Wednesday, September 19, 2007 Editorials: Debate on the anti-terrorism law
FOCUS in the past few days has been on the law designed to insulate the nation from terrorism.
The outcry of protests and resistance to the so-called Human Security Act (HSA) is actually about the preservation of our right to live peacefully and securely in our homes, neighborhood and community.
The average Filipino is worried he would wake up one day to find in his house men who are intent on harming people they do not even know, much less have a grudge with.
Criticism
During the Press Week forum at the MBF Press Center the other day, the HSA was placed on the dissecting table and carefully examined by a group of speakers and panel reactors.
After more than two hours, the conclusion was that the HSA, or Republic Act 9372, should be amended or repealed because it won’t achieve its objective.
National Security Adviser Norberto Gonzales, who was supposed to take up the cudgels for the government and support the HSA instead turned critic of the law.
He pointed to its ambiguity in some points, thus making certain sectors, including the media, cause-oriented groups as well as the opposition “unnecessarily worried.”
They are afraid it might be used against them.
Mangled
The point at issue is how the HSA was conceived and hammered into law.
The way it was done by the Senate and the House of Representatives shows the interacting forces of national politics at work.
Even the police do not want to touch the HSA since with just “a minor mistake” they risk 12 years of imprisonment on top of a few hundred thousand pesos in fine.
In a sense, the lawmakers who hammered the HSA into law in an effort to make it serve a wide range of interests in both penalty and protection have mangled the intent of the law to protect the country and people against the growing menace of terrorism.
Instead, they produced a law that is terrorizing the whole gamut of our populace.
Refinement
Gonzales called for the refinement of the HSA into an anti-terror law that “should target specific groups–-communist organizations, subversive groups and Muslim separatists—and cover specific acts.
Separatists pose a danger not only to the security of the state but to the lives of innocent civilians.
They don’t target soldiers, they target ordinary person enjoying his day at the mall.
