Will the death penalty stop crime and drugs? Reintroducing Capital punishment Justice committee approves death penalty bill

death penalty revisiting Philippines.

Umrao Singh umraoz.wordpress.com

One of the promises that the incumbent President, Rodrigo Duterte had made to the electorate in general was that, in his efforts to cleanse and secure the public life of the people of the Philippines, he would soon be re-introducing the death penalty to act as a deterrent to rampant corruption, crippling crime and a dominance of the culture of drugs that left almost no sections of society untouched.

And, the promise has not been forgotten.

The process of re-imposition of the death penalty has already started; today, the Justice committee approved the first draft of the bill which will pave the way for it to officially become a part of the legal tools to check the lawlessness of the land.

Now all that is left is for the House of Representatives to deliberate on the on the various intricacies, logistics, and the points of order that are raised by the opposition, the members of the legislatures, public and academicians both within and outside the house.

Once that is done, it will turn into the law of the land and the honorable courts can decide to punish the culprits who have committed its violation. The manner in which the Justice Committee approved the proposed legislation makes it clear that the reality of the capital punishment will soon fructify into a new law; this may be before Christmas or prior to that.

The proposed bill might require debates and modifications maybe two to three times at the most before the final draft is ready to be voted upon by the house. The Justice Committee had conducted its business under the Chairmanship of Reynaldo Umali, the representative of Oriental Mindoro and the quorum had the presence of 18 members with one person abstaining. This time around, the number of heinous crimes to which the proposed death penalty would be applicable, were kept at 20 that were mostly recognized as such in earlier bills that had been followed in this regard.

The committee prepared the basic draft and it was approved by a vote of 12 – 6 but not before there was a lengthy debate of more than three hours wherein the pros, the cons and objections that were put up by the learned lawmakers.

Also discussed in the debate were two more pet projects of the President that were his priority as per his agenda, they are:
• Switching to a federal system of government, and
• Lowering the age of a person who is liable for criminal action as per the law; this will help in apprehending and taming all those criminals that were being exploited to commit criminal acts and carriage of drugs but could not be legally proceeded against since they were protected by being underage.

The debate saw a stiff opposition to the bill that was proposed to re-introduce the death penalty who could not understand as to what was the justification of doing it.

But, the majority were baying for the return of the Capital punishment since there has been a clamor in the public, by the common man and by certain legal experts too who are incensed by the arbitrary way in which the country is being held to ransom by the dangerous elements of society who are unscrupulously spoiling the name and environment of the country.

A solid support to the bill was given by Vinente Veloso who was himself a justice of the Court of Appeals and represented Leyte; his argument, while comparing these criminals and drug runners with the devil himself, was that when someone evil is standing in front of you, you should not be restricted by the limitations of the law of the land.

Given the choice, the acts that justified the death penalty should be punished with the strictest punishments in the judicial system. But Bag-ao representative was of the opinion that such legislation becomes a tool to oppress only the poor and the downtrodden; besides, she said, the past statistics revealed that, contrary to belief, crime only escalated substantially when the death penalty was in force.

But, these figures were contradicted by Umali, the Chairman of the Justice Committee with figures of his own that showed an increase in crime once the death penalty was abolished.

Even the Majority Leader Randolfo pointed out that the most devout Christians had framed the 1987 Constitution that had a provision for the death penalty though they kept it in abeyance with a provision to re-introduce it if Congress wished to.

The overwhelming support that President Duterte got was only when he announced his agenda to the common people; re-imposition of death penalty and eradication of criminals was his plank.

Written for: Lars-Magnus Carlsson
www.thephilippinepride.com
Wednesday, 07 December 2016

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