MANILA – Two officials are demanding the revival of the death penalty for convicted drug traffickers to stop the alarming increase in the number of Filipinos, particularly the young, who have fallen victim to growing drug menace in the country.
The demand was made by retired general Dionisio Santiago of the Philippine Drug Enforcement Authority (PDEA) and former senator Vicente Sotto III, the chairman of the Dangerous Drugs Board (DDB).
Santiago believes the return of the death penalty is “very urgent†because it will help reduce the number of drug-related incidents as well as discourage foreign drug syndicates from establishing laboratories for the manufacture of illegal drugs, like shabu, in the Philippines.
The PDEA head, also the former chief of staff of the Armed Forces of the Philippines, cited as an example the tendency of “drug lords†from China to set up illegal drug laboratories in the Philippines as he explained:
“It is a fact that the reason why the Chinese come here is because they know they can find a lot of illegal drugs here. In China, they will be hanged. So, to avoid being hanged, they will look for another place like the Philippines.â€
But if the death penalty is revived, the Chinese drug lords will have second thoughts about coming to the Philippines and so will the Chinese chemists usually hired by them to run their illegal drug facilities here, Santiago argued.
The death penalty law was passed in 1992 but was repealed by Congress in 2006 on urgings by President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo in support of the strong opposition by the influential Catholic Bishops Conference of the Philippines (CBCP).
Significantly, President Arroyo signed the law abolishing capital punishment that same year shortly before she flew to Vatican to have an audience with the Pope. Under the old law, drug trafficking was considered a “heinous crime†along with rape, robbery with homicide and mass murder, among others.
For his part, Sotto sounded the alarm about the increase in the number of Filipinos who have fallen victim to illegal drugs, especially the youth.
Sotto estimated that based on DDB records, there are now more than three million illegal drug users in the Philippines, with the possibility of an increase despite the campaign to stamp out the drug menace.
The revival of the death penalty also found support in two senior members of the House of Representatives, Congressman Roque Ablan of Ilocos Norte province in Northern Luzon and House Deputy Minority Leader Roilo Golez of suburban Paranaque City, Metro Manila.
Ablan, the chairman of the House Committee on Dangerous Drugs, agreed with observations that drug syndicates from China, Thailand and Malaysia operate in the Philippines due to the absence of the death penalty.
But on Friday, a Malacanang spokesman reiterated that President Arroyo, a devout Catholic, has not deviated from her stand against suggestions for the revival of the death penalty.
The spokesman said the President strongly reiterated her stand that the revival would not help deter the commission of heinous crimes like drug trafficking.
Instead, the imposition of life imprisonment as a replacement would afford convicted drug offenders a chance to rehabilitate himself, the President pointed out.
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[...] particular, Biazon sought the revival of the death penalty in cases covered by the Comprehensive Drugs Act of 2002, as he argued: “The non-imposition of [...]