Opposition solons’ New Year wish: End EJKs, stop death penalty

Ifugao Rep. Teddy Baguilat INQUIRER FILE PHOTO

Opposition lawmakers at the House of Representatives on Monday expressed hope that their colleagues would stop the reimposition of the death penalty in the spirit of hope and love this New Year.

In separate statements, the “Magnificent 7” members, minority leader Ifugao Rep. Teddy Baguilat and Albay Rep. Edcel Lagman, expressed hopes that their colleagues would not restore death penalty this 2017.

READ: Death penalty bill lacks the numbers; House debates reset

“This is the season of love, salvation and hope, and I wish that my colleagues will be touched by the love of God and align their position against the death penalty,” Baguilat said.

Baguilat also hopes for an end to the extrajudicial killings (EJKs) of suspected drug criminals  which have marked President Duterte’s bloody war on drugs. The drugs campaign has claimed over 6,000 lives already.

“The culture of violence should not take hold… In the Philippines, everyone is still innocent until proven guilty. The President says he’s sorry for the innocents killed in the drug war,” Baguilat said.

“I hope 2017 engenders a Philippine National Police that is more focused on lawful arrests and stopping the murders,” he added.

For his part, Lagman vowed to lead a broad coalition of anti-death penalty advocates to campaign against the proposed reimposition of capital punishment “until the archaic proposal is finally consigned to the legislative dustbin.”

“The widening coalition of legislators, religious ministers both from the Catholic Church and other religious denominations, civil society and non-governmental organization networks, college students and youth opposing the revival of the death penalty has vowed to intensify its campaign inside and outside of Congress,” Lagman said.

He said death penalty has not proven to be an effective deterrent to crime, its main victims come from the poor and marginalized, and that it “desecrates the right to life which is sacrosanct and inviolable, and is an affront to human dignity.”

Death penalty also runs counter to the modern concept of restorative justice and rehabilitation, and that it also “exacerbates the culture of violence and death” and worsens the already “State-sanctioned” extrajudicial killings of suspected drug pushers, Lagman said.

“The only argument of the proponents for the revival of capital punishment is that the death penalty is a deterrent to the commission of alleged heinous crimes. Empirical studies both here and abroad document that the death penalty is not an effective deterrent to the commission of crimes,” Lagman said.

“Even logic tells us that despite the fact that since the dawn of civilization the death penalty has been imposed on various offenses involving varied modes of execution, until now heinous crimes across the world are being committed mocking the extreme severity of penalty,” he added.

The bill seeking to restore death penalty is expected to undergo plenary debates under second reading once Congress resumes from its Christmas break on Jan. 16.

The bill  hurdled the justice committee on Dec. 7.

READ: House Justice committee approves death penalty bill

The bill seeks to impose death penalty on more than 20 heinous offenses, such as rape with homicide, kidnapping for ransom, and arson with death.

Speaker Pantaleon Alvarez, Duterte’s staunch ally in Congress, filed the bill seeking to reimpose the death penalty after former President now Pampanga Rep. Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo abolished capital punishment in 2006 for its failure to deter crime.

Alvarez filed the bill pursuant to President Duterte’s campaign promise of returning capital punishment against heinous criminals.

READ: First bill in Congress seeks reinstatement of death penalty

In the bill he co-authored, Alvarez said there is a need to reimpose the death penalty because “the national crime rate has grown to such alarming proportions requiring an all-out offensive against all forms of felonious acts.”

“Philippine society is left with no option but to deal with certain grievous offenders in a manner commensurate to the gravity, perversity, atrociousness and repugnance of their crimes,” according to the bill.

Duterte won the elections on a campaign promise to restore the death penalty by hanging, even remarking that the convict’s head should be severed by hanging. Alvarez said Congress would look into the cheapest way for the death penalty, either by firing squad, lethal injection or by hanging. JE/rga

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