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Wednesday, June 14, 2006
Evangelicals to abandon Arroyo over abolition of death penalty
A CATHOLIC Church prelate said President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo may lose the support of the Philippine Council for Evangelical Churches (PCEC) and other religious groups and organizations in favor of capital punishment should she approve the abolition of the Death Penalty Law.
"We stand for what is true and right. We hope she (President Arroyo) would think twice before signing the bill into law," said Bishop Efraim Tendero, chairman of the PCEC.
Various anti-crime groups such as the Volunteers Against Crime and Corruption (Vacc), the Crusade Against Violence (CAD), and the Citizens' Crime Watch (CCW) also threatened to withdraw their support from Arroyo because of her "apathy and lack of concern." The Jesus Is Lord (JIL) Movement of Eduardo "Brother Eddie" Villanueva is also against the repeal of the death penalty law.
"How can we cultivate life, as claimed by those opposing the death penalty, when we ignore the crimes against life? If we keep on insisting Christian forgiveness then maybe we should also remove the lifetime sentence," Tendero said.
He said it is obvious that the passage of the bill in both Houses of Congress was done in "haste" and that consultations with other concerned sectors were not conducted.
Tendero said further that the passage of the bill was doubtful since the motive behind it is clear. "We don't want to speculate but the quick passage of the bill is a little bit alarming," he said.
Lawyer Leonardo de Vera of the Integrated Bar of the Philippines (IBP) believed that politics played a role in the abolition of the death penalty. He said the President should first take a closer look at issues surrounding the abolition of the death penalty before she signs the bill.
Meanwhile, the Supreme Court (SC) will stand by its decision affirming the execution of Leo Echegaray amid the uproar created by Chief Justice Artemio Panganiban's admission recently that "judicial error" may have brought the convicted-rapist to his untimely death.
SC spokesman Ismael Khan said there was no inconsistency between Panganiban's statements with the tribunal's decision imposing death on Echegaray on Jan. 4, 1999, the first man to die by lethal injection since the re-imposition of the death penalty on Dec. 31, 1993.
"That is a decision that has been implemented already. The court will stand by its decision," he said in a phone interview.
During a speech before the Free Legal Assistance Group (Flag), which is a staunch opponent of capital punishment, Panganiban said the SC may have committed a "judicial error" in ruling in favor of the execution of Echagaray.
Panganiban, one of the two remaining dissenters to the constitutionality of the death penalty law, said the SC may have erroneously affirmed the capital punishment of death.
He further said the death penalty has no place in the legal firmament because, in spite of the meticulous scrutiny that the SC gives to death cases, "it is still possible that an innocent person would be held legally guilty and thereafter judicially executed."
But in downplaying Panganiban's statements, Khan said the Chief Justice has always been vocal in his opposition to the death penalty and it was reflected when he dissented in the constitutionality of the death penalty because death penalty decisions are written "per curiam," which means that the individual votes of justices cannot be indicated.
"He (Panganiban) was just making it crystal clear that he was dissenting in the Echegaray penalty. He has stated this is his personal view and he certainly did not mean to foist it on the other members of the court," Khan said.
Khan explained that the supposed judicial errors referred to by Panganiban in his speech simply pertains to the fact that in the complaint against Echegaray, the complaint stated that the victim was his daughter, when in fact he was just the common-law spouse of the girl's mother.
"The Chief Justice was referring to the judicial process, although the fact that Echegaray was not the real father does not detract from the fact that it was also a heinous crime under the terms of the death penalty law. If it was alleged in the information, at least the accused would have been properly informed of the charges against him," Khan said.
"The only problem there was due process might have been affected somehow because of the fact that being alleged as the father in the information, the accused was not able to mount a proper defense," Khan added.
But in his speech, Panganiban said because of "judicial errors", Echegaray was executed when he could only have been meted life imprisonment because Republic Act (RA) 7659 prescribes the capital punishment for rape perpetrated by the "common law spouse of the parent of the victim," a qualifying circumstance which was not alleged in the complaint.
In an interview Tuesday, Panganiban said it is up to the political branches of government to determine whether there is a need to compensate the family of the convicted rapist.
"We don't make any opinion on political matters, in the sense that it relates to the political department of the government, Congress or the Senate or to the President. We don't give any comment," Panganiban said.
He also said he furor created by his statements did not at all affect the court as an institution. "It was just my personal opinion," he added,
Associate Justices Antonio Carpio, Adolfo Azcuna and Conchita Carpio-Morales refused to comment on Echegaray's alleged mistaken execution in 1999.
Since the reimposition of the death penalty in 1993, only seven convicts have been actually killed by lethal injection. Since former President Joseph Estrada's declaration of an 11-month moratorium on executions, in deference to the Catholic Church's Jubilee Year in 2000, no convict was put to death for the rest of the year.
This no-execution policy was continued by President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo who asked Congress to immediately pass a legislation repealing the death penalty Law.
Earlier, the Senate and the House of Representatives approved on third reading a measure that would repeal RA 7659. (MSN/ECV/Sunnex)
(June 14, 2006 issue)
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