Palace confirms suspension of executions by President. Malacanang on Tuesday confirmed reports that President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo had suspended all executions indefinitely until Congress "wraps up" its review on the death penalty law.
"This is just to allow Congress a reasonable time to finish its review of pending resolutions asking for the abolition of the death penalty," Press Secretary Ignacio Bunye told the Malacaņang press. Bunye maintained the President did not cite a specific timetable of the suspension, which anti-crime advocates said would "weaken" Ms Macapagal's campaign to crush the rising criminality. "We'll see what the final action from Congress would be because as it is what is pending is just a resolution and this may not yet reflect the stand of the whole Congress," he said.
Foreign Affairs Secretary Blas Ople on Monday told a group of envoys from the European Union that Ms Macapagal had suspended the death penalty law. Ople did not explain why.
Last month, Ms Macapagal granted a 90-day reprieve to 3 convicted rapists who were scheduled to die by lethal injection. More than a thousand convicts have been on the death row since the death penalty was reimposed in 1998.
INQ7.net, 1 October 2002
110 solons seek stay of state executions. A House resolution that has so far garnered the support of 110 congressmen is expected to be filed next week urging President Macapagal-Arroyo to stay all state executions until Congress repeals the death penalty.
Akbayan Rep. Loretta Ann Rosales said Thursday the House resolution will be submitted to the Senate, which is working with the lower chamber on a joint resolution seeking a moratorium on executions. "This is our response to Justice Secretary Hernando Perez' statement that a joint resolution by the House and Senate can be one way of stopping implementation of the death penalty law," Rosales said.
Last Tuesday, Perez had said either President Macapagal or a Congressional resolution could stop the Department of Justice from carrying out Republic Act 7659, or the Death Penalty Law.
In an interview, Rosales said the 110 congressmen who support the House resolution include the 102 who had supported a House committee report favoring repeal of RA 7659. The rest, she said, had supported her letter of appeal last week to President Macapagal to stay all executions. She said Sen. Francis Pangilinan, chair of the Senate justice and human rights committee, agreed last Wednesday to work with the House on the joint resolution.
The anti-death penalty bill in the House is set for plenary deliberations when Congress returns from a three-week break on Sept. 29.
This after Rosales, chair of the House committee on civil, political and human rights, was able to deliver last Wednesday the sponsorship speech for House Bill 5114, "An Act Abolishing the Death Penalty in the Philippines." In her speech, Rosales said the 10-year-old death penalty law has failed to curb the crime rate in the country and, thus, was not a deterrent to crime. "Rather, the death penalty is an act that has a brutalizing effect and which incites the violent tendencies of persons," she said. "The only answer to crime is enforcement."
According to anti-death penalty advocates, of the present 1,010 death row convicts, 47.62 percent were industrial and service workers, 32.24 percent were agricultural workers; 11.49 percent were other low income earners, and 2.38 percent were jobless.
INQ7.net, 29 August 2002
Anti-death penalty bill behind delay in executions. President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo said Wednesday a bill authored by a hundred legislators scrapping the death penalty was the most important influence in her decision to postpone the execution of three death row convicts.
"You can not say that my position has softened because from the very beginning I voted against the death penalty," Ms Macapagal said, referring to her vote rejecting the return of the death penalty while she was still a senator. But she said she reluctantly supported the death penalty when she became president because of the spate of kidnappings, which she said is now on the decline.
"At this point in time, the most important thing that affected my decision is there is this bill with a hundred authors so I have to respect the sense of Congress and at least review it. I'm not saying that I'm already accepting it but give me a chance to hear the congressional debates," Ms Macapagal told reporters.
She said she was not yet sure if she would commute the penalty of the three convicts whose scheduled death by lethal injection she ordered delayed by three months. But she ruled out pardon for them.
Earlier on Wednesday, Press Secretary Ignacio Bunye announced that the President postponed the execution of rape convicts Rolando Pagdayawon, Eddie Sernadilla and Filomeno Serrano. Padayawon' s execution, scheduled on August 30 was moved to November 28, Sernadilla's was pushed back from September 3 to December 2, while Serrano's was moved from September 20 to December 19.
But Ms Macapagal said any proposal to scrap the death penalty must go hand-in-hand with a reform in the justice system. She noted that some of the detained kidnappers and drug pushers have been able to continue with their trade because they were allowed to keep cellular phones while in jail. "The Pentagon gang and the Villaver gang got together. I was asking them, how did they get together? They met one another in jail," she added, referring to two notorious kidnapping gangs.
The President said rape is a crime of passion and rapists could be reformed. "But for kidnappers who use even their jail terms to get into partnerships, jail is not a strong enough punishment for them."
INQ7.net, 28 August 2002
Palace defers August 30 execution of rape convict. Manila Archbishop Jaime Cardinal Sin's birthday saved a rape convict from lethal injection - at least for a week.
President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo on Friday suspended the scheduled execution of Rolando Pagdayawon on August 30 because it was the eve of Sin's birthday. The country's influential church leader will turn 74 on August 31. The Roman Catholic Church opposes the death penalty.
Earlier on Friday, human rights group Amnesty International urged Ms Macapagal to order a freeze on the execution of Padayawon and two other convicts scheduled for lethal injection within the next two months.
