A PHILIPPINE government court petition to designate the New People’s Army as terrorists is a desperate attempt to alienate it from the people, NPA commander Jaime Padilla said yesterday.

But he insisted that the NPA and its Maoist political wing, Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP), are still open to talks to settle their insurgency.

Mr Padilla said that President Rodrigo Duterte would, like past leaders, fail to defeat the NPA and so was resorting to “fake news” to undermine the Maoist fighters, who have waged an insurgency for nearly half a century with what he said was the people’s support.

The Department of Justice asked a Manila court on Wednesday to formally designate the CPP and NPA as terrorist groups.

Mr Padilla rejected the assertion that the NPA was similar to extremist groups notorious for beheadings and other atrocities.

“The Abu Sayyaf is heaven and earth different from the NPA,” he said, referring to Isis’s Filipino affiliate.

“Labelling the revolutionary movement as such is a big crazy act.”

He said rebels attack government forces that raid or infiltrate guerilla zones but the guerillas do not assault innocent civilians or ransack their properties like Abu Sayyaf.

“If they withdraw the petition, that will be good because it’s baseless,” he declared.

• President Duterte confirmed yesterday that a ban on the deployment of workers to Kuwait, where Filipina maid Joanna Daniella Demafelis was found dead in a freezer, will continue and could be expanded to other countries where Filipino workers “suffer brutal treatment and human degradation.”