Peace talks with the CPP-NPA-NDF is not what the Filipino people want

05 May 2026

The National Security Council fully supports the position of Department of National Defense Secretary Gilberto C. Teodoro Jr. in rejecting any renewed peace talks with the Communist Party of the Philippines, the New People’s Army, and the National Democratic Front.

Sec. Teodoro is correct in saying that to resume a national-level peace negotiations with a clearly spent, isolated, and criminal armed group would not advance the Filipino’s interest in security, peace, and development. It would only give their crumbling insurgency a veneer of credibility it no longer possesses on the ground.

For close to four decades, the Filipino people have paid the price of misplaced generosity toward a movement that repeatedly used peace negotiations as a tactical instrument for recovery, never a sincere path to reconciliation. Since the formal talks at the time of Pres. Corazon Aquino, the CPP-NPA-NDF has repeatedly exploited ceasefires and negotiations to regroup, rebuild networks, regain influence in communities, and project political relevance while its armed units continued to commit atrocities, extortion, recruitment, and violence against the Filipino people.

At this point in our nation’s history, peace talks should not be allowed to become a lifeline for a dying insurgency. To reopen negotiations at this time would only overturn the hard-won victories that Filipino communities have achieved through years of courage, sacrifice, and peacebuilding. Across the archipelago, towns and barangays that were once trapped in fear and coercion have rejected the NPA. They continue to restore local governance, welcome genuine development, and choose lawful democratic participation over armed violence.

These gains were not handed down from conference tables abroad or negotiated in the name of an organization that has increasingly become divorced from the people. They were built by communities on the ground, with the government, with our security sector, and with stakeholders who have no ulterior motives but to move our history forward, away from the darkness of communist insurgency.

Any proposal to talk peace with the CPP-NPA-NDF today is tone deaf to the realities of the ground. The Filipino people are not asking for the return of peace negotiations that the CPP-NPA-NDF has historically abused. Our communities are asking for roads, schools, livelihoods, justice, local security, reintegration, healing, and protection from recruitment and intimidation. These demands need our utmost and urgent attention, and not a return to the negotiation table with a group that has lost any semblance of integrity, let alone belligerency.

Through the mechanisms of the National Task Force to End Local Communist Armed Conflict, the Office of the Presidential Adviser for Peace, Reconcilitation, and Unity, and local government units, Filipino communities are already empowered to pursue localized peace engagements that directly address the roots of conflict. These mechanisms recognize that peace must be built in barangays, families, schools, farms, indigenous communities, and former conflict-affected areas, where forms of conflict were actually suffered.

We reaffirm the State’s policy that those who wish to abandon armed violence are afforded lawful and dignified pathways through localized peace engagements, reintegration, transformation programs, and amnesty processes. The door remains open for individuals who sincerely renounce armed struggle and return to the fold of the law. But the State cannot and must not elevate the CPP-NPA-NDF’s criminal and terrorist activities into a legitimate political cause through another round of national-level talks.

The Philippine State is not at war with its people. It is protecting its people from those who continue to spoil the peace. Secretary Eduardo SL Oban Jr

National Security Adviser,

Director General NSC, and

Vice-Chairman, NTF ELCAC