DOES President Rodrigo Duterte really believe that communist leader Jose Ma. Sison and his cohorts in Utrecht could be talked into signing and honoring a “peace agreement” — or even just a ceasefire — with the government?

Why would Sison et al. agree to stop shooting and give up their life of comfort and safety in the Netherlands, their host that has allowed them to run by remote control a rebellion in their home country?

Has President Duterte anything to offer to compensate for “het goede leven” (the good life) that they will miss?

Actually there is no more reason for the National Democratic Front/CPP to continue its avowed fight for reforms. Digong Duterte, a confessed socialist, has broken into the inner sanctum of the despised Establishment and captured it from inside and from the top.

With him as a populist president, change for the long-suffering Filipino is at hand — if we are reading Mr. Duterte’s lips correctly.

Regarding ceasefire, we won’t be surprised if Sison reiterates his old line that the NDF is being “compelled to declare a premature and prolonged ceasefire, even without addressing the fundamental questions at the root of the armed conflict and in spite of numerous key prejudicial questions that have stalled the peace process.”

This time, however, NDF leaders may want to consider helping the Duterte administration accelerate the reforms that they have been fighting for on various fronts, including the countryside splattered with the blood of innocent Filipinos.

But mixed signals are getting in the way. President Duterte announced a unilateral ceasefire July 25 and gave the rebels until July 30 to respond. The NDF replied July 27 with its New People’s Army attack on government forces in Davao, prompting the President to lift the ceasefire after the deadline lapsed.

• Invite NDF leaders for talks in Manila

A PANEL led by presidential peace adviser Jesus Dureza, meantime, is packing for Oslo, Norway, for talks previously set Aug. 20-27. It might be prudent to hold the trip in abeyance until the frame of mind of Sison is ascertained.

If Dureza proceeds, we suggest that he ask the NDF bosses ensconced in Europe to show that they have effective control over their NPA fighters. A commanding grip on the ground troops is vital when managing ceasefires and such.

An alternative is to invite the NDF bigwigs to Manila, with the government footing the bill. Guarantee their safety so they won’t need bodyguards. And while they are here, approximate their acquired continental lifestyle so they feel at home.

Mr. Duterte and his spokesmen should stop making statements, meanwhile, about restoring the death penalty. That they face possible execution in the Philippines is one of the reasons why the Netherlands has granted political asylum to the revolutionaries.

Just to remind everybody, the NPA is on the US state department list of foreign terrorist groups, together with the Abu Sayyaf, the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant, Boko Haram in Nigeria, Hamas in Palestine, and Jemaah Islamiyah in Indonesia.

But with President Duterte “The Punisher” by the rebels’ side, US marshals will not dare touch them, IMHO.

Seriously now, the Netherlands is cool, a perfect retreat for rebellious seniors, but we insist on inviting the exiles to come home and rest. After playing cat and mouse with the government for decades, they have set a record already — of being the only remaining communist insurgency in the region.

If old age does not catch up with them, irrelevance might.

• Don’t give NDF belligerent status

DURING the talks, here or abroad, the NDF should never be given the chance to project itself as an equal of the “Government of the Republic of the Philippines” and to perpetuate the anomaly of the “GRP” negotiating with insurgents claiming belligerent status.

Once the Philippine government accedes – through ignorance or carelessness — to give the NDF/CPP/NPA a “status of belligerency,” it impliedly recognizes the other party as another government of equal standing.

We should learn from our mistake of allowing the Moro Islamic Liberation Front to engage in “peace” talks the Executive branch (under then President Noynoy Aquino) misrepresenting itself as the “GRP” sitting opposite the MILF that was claiming to represent a Moro nation!

The two parties were fooling each other.

The Aquino panel also did not object when naughty Malaysian facilitators used the “GRP” label to identify it as it sat down opposite the MILF, apparently to give the Moros the status of a government. But rebels and secessionists are never “equal” to the established government.

Such protocol labelling at the table and elsewhere, which is duly incorporated in the official documentation, distorts the true status of the parties. Why did Malacañang allow this gross misrepresentation?

Note that when the NPA captures soldiers it refers to them as “prisoners of war,” a sly way of saying that it is engaged in a people’s war against an opposite government. The fact is that what is going on is not a war, but simply insurgents’ sowing mayhem for leverage and to make their presence felt.

The NPA acts as some kind of de facto government by, for instance, collecting revolutionary taxes and dispensing its own brand of swift justice to show up, by contrast, the painfully slow due process in the regular courts.

The government is lucky the NPA as the armed component of the communist structure is still unable to hold its own territory. The MILF also did not control a defined territory, but then President Aquino moved to give it an area bigger than the Autonomous Region of Muslim Mindanao — except that the deal fell through.