THE majority and minority blocs in the Senate on Friday assured the public there would be “full-blown, no-restraints” debates on the death penalty bill.
Discussions on the revival of capital punishment will not be abbreviated, said Senate President Pro Tempore Ralph Recto.
“It has never been the Senate’s tradition to curtail the airing of ideas,” Recto said.
“That has been the way bills are made in the Senate. They go through the filter provided by members. There’s no gag rule here. Everyone has the right to say his piece,” he said.
Senate Deputy Minority Leader Paolo Benigno IV said the minority will play an active role in the debates and we will make sure that all perspectives will be given space in the Senate.
“Filipino lives are at stake here and most of them are poor,” he said.
Accordng to Recto, debates on proposals to restore capital punishment will be “tough” and thorough because the hardest vote for a legislator to cast is on bills that will “send men to war or to death.
Recto agreed with his fellow members’ observation that despite its approval in the House of Representatives, the death penalty bill will not be an “urgent priority measure” in the Senate.
The reason, he said , is that there are many good measures in the Senate pipeline which came ahead and must be disposed of first.”
These are the Free Public College bill, the creation of Coconut Industry Development Fund, the proposed Emergency Powers Act on the traffic crisis, tax break measures, women empowerment bills, the New Corporation Code, and anti-money laundering measures.
Recto believes that before the Senate tackles the business of state-sanctioned deaths, it must pass “life-improvement” measures first.
“Another predicate,” he said, is to improve and modernize law enforcement, prosecution service, the courts, and the prison system.
“If they have logistical needs, let’s fix and fund them first because justice is not about punishment alone.
The Committee on Justice recently started hearing proposals to restore the death penalty. However, the public hearing was indefinitely suspended amid worries that the country might violate the Treaty of International Convention on Civil and Political Rights it signed in 1986.
The treaty prevents states from carrying out execution as a form of punishment.
Because of this, Aquino urged fellow lawmakers to confer with foreign affairs officials regarding international treaties in connection with death penalty reinstatement.
In the House, those who opposed the death penalty bill said they will not give up their fight against the reimposition of capital punishment.
Albay Rep. Edcel Lagman said the opposition will remain unfazed by what they described as bullying tactic of the majority.
Lagman slammed Alvarez’s House leadership for “arrogantly absolving itself of its sins of suppressing the right of free expression and debate in its unconscionable haste in passing the death penalty bill on second reading by accusing the oppositors of bullying the majority.”
“Since when has a small authentic minority oppressed the ascendant majority?” Lagman said in a statement.
“It is the majority leadership that dictates, albeit with unreasonable alacrity, the tempo of the proceedings; it is the House leadership which interprets the rules, albeit arbitrarily; and it is the House leadership that stifles dissent,” Lagman said.
Lagman said the opposition—even if they are small in numbers—will not allow the House leadership to once again railroad the third reading proceedings in passing House Bill 4727 next week
The House, through voice voting, approved on second reading Wednesday night House Bill 4727 or the bill seeking to reimpose death penalty on drug-related heinous crimes.
The proposed “Death Penalty Law” defines heinous crimes as “grievous, odious and hateful offenses, which by reason of their inherent or manifest wickedness, viciousness, atrocity and perversity are repugnant and outrageous to the common standards and norms of decency and morality in a just, civilized and orderly society.”
Under the measure, the punishment of death shall be imposed on the following offenses: 1) importation of dangerous drugs; 2) sale, trading, administration, dispensation, delivery, distribution, and transportation of dangerous drugs; 3) maintenance of a den, dive, or resort where any dangerous drug is used or sold; 4) manufacture of dangerous drugs; and 5) possession of 10 grams or more of dangerous drugs.
The death penalty shall also be enforced when the crime is committed under the influence of dangerous drugs, provided that the offense committed is punishable by reclusion temporal or 12 years and one day up to 20 years.
The penalty of death shall also not be imposed when the offender is below 18 years old or more than 70 years old, or when the crime was committed, a draft of the bill showed.
