When Pause Means Reload: CPP’s Ceasefire Gimmick

Every few years, usually timed with symbolic or holiday seasons, the Communist Party of the Philippines announces a ceasefire, wrapped in the language of goodwill, restraint, and readiness for peace. For a brief moment, the guns fall silent and peace-coded headlines ask the public to believe in sincerity.

History, however, tells a different story.

For nearly four decades, ceasefires between the Government of the Republic of the Philippines and the CPP-NPA-NDF have followed the same cycle: declaration, temporary lull, alleged violations, collapse, denial, and repetition. If peace were truly the goal, this pattern would have changed by now. It has not.

What the CPP frames as peace has repeatedly functioned in practice as a tactical pause, a calculated break used to rest units, move cadres safely, fix logistics, reset command structures, and reduce public pressure. Hindi ito parang organic encounter; it is a managed sequence. Revolutionary movements have long treated ceasefires and negotiations as political theater, projecting moral high ground while quietly reorganizing their war machinery. The pause becomes evidence of “reasonableness,” even as it prepares the ground for renewed violence. When pressure returns, the ceasefire ends, and another carefully worded statement takes its place.

Ceasefire as Concept: From Mao to the Philippine Countryside

The CPP’s approach to ceasefires traces its ideological lineage to Mao Zedong’s tactical use of negotiations and truces during the Chinese Civil War. Mao’s engagements with Chiang Kai-shek were never premised on reconciliation, but on political exposure. Talks and ceasefires were declared during moments of national crisis to demonstrate, to the public, that the opposing state would eventually falter, overreact, or resort to violence. When that happened, the revolutionary movement emerged morally vindicated, its adversary framed as repressive and insincere.

This logic is mirrored in the Philippine setting. Ceasefires are declared unilaterally, often short-term, deliberately fragile, and rhetorically framed as magnanimous acts. When violations occur, the CPP narrative rarely concedes strategic error. Instead, incidents are digested and reframed as proof of state bad faith, reinforcing revolutionary legitimacy rather than diminishing it. Kahit may putukan, ang kwento ay laging, “sila ang unang lumabag.”

History Check, Hindi Vibe Check

The Philippine experience is littered with ceasefires that collapsed the moment reality intruded. The 1986–1987 ceasefire under President Corazon Aquino was framed as a breakthrough. Sixty days of calm. Then came Mendiola. Thirteen farmers killed. Talks dead. Trust buried with them. The lesson was clear early on. Ceasefires do not survive when the conflict’s fundamentals remain untouched.

Fast forward to 2016. Peace talks reopened with optimism and spectacle. The Duterte administration released consultants and allowed NDFP figures to surface. Ceasefire conditions lowered operational pressure and widened movement corridors. What followed was not demobilization, but dispersion. Some consultants later surrendered. Some returned to armed struggle and died in encounters. Eduardo Genelsa eventually surrendered. Concha Araneta was killed as an active NPA member. CPP chair Benito Tiamzon and Wilma Tiamzon were later neutralized after returning to the field. Porferio Tuna Jr. is currently detained. So is Maria Loida Magpatoc. The talks did not end the war. They rearranged it. When clashes resumed elsewhere, the ceasefire collapsed as it always does. Not with closure, but with casualties.

Holiday truces followed the same rhythm. Announced in December. Lifted quietly in January. By 2019 onward, even the pretense wore thin, with both sides often rejecting seasonal pauses outright. A brief COVID-era ceasefire in 2020 echoed the pattern. Humanitarian language. Short-lived calm. Accusations of violations. Regrouping during the lull. Tapos back to reality.

Makiki-anniv o, makiki-anib?

This is the part rarely said out loud. Ceasefires coincide with anniversary runs and so-called revolutionary integration. Youth, students, workers enter guerrilla zones for celebrations. Cultural nights. Political education. Commemoration. Some are encouraged to stay. Some do not leave at all. What begins as solidarity becomes recruitment. A ceasefire lowers scrutiny and raises access. Old trick. Bagong pangalan. Pasampa szn dressed as peace season.

This is why the timing matters. Holidays mean relaxed enforcement, softer optics, and a distracted public. The ceasefire is not random. It is strategic.

The Hypocrisy Question

The question is no longer whether ceasefires collapse. They do. Repeatedly. The real question is why some still sell them as proof of good faith. If every pause ends with renewed violence, if every truce aligns with regrouping and recruitment, then what exactly are we being asked to believe?

And where is the outrage from those who claim to represent peace in parliament? The silence is loud. Condemning state abuses is necessary. Refusing to call out armed hypocrisy is complicity. Hindi pwedeng selective ang prinsipyo.

Peace is not a seasonal announcement. It is consistency. It is accountability. It is disarmament, not rebranding. Until ceasefires stop functioning as tactical pauses, until the war actually logs out, the public has every reason to call it what it is.

Plastikan. Malala.