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[av_heading heading=’No to Pacquiao’s and Sotto’s advocacy’ tag=’h3′ style=’blockquote modern-quote’ size=” subheading_active=’subheading_below’ subheading_size=’15’ padding=’10’ color=” custom_font=” av-medium-font-size-title=” av-small-font-size-title=” av-mini-font-size-title=” av-medium-font-size=” av-small-font-size=” av-mini-font-size=” admin_preview_bg=”]
BY HERBERT VEGO
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January 18, 2018
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LIKE ME, you must have wondered why Sen. Manny Pacquiao – who claims to be a born-again Christian pastor – wants his Senate Bill 185 passed into law. Like Sen. Tito Sotto’s Senate Bill 2080, it seeks capital punishment for heinous crimes.
In January last year, the boxer/politician said, “Even Jesus Christ was sentenced to death by the government.”
It made me wonder whether he could have chanted, “Crucify him!” if he had been one of the Jewish leaders whom Roman governor Pontius asked for opinion on what to do with Jesus Christ.
Pacquiao supports President Rodrigo Duterte’s argument that death penalty could wipe out the illegal drug trade in the entire country.
Sotto also espouses death penalty for heinous crimes, including murder and drug pushing, by lethal injection in view of the “influx of heinous crimes all over the country.”
He sounded as if he had forgotten that in the same Senate forum, he had opposed the passage of what was then the Reproductive Health Bill because, being a Roman Catholic, he was “pro-life.”
When a newspaper reporter asked him to comment on his apparent inconsistency, he replied, as if believing in the “perfection” of our justice system, “I am pro-life for the unborn and the Filipino family. I am pro-death to heinous criminals.”
Ouch! If unexplained wealth were a heinous crime and the justice system were incorruptible, probably nobody would be left alive in the “pork-hungry” Congress.
So far, however, only four other senators – Joel Villanueva, Sonny Angara, Joseph Victor “JV” Ejercito, and Sherwin Gatchalian – have expressed support for restoration of death penalty.
If death penalty were not abolished during the Gloria Arroyo presidency, Sotto’s friend Erap (yes, the ex-President and now mayor of Manila) might have said “goodbye world” in the wake of his plunder conviction.
Remember when, in 1997 during the administration of President Fidel Ramos, Sotto himself was suspected of “protecting” a suspected drug lord named Alfredo Tiongco, who was alleged to have financed the senator’s 1992 campaign? While he decried the charge, he admitted having befriended Tiongco.
At that time, death was the maximum penalty. But not surprisingly, the case against the wealthy Tiongco never reached the court of law.
There was no outcry from Sotto for his conviction and execution.
Before the Tiongco fiasco, Sotto was being floated as a possible presidential candidate in 1998. The drug scandal scuttled his plan.
Now he would like us to believe that the prevailing life imprisonment as maximum penalty is a non-deterrent against heinous crimes; hence, the need for the government to revive the death penalty.
Woe unto the poor. As I see it, its revival would harm the poor but still benefit the rich accused; it would also corrupt the police, prosecutors and judges who would jack up the amount of bribe money they would demand from the accused under the table in exchange for their freedom.
It’s a different story when a convict has political connections. As a child in 1954, I remember that former Negros Occidental Governor Rafael Lacson was meted death sentence for the murder of Moises Padilla. The sentence was never carried out.
The book For Every Tear a Victory tells how a young lawyer named Ferdinand Marcos was tried and sentenced to death in 1939 for the murder of Julio Nalundasan, his father’s political opponent. Fortunately, he was acquitted on appeal.
If death penalty were a deterrent, how come the illegal drug trade is most rampant in China? According to Amnesty International, as many as 2,000 death convicts are executed in China every year. (hvego31@gmail.com/PN)
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