Sison denies 3-year Duterte ouster plan

“It is not true that the CPP has a three-year plan to oust Duterte by October 2018 since 2016,” Sison said in a statement on Wednesday, July 4. (File Photo by Briant de los Santos via Joma Sison/Facebook)

Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP) founding chairman Jose Maria Sison denied the claims of the administration that communist rebels have a three-year plan to oust President Rodrigo Duterte by October.

“It is not true that the CPP has a three-year plan to oust Duterte by October 2018 since 2016,” Sison said in a statement on Wednesday, July 4.

Addressing Defense Secretary Delfin Lorenzana, Interior Officer-in-Charge Eduardo Año, and National Security Adviser Hermogenes Esperon Jr., the communist leader said the three officials are ‘misrepresenting’ the three-year plan of the CPP Central Committee to strengthen the CPP “ideologically, politically, and organizationally.”

According to Sison, the so-called ouster plan of the CPP, its armed wing, the New People’s Army (NPA), and its political arm, the National Democratic Front of the Philippines (NDFP), is only a mere ‘fabrication’ of the Duterte administration to “carry out a fascist coup against the 1987 Constitution under the guise of pushing charter change (Cha-cha) for federalism.”

“They want to use the CPP and NPA as scapegoats for imposing martial law nationwide and anti-terrorism so-called to suppress all critics, opponents and the broad masses of the people who oppose and fight Duterte´s reign of greed and terror,” Sison stressed.

Sison further said it is Duterte himself and the pro-United States (US) militarists in his Cabinet are the ones destabilizing their own regime by offending people in many horrible ways such as thousands of killings in the administration’s war against illegal drugs and costly military operations under Oplan Kapayapaan.

Aside from those, he also noted the rising prices of basic goods and services, rampant corruption of the President’s relatives and his favorites, gross disrespect for the Catholics and Christians’ religious belief, and the “traitorous sell-out” of the Philippines’ sovereign rights over the oil and gas resources under the West Philippine Sea (WPS) which cost trillions of dollars.

Sison’s remarks came following the announcement of the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) on Tuesday, through its spokesman Colonel Edgard Arevalo, that communist rebels are planning to oust the Chief Executive.

Arevalo noted that they learned about the plot based on the recovered documents and testimonies of rebels who have surrendered.

He, however, refused to give further details about the matter but assured that government troops remain on alert following these reports.

“We cannot take chances, it’s a threat not only to the liberties of our people [or] in the life of our President, we in the department have to take that seriously,” Arevalo said.