House panel approves death penalty bill

MANILA, Philippines – Voting 12-6 with one abstention, the justice committee of the House of Representatives approved yesterday a bill that seeks to restore the death penalty as punishment for heinous crimes.

Former Court of Appeals justice and now Leyte Rep. Vicente Veloso said the death penalty is an option for government to fight heinous crime, while Speaker Pantaleon Alvarez advised Catholics to change religion if the church leadership continues meddling in government affairs.

Catholic bishops slammed the lawmakers’ statements yesterday, even describing Alvarez’s advice for Catholics to shift religion as “horrible” and “inspired by Satan.”

Eleven administration lawmakers under the justice committee headed by Oriental Mindoro Rep. Reynaldo Umali rejected a motion to review the death penalty substitute bill – not just page by page, but line by line.

Veloso, who heads the House sub-committee on judicial reforms, reiterated that now is the best time to restore capital punishment for what he called “habitual delinquents” or criminals in the streets.

“We are giving the court the option. Let’s give the government the option of getting rid of Satan, who stands right before us,” Veloso said, citing heinous crimes of rape, murder, arson, kidnap-for-ransom and planting of evidence.

The former magistrate noted that hardened criminals at present are neither afraid of authorities nor the prospects of life imprisonment, as exemplified by high-profile druglord-convicts in the New Bilibid Prison.

Pro-life advocates Edcel Lagman of Albay and Kaka Bag-ao of Dingat Islands made their objections to what they called railroading of the bill. Bag-ao said no data or statistics could be considered as a “compelling reason” to revive it.