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Wednesday, April 19, 2006
Pooled editorial: Glo revives tempest over death penalty
The “no-death” policy declared Sunday by President Arroyo merely reaffirms her practice of not having any death convict killed during her watch.
No death convict in the country has been executed since 2000 despite the law prescribing it for heinous crimes.
The President sat on death warrants from cases reviewed by the Supreme Court but did not, according to our best knowledge, commute any death sentence to life imprisonment.
The situation, left to itself, would have appeased, as it had, pro-life forces and those who demand the death penalty.
Technically, capital punishment is legally in the books, rendered ineffective but not abolished. It is in some suspended state, which had kept contending forces in a truce and Congress at rest.
Why the new storm
Then out of the Easter Sunday blue, the President announced the lump-all commutation. Why did she rouse a sleeping dog?
The President might have felt genuine reverence for human life. Or she might have hoped, as critics allege, to win support of bishops “seeking the truth” of charges of election fraud.
Whatever motive, she is now paying a stiff price for one more tempest in a storm-buffeted term.
Crime victims and kin, anti-crime crusaders, and defenders of peace and order are furious the death penalty is effectively crippled.
Those who survived horror and pain of being kidnapped, robbed, or raped feel they are cheated of redress. Those who worry over the crime rash believe the President is encouraging disrespect for the law.
Legislators are incensed. While they accept President’s right to commute death sentences, they think “wholesale” commutation defeats intent of Congress.
These angry people were already screwed but the President’s declaration reminds them that and worsens it.
Revisit the law
True, others are jubilant: Church and pro-life advocates and those who think capital punishment has not deterred crime and is not democratic since those in death row are mostly poor and ignorant.
But they are restive and not content: they demand that Congress repeal the law creating exceptions to the constitutional ban on death penalty.
The controversy is out in the open again. The President may as well prod Congress to revisit the law.
The law has not worked with this President. It may not work at all and may as well be scrapped. [Sun.Star Cebu]
For Bisaya stories from Cebu. Click here. (April 19, 2006 issue)
Write letter to the editor.Click here.
Join the Sun.Star message board.Click here. |
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