activities in Masbate, which forced some schools to suspend in-person classes and shift to distance learning.

Castro responded by saying that the incidents in Masbate are “indeed condemnable and an independent probe should be conducted by forensic experts and the Commission on Human Rights to see the real perpetrators of the gun firing near the schools.”

“These incidents also highlight the need for the resumption of the peace negotiations between the government of the Republic of the Philippines and NDF to address the root causes of the armed conflict,” she added.

The lawmaker maintained that it is Duterte who is diverting attention from crucial issues in the education sector.

“Our call for hiring 30,000 new teachers and constructing 50,000 new classrooms yearly, until 2028, to eradicate teacher and classroom shortages and improve education quality are perfectly legitimate and logical demands,” she said.

“In fact, the past two administrations were able to get near these targets as the Aquino administration hired an average of 29,166 teachers per year and even the administration of the current Vice President and concurrent DepEd secretary’s father was able to hire 25,000 teachers per year,” added the lawmaker.

In her latest statement, the Vice President accused Castro of attempting to “lawyer” for the NPA, claiming that she is “fake representative of learners, educators and other members of the education sector in Congress.”

“It was a tactic intended to cast doubts over the integrity of official reports that the sighting of elements of NPA in an area near a school in Barangay Locso-an, Placer town, triggered the Masbate fighting,” said Duterte.

Castro in her statement merely stated the need for an independent investigation to identify the real perpetrators of the reported gun firing near schools.

The ACT, meanwhile, scored the DepEd anew for the latest department order discouraging teachers from doing volunteer and community service work during work hours.

“How can discouraging teachers from rendering community service be ‘empowering’? The agency is not setting a good example here, as teachers, in fact, have a moral obligation to encourage and initiate community involvement and service, according to Article III of Republic Act 7836, Code of Ethics for Professional Teachers,” ACT chairperson Vladimer Quetua said.