MANILA, Philippines — A lawmaker on Monday urged President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo to again make drug trafficking a crime punishable by death if the administration is really firm in winning the war against the drug menace in the country.

Muntinlupa Representative Rufino Biazon made the call amid a report that a daughter of a drug agent has been drugged and raped by a suspected drug syndicate with political connections.

“If the government says that the abduction and rape of the daughter of a narcotics agent is the start of the war, then I suggest the government first look at what they will throw against the drug syndicates,” he said in a statement.

“The government can mobilize all the law enforcement agents, and ensure that the prosecution is swift, decisive, and uncorrupted. But if we send the drug convicts to a life of security, comfort, and with the ability to go on with business, then the war will still be won by the syndicates,” Biazon added.

Appalled by the latest incident, Malacanang has declared anew a war on drugs.

The President has appointed herself as the country’s drug czar since January this year following allegations of bribery at the Department of Justice and the Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency (PDEA) on a controversial drug case involving three suspects of prominent families.

“So if this is war, what is the government prepared to do to fight the battles?” Biazon asked.

Citing the case of Colombia, he said syndicates there have become so brazen, staging assassinations not only of police and anti-narcotics operatives but also of judges handling drug cases.

“This crime is so heinous, so sinister, and diabolical that it takes a particularly evil mind to conceive and do it,” he said in a statement, adding that the attack on the girl was “obviously a pre-meditated act, meant to hit back at the person who has been effective in foiling the proliferation of the illegal drug trade.”

In January this year, Biazon filed House Bill 5714 to amend Section 1 of Republic Act 9346 (An act prohibiting the imposition death penalty in the Philippines) that abolishes death penalty in the country.

A similar proposal filed by Senate Majority Floor Leader Juan Miguel Zubiri is pending at the Senate.

In June 2006, the President signed the measure abolishing death penalty a few days before she left for the Vatican for a meeting with Pope Benedict XVI.

The issue has sharply divided the country between those who want to retain it and those who do not think it is a deterrent to criminality.