Back to the death penalty

In interviews, officials of the Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency have told us that during several raids wherein Chinese traffickers were apprehended, PDEA agents asked the foreigners why they picked the Philippines for their operations.

There are two common answers, the PDEA officials say. One is the rampant corruption in the Philippines that allows illegal activities to thrive. Another is the absence of the death penalty.

This must be why President Duterte, in his fourth State of the Nation Address last year, included in his legislative agenda the restoration of capital punishment. He wanted it, however, not just for drug offenses, but also for large-scale corruption or plunder, whose threshold amount is P50 million.

This fueled speculation that self-preservation was behind the inaction of the Senate on the proposal. Former Senate president Juan Ponce Enrile and former senator Jinggoy Estrada are still on trial for plunder in connection with the pork barrel scam. Sen. Bong Revilla has been cleared of the same charge in a controversial decision, with the public still waiting for him to return over P124.5 million in people’s money to the National Treasury.

Jinggoy’s dad, former president and senator Joseph Estrada, was placed under house arrest and then convicted of plunder over illegal gambling payoffs, but was immediately given pardon by his successor, Gloria Macapagal Arroyo. GMA herself spent several years under “hospital arrest” without bail for plunder before being cleared and going on to become a Pampanga congresswoman and speaker.

This time, Duterte has specifically asked Congress to restore capital punishment only for drug offenses. With plunder no longer on the table, the odds of getting Senate support for the measure are now seen to be higher.

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The next question is whether the country can afford to renege on its international commitment to abolish capital punishment.

Commissioner Karen Dumpit of the Commission on Human Rights told “The Chiefs” on Wednesday night on One News / TV 5 that there is no withdrawal or denunciation mechanism in the Second Optional Protocol to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, abolishing the death penalty, which the Philippines ratified in November 2007. The absence of an opt-out provision, she warns, could earn the country sanctions for violating international rules if capital punishment is restored.

Dumpit stresses that the Second Optional Protocol is unlike the Rome Statute, which established the International Criminal Court and allows ratifying states to leave the ICC one year after serving a formal notice of withdrawal.

In leaving the ICC, which is examining complaints about human rights violations in the Philippines’ war on drugs, the Duterte administration invoked national sovereignty.

The same argument will surely be raised in case capital punishment is restored, even in the absence of a withdrawal mechanism in the Second Optional Protocol.

Reneging on an international commitment could further render inutile our country’s feeble attempts to make China abide by the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea and the ruling of the UN-backed Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague, which voided Beijing’s claim over the South China Sea. Like the Philippines, China is a signatory to UNCLOS.

Dumpit also warned that restoring capital punishment could weaken our attempts to save the scores of Filipinos on death row in other countries for various offenses including murder and drug trafficking, such as Mary Jane Veloso in Indonesia.

Opponents argue that the death penalty does not serve as a crime deterrent, and is anti-poor because large-scale traffickers can afford expensive lawyers and can bribe their way to freedom or at least leniency.

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On the other hand, proponents of this latest push for capital punishment say it will be applied only on large-scale traffickers, who can’t possibly be poor.

This pitch was immediately undermined by the proposal of Philippine National Police chief Archie Gamboa, who wants death for trafficking even 50 grams of illegal drugs. This is a far harsher punishment than what is provided under the Comprehensive Dangerous Drugs Act.

In reality, however, thousands have been killed in anti-drug operations since 2016 involving illegal drugs that were even less than 50 grams.

One argument of those pushing for capital punishment is that state execution after trial and judicial determination of guilt is better than the wholesale killing of people merely suspected of drug dealing.

They also argue that capital punishment in the past did not serve as a deterrent because it was rarely applied. President Duterte has promised that he would not hesitate to regularly carry out executions by lethal injection, to put the fear of the law if not God into the hearts of criminals.

Considering the inefficiency of the criminal justice system in this country, however, the trial of drug-related capital offenses could drag on, and Duterte may no longer be in office by the time anyone is sent to death row.

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There is also the real danger of a miscarriage of justice. The Philippines is no Singapore, with a lethally efficient justice system that rarely hesitates to carry out – quickly – a death sentence. In that kind of environment where the rule of law prevails, it can look like capital punishment does serve as a crime deterrent. But Singapore combines the threat of state execution with the certainty of being caught, prosecuted, and penalized as prescribed by law – with no exceptions for favored individuals.

Clearly, this is not the situation in our country, where the case against the ninja cops is crawling along, and where it looks like a narco suspect high in the order of battle of the Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency has been allowed to disappear. What has happened to the probe of large-scale drug smuggling through the Bureau of Customs? For his efforts, Aaron Aquino has been shunted out of the PDEA’s top post.

The system is so broken and corrupted that large-scale drug trafficking has been reported to be controlled by convicts from behind bars in the New Bilibid Prison.

Several of these NBP narcos have since been reported to have died… of COVID-19. Other notorious narco suspects, among them the Parojinogs of Ozamiz City and Albuera town mayor Rolando Espinosa, have been killed in police raids.

You wonder why the government still needs the death penalty.