Only a leader with true grit and a grasp of the wily Communist Party of the Philippines, its armed combatants, the New People's Army, and its legal front, the National Democratic Front, can dub the resumption of peace talks and amnesty overtures as a "pact with the devil."

Vice President Inday Sara Duterte grew up in an environment of strife in Davao City spawned by the vicious communist regime, the NPA, and its urban liquidation squad, the "Sparrows." Her father, Atty. Rodrigo R. Duterte, was an assistant city fiscal who investigated killings carried out by the NPA, police, soldiers, and Citizen Armed Force Geographical Units.

The Davao annals of infamy in the 1980s were written in blood. While the people's uprising in the middle of that decade virtually wiped out the NPA's urban operatives, the communist combatants continued to rule in remote barangays. 

In 1988, while barely in her teens, her father was elected mayor of Davao City. She saw firsthand how her father had to fight on several fronts — against the ruthless NPA, the separatists, the emerging terrorist organizations, and, the most savage of these, the drug syndicates.

Under the uncompromising leadership of Mayor Duterte, Chairman Nur Misuari of the Moro National Liberation Front ceased its belligerence in and around the city and both nurtured a friendship born out of respect and understanding.  Duterte decisively dealt with the drug syndicates that operated even on school campuses. Terrorists inflicted casualties among innocent civilians, but Duterte laid down a sophisticated network of defense to curb their diabolic activities.

The NPA, however, remained a dangerous force even as Duterte personally reached out to them in their mountain lairs.

In that situation, the young Inday Sara, a freshly minted lawyer, was elected mayor of Davao City. The transition in the city leadership was seamless. She was the youngest to hold the job at 43. She was honed by the vicarious and actual experience of watching how her father had addressed the peace and order problems that hounded the largest city in the world. We witnessed her crying over the dead bodies of innocent victims of NPA atrocities and saw her firm resolve to deal with them.

It is not difficult to understand why VP Sara abhors the idea of resuming the failed peace negotiations with the CPP-NPA-NDF, and neither is she in accord with granting amnesty to the vicious enemy. Not when the government is winning the war, she stressed, and not when most of the regions in the country have been declared insurgent-free. Further, VP Sara saw firsthand how peace talks with the Reds only accorded the enemy a breathing spell and the opportunity to regroup, rearm, and recruit.

It is indeed the height of absurdity for some politicians to just follow blindly what Malacañang proposes. We are in a situation where the blind lead a horde of blind and blinded politicians. Worse, the leadership of the executive and legislative branches see virtue and validity in conceding to the demand of an enemy that had been routed by the Armed Forces of the Philippines, the Philippine National Police, and, in no small way, the NTF-ELCAC. 

If there is anything of value in this imbroglio, it is the unmasking of the weaknesses, childish unawareness of some of the politicians in the legislature, and their apathy toward our soldiers and police officers who had fought hard to win the war against the communist insurgents.

But there is something there that is also worrisome. While Malacañang has acceded to talking peace with and granting amnesty to the beleaguered enemy, the House of Representatives has detained Jeffrey "Ka Eric" Celis and Dr. Lorraine Badoy. They, as members of the NTF-ELCAC, helped cripple the CPP-NPA but are now fighting for press freedom and freedom from unjust detention.

What is happening to our country?