Pagdayawon would be the first death convict to be executed this year if Ms Macapagal does not exercise her pardoning power. The Supreme Court upheld Pagdayawon's conviction in March 2001. The last state execution - of rape convict Eduardo Agbayani - took place in June 2000 during the term of then President Joseph Estrada.
Besides Pagdayawon, at least 17 death convicts have been lined up for execution this year.
INQ7.net, 23 August 2002
5 convicts to be executed in a row starting August 30. At least five convicts on death row are scheduled to be executed one after the other beginning on August 30.
All the five convicts were meted the death penalty for rape, all come from poor families and have had little education, GMA Network's "Frontpage" newscast said. The executions are scheduled on August 30, September 20, October 16 and October 31, the report said.
National Bilibid Prisons chief Joselito Fajardo said prisons officials support the scrapping of capital punishment but are prepared to carry out the executions. "Our final objective is to rehabilitate our prisoners, to correct them, but not to punish them."
There are currently 1,081 convicts on death row. Seven convicts have been put to death by lethal injection since capital punishment was reimposed in 1993 for heinous crimes.
INQ7.net, 20 August 2002
Macapagal mulls death for economic sabotage. President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo on Tuesday ordered the justice department to study the legal basis of issuing an executive order imposing the death penalty on the crime of economic sabotage.
Energy Vince Perez said Ms Macapagal issued the order on the basis that "disruption of power supply and other vital facilities are really atrocious and will deepen the sufferings of our people."
It also came in the heels of communist leader Jose Ma. Sison's order to the New People's Army to renew attacks on "power lines and vital installations." About fifteen representatives from power plants in Southern Tagalog met in Malacaņang Tuesday to discuss the security of the power installations against the NPA. But Perez conceded there was no "specific threat" yet coming from the NPA.
During the meeting in Malacaņang, Ms Macapagal directed Interior and Local Government Secretary Jose Lina Jr that would come up with specific security measures for power plants and transmission lines nationwide.
On Monday, Ms Macapagal visited Mauban, Quezon to assess the security arrangement made by the military and the police to protect the power plants in Southern Luzon.
Last week, suspected NPA rebels attacked a coal-fired power plant in Pagbilao, also in Quezon. An NPA rebel was killed during the attack, and the rest fled, according to a military report.
INQ7.net, 20 August 2002
PRESIDENT SET ON CARRYING OUT EXECUTIONS: Pres. Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo is hanging tough on her position to resume the execution of death convicts at the risk of alienating some of her supporters, including the Church.
"The President has said that she is going to take a strong stand on law and order, and she is very well aware of the trade-off in taking this position," Acting Press Secretary Silvestre Afable said. Afable said "some sectors are bound to disagree with you when you make a policy but then it is really the job of the President to determine what in her mind is in the public interest."
Critics, however, have charged that President Macapagal-Arroyo is now in favor of executions for political reasons. When she was installed president, the President said that her administration would not allow state executions in deference to the position of the Church and civil libertarians.
Later on, President Macapagal-Arroyo said that she was in favor of executing kidnapping convicts only because of the strong clamor by the Chinese-Filipino community, whose members are often the victims of kidnapping syndicates. Recently, the President was reported to have said that her administration will allow the executions of death convicts other than those convicted of kidnapping. The President has apparently bowed to the pressure by anti-crime groups, whose membership are mostly relatives of victims of heinous crimes.
Philippines Daily Inquirer, 15 July 2002
NEW MORATORIUM ON EXECUTIONS SOUGHT: The country's Roman Catholic bishops urged President Arroyo yesterday to impose a fresh moratorium on the death penalty ahead of the scheduled judicial execution of a convicted rapist in October.
The bishops said there appeared no doubt that there was widespread criminality in the Philippines, but stressed sending convicted criminals to the gallows was not the answer. "The reality is that our leaders and law enforcers have not really addressed the root as well as the immediate cause of crime. There lies their inefficiency, an inability that has to be covered with cosmetics," said Rodolfo Diamente, head of the bishops' prison pastoral case program.
Philippine Star, 12 July 2002
CBCP RENEWS OPPOSITION TO DEATH PENALTY: The Catholic Bishops' Conference of the Philippines (CBCP) renewed its call yesterday for the abolition of the death penalty after a court ruled that the first judicial execution under the watch of President Arroyo would take place on Oct. 16.
The 120-strong bishops' group said the death penalty would not reduce crime, but only complicate the country's problems. The bishops said they vigorously support the efforts of "enlightened legislators who have pushed for the scrapping of the onerous Death Penalty Law."
The Legaspi City court has ordered convicted rapist Alfredo Nardo to be put to death by lethal injection on Oct. 16. Under the Heinous Crimes Law passed in 1994, only a presidential pardon or commutation can save the life of a death row convict.
While admitting that the country is beset by rising criminality, the CBCP warned that resorting to quick fixes will only complicate matters. The bishops said capital punishment merely gives the impression that extreme measures are being taken to eradicate crime. The CBCP said cases involving crime lords who seem to always get off the hook are effective illustrations "being demonstrated right in the sala of our courts."
Rather than take away human life, the Church wants to explore alternatives to handing down justice: from litigation to mediation; prosecution to healing; punishment to reform, and from retributive to restorative. The CBCP said the restorative justice system is fast gaining acceptance in many countries.
Philippine Star, 10 July 2002