BUHAY Rep. Joselito Atienza said on Sunday the fear of losing the support of the Catholic Church in the 2019 elections could influence senators to junk the restoration of death penalty.
“The peril of denials of support, especially from Church-based groups, is there. And our sense is, members of the Senate are far more sensitive to withholdings of support than members of the House of Representatives,” he said.
Atienza is a House senior deputy minority leader.
Voting 217-54 with one abstention last March 7, Congress approved on final reading House Bill 4727 to impose the death sentence on drug-related cases.
“Even a few hundred thousand votes lost could spell the difference between winning or losing in the Senate race, or spending a lot more just to get into the Magic 12,” he said.
For very popular senators, he said, their nonsupport could cost them their goal to lead in the senatorial race in 2019.
“It could be that the pro-death penalty senators, mostly from the majority, are afraid that they’ll lose the vote, and embarrass not only themselves, but also President Rodrigo Duterte,” he said.
Other nations have long rejected the death penalty as a cruel, degrading, inhuman and unnecessary punishment, he said.
“At least 140 countries have either eliminated the death penalty from their penal laws, or have not carried out any executions for years, thus effectively abandoning the extreme punishment in favor of prolonged imprisonment,” he added.
