It used to be said of mathematics that it was an exact science, and although “exact” and “science” are disputable terms, that description was generally accepted. But these days, even counting has become problematic. How many joined the rallies against the Marcos burial at the Libingan ng Mga Bayani? It seems that mathematics yields to politics, for we get different counts according to different sources, each claiming to be veridical.
But this time we need the marches, and the noise, and the ferocity even—but above all the conviction. At the urging of Malacañang, allies in both houses of Congress are poised to ram through the Legislature a bill that returns the death penalty. In fact so confident are its advocates that the measure will pass muster that the conversation has turned ghastly: which method inflicts the most agony—and proposals range from a return of the electric chair, to televised executions by firing squad, to hanging and to the terrible irony of lethal injection in a pseudo-clinical setting! If so much noise was made about the burial of one long dead, the proposal to inflict death on the living should meet with even more spirited opposition and manifest disgust!
In the first place, all the years that we sent people to their deaths by the electric chair and by the lethal injection chamber, we were really hypocrites, constitutionally. The fundamental law, in very clear terms, forbids inflicting “cruel and unusual” punishment, and yet, by some stupid (unpardonably stupid— repetition for the sake of emphasis) sophistry, Philippine jurisprudence has maintained that the “death penalty” is not cruel. How much more deranged can one get? What can be more cruel than sending someone to his death? And it is not a question of whether or not the IV line that delivers a lethal dose is benign in comparison to the barbarity of the gallows or the guillotine. It is rather telling a person that she is to die, and then making her count the minutes as the hour of doom approaches, and then walking her to the site of execution—this whole macabre drama is cruel in the extreme. And nothing has yet been said on the cruelty visited on parents, children and relatives. One reason we did not incorporate Sharia’h penology when we accommodated personal, marriage and inheritance laws was because we considered Sharia’h penalties irreconcilable with the constitutional proscription of cruel and unusual punishment. And we have made those pronouncements with the pompousness of utterers of supreme wisdom. How different really are flogging, amputation and stoning from the plans afoot to inflict death on convicted persons in the most terrifying manner possible? How much does it speak of the perversity into which we have fallen even to suggest that executions by firing squad be televised?
I will not be drawn into the deterrence argument—because it is in fact a non-argument. Extrajudicial killings and the enforced disappearances of drug peddlers certainly scare the daylights from those contemplating on entering the dastardly trade —but that does not in any way legitimize summary executions and the abduction of persons who are neither seen nor heard from again! You deter criminal conduct through the formation of character—and there are not short-cuts to that. One thing it does demand, though, is a truth Justice Louis Brandeis of the US Supreme Court taught decades ago: “Government is the teacher of the people. If the government becomes the lawbreaker, it breeds contempt for the law.” There are those who would plunge the nation into a Reign of Terror, forgetting that this terrible period of French history got France absolutely nowhere!
No matter that convictions follow only upon acceptance of proof beyond reasonable doubt, the trouble is that there is an epistemic difference between “what has been proved” and “what happened.” When you have perjuring witnesses, well-rehearsed and coached professional liars, manufactured documents and an unfortunate confluence of circumstances (including bungling and incompetent lawyers and occasionally corrupt judges), you may be able to prove beyond reasonable doubt what in fact never happened. That is always the challenge of “historical truth”—the truth of “past events.” There is always a good amount of conjecture in every retelling and reconstruction of the past, and while, for purposes of everyday life, we can cope with that, there is certainly no way it can be trifled with when it means the death of another person!
It is clear from the victims of EJKs and the suspected peddlers gunned down by the police that our enforcers can get their hands only on shanty-dwellers, small-time dealers, although occasionally you have some who live in mansions, high-rise apartments and exclusive subdivisions. But even President Digong admits that the really big fish are not around—ensconced safely in their guarded estates in China, perhaps or elsewhere. So we send the small fry frying because we cannot lay our hands on the big fish?
There is much to be learned from the fact that for most countries of the world, the death penalty has been stricken off their criminal codes. It is instructive that for even the most heinous crimes over which international criminal tribunals have cognizance—genocide, crimes against humanity, war crimes—the death penalty is not meted out. It cannot but be of significance for us in the Philippines that we became state parties to the Second Optional Protocol to the Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. It is the emerging consensus among nations that humanity should have evolved beyond the stake and the block—and even its modern renditions: the gas chamber, the electric chamber, the lethal injection gurney. All are cruel. All transgress our humanity. All dehumanize the executioner and the executed alike. It is degenerate to counter the stream of the evolution of consciousness and humanity
So shall we have the numbers and the voice shout out as loudly if not even louder for life, as they did against an almost 30-year-old deferred interment?
rannie_aquino@csu.edu.ph
rannie_aquino@sanbeda.edu.ph
rannie_aquino@yahoo.com
