THE chief peace negotiator of the communist-led, National Democratic Front of the Philippines (NDFP), Fidel Agcaoili, has passed away. He was 75.
A statement from the NDFP said that Agcaoili died due to “pulmonary arterial rupture which caused massive internal bleeding.”
“It was not COVID-19 related,” the NDFP stressed in a brief statement, adding arrangements are already being made to fly his body back to the Philippines.
Military sources said that Agcaoili was among those who organized the ‘M/V Karagatan’ incident, the smuggling of China-supplied weapons for use by the then fledgling ‘New People’s Army’ (NPA) in 1972, several months before the declaration of martial law.
After the “re-establishment” of the Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP) in 1968 by Jose Maria Sison, he tasked Agcaoili as the party’s “emissary” to China for material support.
After all, Sison had included ‘Mao Zedong Thought’ with ‘Marxism-Leninism’ as the philosophical foundation of his movement.
The courting of China is also to take advantage of the rupture in relations between Chairman Mao’s China and the Soviet Union.
But after their request that the weapons, mainly assault rifles and ammunitions, be transported to the Philippines via submarine was rejected by China, Agcaoili then went to Japan and purchased a run-down, 90-ton fishing trawler, the ‘Kishi Maru,’ which he renamed as the ‘MV Karagatan.’
The MV Karagatan, with the weapons loaded from a port in Fukien province, China, finally reached the shores of Digoyo Point, Palanan, Isabela province in the last week of June 1972.
However, most of the weapons fell into the hands of the government after a military aircraft sighted the MV Karagatan and troops were sent to investigate.
Agcaoili and Sison’s China caper was said to be among the reasons why Pres. Ferdinand Marcos decided to declare martial law just months later, in September 1972.
Agcaoili succeeded former priest, Luis Jalandoni, as chief NDFP peace negotiator in 2016. ###