Cagayan de Oro Rep. Rufus Rodriguez. INQUIRER FILE PHOTO
MANILA, Philippines—Cagayan de Oro Rep. Rufus Rodriguez said he considers human life sacred, hence his opposition to the reproductive health bill and the death penalty.
However, there is “an exception, a small wrinkle to my stand against the death penalty,” the congressman said.
Rodriguez has authored a bill imposing the death penalty on convicted foreign drug traffickers if the crime is punishable by death in their respective countries.
House Bill No. 4510, which is coauthored with his brother, party-list member Maximo (Abante Mindanao), seeks to amend the Comprehensive Dangerous Drugs Act of 2002 “by implementing changes in the penalties applied when the offender is a foreign national.”
“There have been constant reports of foreign nationals, including Chinese nationals, being caught selling drugs and operating drug dens and laboratories in the Philippines. And once caught and convicted, the penalty that our local courts may impose is only life imprisonment,” said the bill’s explanatory note.
“This is sad or even an unfair situation because when Filipinos are caught drug-trafficking abroad, they may be imposed the death penalty,” the bill’s authors said, citing the execution of three Filipinos in China last year.
Uneven laws
“While there is no reason to question the laws of foreign countries, we must, however, ensure that our countrymen do not suffer the short end of the stick,” they said.
In an impromptu press conference, Rodriguez clarified that his proposed amendment would not cover other heinous crimes such as the Magalang killing.
“No, because we have a policy of no death penalty and I believe in that,” he said.
Cyrish Magalang, a 20-year-old cum laude graduate of the University of Santo Tomas, was brutally killed by a tricycle driver and his brother in Cavite last week.
“I am against the death penalty. Human life is sacred. We have gone through, for the past many decades, retributive justice. We are now into reformative justice. There’s no more ‘tooth for a tooth, an eye for an eye.’ It’s been discarded in the world. So to go back to the death penalty brings us back to the Medieval Age,” he said.
However, in the case of foreign drug traffickers, Rodriguez asks what the difference in value was between the life of a Filipino and a foreign drug offender.
“I’m invoking the rule of equity and reciprocity in international law,” he said.
Because of the absence of the death penalty in the Philippines, “our country is becoming a haven of this pernicious and pervasive drug problem,” Rodriguez said.