House Majority Leader Martin Romualdez on Tuesday said the House of Representatives will thoroughly deliberate the proposed bill restoring the death penalty for drug-related crimes.
Romualdez said the House is ready to stand up to the task and pass the priority bills outlined by President Rodrigo Duterte in his fifth State of the Nation Address (SONA), including the revival of the death penalty.
“We, in the House of Representatives, are committed to deliver to the President the measures needed to support his vision for the nation in the years to come. We are ready to take on the challenge,” Romualdez said. “Despite the uncertain times brought by the global pandemic, we will ensure that the administration’s priority bills will be realized with efficiency for the welfare of the Filipino people.”
The chairman of the House of Representatives' committee on dangerous drugs on Tuesday backed Duterte's call for reviving the death penalty for drug-related crimes.
Rep. Robert Ace Barbers of Surigao del Norte, the panel's chairperson, said "re-imposing the death penalty now on drug related offenses will surely stop the criminals in their tracks and deter them from further plying their trade."
In the 17th Congress, Barbers is one of the principal authors of the death penalty bill that was passed by the House on third reading but was not taken up by the Senate.
President Rodrigo Duterte has pushed for the reimposition of the death penalty for drug-related charges.
READ: Duterte bats for death penalty for drug crimes
Duterte first made a pitch for the revival of the death penalty, which was abolished in 2006, in his SONA last year. “Drug syndicates continue to operate – just like the countries of Colombia, Mexico – and it is being played inside the national penitentiaries…. This law will not only help us deter criminality but also save our children from the dangers posed by illegal and dangerous drugs,” he said.
Barbers appealed to his fellow congressmen to pass with dispatch pending bills in the House re-imposing the death penalty on drug related crimes and called on the senators to do the same.
“Illegal drugs is (sic) a menace in society. It destroys not only its victims but entire families, and with them, the whole nation," Barbers said.
The Integrated Bar of the Philippines (IBP), on the other hand, opposed reviving the death penalty for drug cases.
IBP President Domingo Egon Cayosa said what the country needs is improved delivery of justice, instead of restoring the death penalty.
"What is more important is for our country, for our government to improve the delivery of justice. Meaning to say, take away the corruption in our justice system, take away the delay, take away the undue influence and the lack of personnel," Cayosa said, in an interview with GMA News.
The IBP executive made the statement after President Duterte called on Congress to enact a law reviving the death penalty by lethal injection for drug-related cases.
"So that when people are accused of crimes, it’s certain that they will be arrested, they will be prosecuted, given due process and sooner than later, they will be meted out the penalty. And when they go, they are transferred into the jails of this country, that they will suffer the penalty instead of continuing their drug business inside the walls of that prison," Cayosa added.
He said the certainty of punishment is a better deterrent to crime than the death penalty.
"The death penalty is not the best solution to our drug problem," he said.
Cayosa noted that the illegal drug trade in the country continues despite the numerous police operations that resulted in the deaths of drug suspects.
The IBP president observed that a lot of drug suspects were just being killed but drug trafficking has not stopped apparently because only the small fry and not the big fish are being targeted.
Senate President Vicente Sotto III said the revival of death penalty for drug-related offenses now has a good chance of being adopted by the 18th Congress.
Sotto said the bills seeking to revive capital punishment have simply not been prioritized in previous years. He pointed out the proposed measure died with the adjournment of Congress, and was not junked altogether by the senators.
However, members of the minority in the Senate are not inclined to support the death penalty bill.
The Catholic Bishops' Conference of the Philippines (CBCP) on Tuesday called for a public consultation on the reimposition of the death penalty.
CBCP spokesperson Fr. Jerome Secillano said the Catholic Church continues to oppose the death penalty and called on the President to reconsider the matter.
He said senators and congressmen must hold a public consultation to know the people’s stand on the issue.
He also called for reforms in the justice system.
The Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency (PDEA) also voiced its support for the return of the death penalty for drug-related offenses.
“The absence of capital punishment is favorable for drug peddlers who continue their nefarious activities despite being in detention,” director general Wilkins Villanueva said.
“We have intercepted drug transactions perpetrated by convicted high-profile inmates while inside the national penitentiaries. They have found ways to communicate with the outside world one way or the other, and give direct orders to people involved in the illegal drug trade,” he added.
Villanueva said the imposition of the death penalty should depend on the quantity of the confiscated narcotics.
“Execution by lethal injection is for big-time drug traffickers, and not for the street-level pushers. I strongly suggest that seized drugs weighing one kilogram or more should be the threshold amount,” he said.
He said foreign and local drug offenders, including drug protectors and coddlers who were found guilty of manufacturing, trafficking, and pushing of dangerous drugs, deserve capital punishment.
“Tougher penalties will send a clear message and force them to have second thoughts before smuggling and trafficking illegal drugs. They have the luxury to operate in our country without worry because the maximum penalty on our laws is less harsh,” he said.
Senator Ronald dela Rosa, a former national police chief, said he supported the death penalty and appealed to lawmakers to approve the passage of a bill to enable its return.
But opposition Senator Risa Hontiveros said she wondered why the President would push a death penalty bill in the middle of a pandemic.
The government, she said, should get its head in the game and focus on the biggest crisis the country is facing.
"I can’t believe I need to say this: but the death penalty is not the solution to this pandemic," she said.
The push for the return of the death penalty comes weeks after Duterte signed an anti-terrorism law that critics and rights defenders fear will be used to target government opponents.
The UN Human Rights Council called last month for an independent probe into the drug war that it said had unleashed widespread and systematic killing with "near impunity" for offenders.
Butch Olano, section director for the Philippines of Amnesty International, said capital punishment was not a solution.
"President Duterte's favorite solution to public clamor for safety, whether from drug-related or virus-related problems, has always been to make harsher laws that seek to instill fear among Filipinos," Olano said in a statement.
A mainstay of the Philippine penal system during more than 300 years of Spanish colonial rule, capital punishment was outlawed in 1987.
It was reintroduced six years later and then abolished again in 2006. With AFP