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Tuesday, April 18, 2006
Ariola: Crime pays
By Jose Paolo Ariola
I Still Walk the Line
IN the crucifixion scene at Golgotha, two convicted criminals who suffered the same fate as our Lord as we all know flanked our Savior. One of the thugs, Hestas, was so brazen as he unremorsefully mocked Jesus to come down from the cross if he was really the Son of God. In contrast, the other felon Dimas, repentantly rebuked Hestas and said, "Our punishment is just." Apparently, Dimas was remorseful of his crime and acknowledged the punishment meted them by the Romans as but fitting for their crimes. But not the Lord who, beyond the shadow of doubt, was innocent of the crimes by which he was charged by Caiaphas, Annas, and their acolytes. The old adage - "crime does not pay" - is therefore as old as Calvary it self. But here in the Philippines, it appears that crime does pay, especially the heinous ones, with the commutation of the death sentences of about 1,200 convicts on death row by President GMA.
I was particularly aghast when I read the news of Easter Sunday. With this wholesale presidential commutation of all death sentences into life imprisonment, our government is sending a wrong signal to criminals - that crime indeed pays - in this forlorn country of ours. And it pays even more when one's crime is so heinous because in spite of the fact that it may carry the penalty of death, he wouldn't get executed anyway because GMA will surely commute it and the felon will get to live into ripe old age with free board and lodging at taxpayers' expense. Swell! Criminals haven't had it so good under the present administration which appears to be too timid to enforce the law lest it incur the ire of the Roman Catholic Church in the Philippines.
And what about the families of the victims who were raped, murdered, and kidnapped? Don't they deserve justice for their hapless kin? Sure, killing the criminal will not bring back the life of the victim. But will the years of agonizing litigation before our criminal courts be all for naught just because the President does not bear true faith to her bounden constitutional duty to enforce the law. If that were so, then we might as well blow our Criminal Justice System to kingdom come. Why waste governmental expense and sleepless nights for the victims' families just to get a felon convicted only to be given a presidential commutation later on? We'd better cry havoc and let the criminals loose and wreak mayhem in this pitiful society of ours.
The presidential apologists may claim that hers was just an exercise of her presidential prerogative to grant pardons, reprieves, and commutations under the Constitution. While this presidential privilege may be true, yet the same must not be exercised in wild abandon as to grant a wholesale commutation of all death sentences as a form of appeasement for the Catholic Church. Why should PGMA curry the favor of the Catholic Church when the same church has been harshly critical of her administration anyway? In the Easter homily of that priest at the Bacolod Cathedral, he so wantonly condemned the GMA administration as corrupt, immoral, and what have you notwithstanding the fact that the commutation had been earlier blurted out in the news. See, there's no effect on the stand of the Catholic church vis-à-vis the GMA administration. There's no love lost between the Church and Malacanang. No amount of appeasement nor conciliatory moves on the part of this administration will win the church over to its side. Enough with this charade of appeasement.
In the meantime, the criminals on death row are rejoicing from their deliverance from certain death. Well, that's being Easterly, I might say. After all, Easter Sunday promises a new life. But on the other hand, the families of victims of heinous crimes were, ironically, crucified on Easter Sunday by PGMA. Oh, Gloria, why hast thou forsaken them?
(April 18, 2006 issue)
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