FILE PHOTO: Senator Robinhood Padilla. Voltaire F. Domingo / Senate PRIB
MANILA, Philippines — Senator Robin Padilla is again pushing to reinstate the death penalty in the country, this time targeting law enforcement and elected officials implicated in illegal drugs.
Padilla filed Senate Bill No. 2217 to amend the Comprehensive Dangerous Drugs Act of 2002 to include capital punishment for drug-related offenses by members of the Philippine National Police, Armed Forces of the Philippines, and other uniformed or law enforcement agencies.
Under Padilla’s proposal, elected officials who contribute, donate, or profit from drug trafficking shall likewise be executed “without prejudice to removal from office and perpetually disqualified from holding government positions.”
But, he noted, that capital punishment “shall not be inflicted upon a woman while pregnant or one year after delivery, or any person over 70 years of age.”
‘Sorry state of affairs’
The Philippines, according to Padilla, is in a “state of insecurity” due to a startling surge of illegal drug cases involving law enforcers and elective officials.
“The present law has demonstrated its futility to deter offenses relating to drugs. Our law’s leniency has brought us to this sorry state of affairs where law enforcers are now unafraid to be involved in illegal drugs. The situation is dire which requires our government to respond with a staunch and decisive measure: the law must be changed,” the senator said.
He decried the “incontrovertible truth that the illegal drug trade and prevalence become so entrenched and systematic that its rot sets in the very core of our public institutions,” – thus, underscoring the need to re-impose capital punishment to deter drug offenders from law enforcement agencies and public offices.
The proposed law’s ultimate goal, he said, is “to reinstate the rule of law and rebuild the trust of the Filipino people.”
Senate Bill No. 2217 is Padilla’s third bill in the 19th Congress that calls for reviving the death penalty for specific crimes in the Philippines.
He earlier filed proposed measures seeking capital punishment for security personnel engaged in committing murder and officers of the Bureau of Customs and other law enforcement agencies found guilty of violating the anti-agricultural smuggling law.
READ: Death penalty vs law enforcers who disobeyed anti-agri smuggling law sought
The death penalty for heinous crimes was first imposed in the Philippines in 1993. But this was stricken off the list of penalties prescribed by penal laws in 2006 during the administration of former president Gloria Macapagal Arroyo.
In 2007, the Philippines ratified the Second Optional Protocol to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, requiring nations to abolish capital punishment.
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