Filipinos abroad are being urged to do their part in achieving peace in the Philippines by becoming “agents” of growth.

Presidential Peace Adviser Jesus Dureza said he is continuously engaging overseas Filipino worker (OFW) communities whenever and wherever he can so that they can bring their message of peace on their own and contribute to make the Philippines a better place without conflict and with an improving economy.

“There are about 10 million OFWs all over the world. There are big agents of growth because they provide great support to our economy,” he said.

He said one means where OFWs can contribute to improving the country is to become “peace ambassadors”.

“We have a concept and a way of how we can involve our OFWs and we call these the ‘Peace Ambassadors’,” Dureza said.

He said the peace ambassadors are installed especially among the OFWS because they are the best people to convey information to other Filipinos.

“They are hoping to bring the message of peace to their own family, neighbourhood, to fellow Pinoys (Filipinos) and especially to the communities where they live,” he added.

He said the concept of “peace ambassadors” had been in development and had also been installed during the previous rounds of peace talks in Rome, Netherlands, and Norway between the Philippine government and the leaders in exile of the Philippine insurgency.

“They (Peace Ambassadors) will become recipients of regular updates on the peace work in the Philippines. After that, we’d like to expect feedback from them,” Dureza said.

“Out Peace Ambassadors are very active. Some of them are giving feedbacks already, so that’s one way of getting cohesive action from the public,” he added.

The Philippines and insurgent group, the Communist Party of the Philippines, New Peoples Army, National Democratic Front (CPP-NPA-NDF) had been engaged in almost a half a century old insurgency conflict.

Upon the orders of President Rodrigo Duterte, government representatives led by Dureza months ago initiated “back-channel” talks revive peace negotiations.

Several weeks after, Duterte ordered a pause in the informal back-channel negotiations saying that he would be consulting first with the Filipino people before talks could continue.

Since the insurgency began in 1969, more than 100,000 combatants had died while certain areas of the country lagged behind in development.

In related developments, the Communist Party of the Philippines last weekend cast doubts that Duterte would finish his term, which ends in 2022.

“In less than two years, he has become isolated domestically and internationally. Thus, there is a high probability that Duterte will not be able to complete his six-year term of office and will be forced out of Malacañang by way of a surge in anti-fascist protest actions or some other means,” the CPP said in a statement sent to reporters on the day Duterte marked his second year in office.

“Far weaker than the Marcos dictatorship, the US-Duterte regime will likely be ousted in a shorter period of time,” the CPP warned, referring to the years 1972 until 1981 when martial law was imposed in the Philippines by President Ferdinand Marcos.

Armed Forces of the Philippines spokesperson Col. Edgard Arevalo has said the number of New People’s Army forces continues to dwindle nationwide.

Arevalo said around 7,531 rebels had been neutralized from January 1 to June 28 this year: 71 killed, 114 captured and 7,346 voluntarily surrendered.

Among those who surrendered were three rebel leaders from the NPA’s Sentro De Grabidad from Guerilla Front 30, North Eastern Mindanao Regional Committee.

Esperon included the Communist Party of the Philippines and its military arm New People’s Army which he dubbed as dangerous local terrorists that continued to wreck havoc in the countryside, waging desperate attacks on military and police forces and innocent civilians.

The CPP through its founding chairman Jose Ma. Sison, had opted to close its door to the ongoing peace talks with the government after the scheduled June 21 resumption of talks was unilaterally postponed by President Duterte.

The CPP founder earlier claimed they were focused now on efforts to oust the present administration as it would be much easier to talk peace with the next leadership.