Contact Details

Rm. N-411, House of Representatives, Quezon City, Metro Manila, Philippines
+63 2 931 5497, +63 2 931 5001 local 7370

Press Statements

The third reading of the death penalty bill is more than a mere formality.

As Representatives personally cast their votes on nominal voting, it would be a day of revelation for Members of the House on either side as well as for Speaker Pantaleon Alvarez.

The roll call vote or nominal voting will reveal the identities of those with courage and will to defy the House leadership’s agenda for the final passage of the bill and those who may have succumbed to intimidation and pressures from House leaders.

For Speaker Alvarez, it would be the time for him to make good his threat to strip defying Members of their committee chairmanships and deputy speaker positions.

Speaker Alvarez has no alternative but to consummate his planned reprisal, otherwise no one will believe him when he wields again the Sword of Damocles in the plenary consideration of other administration measures.

 

EDCEL C. LAGMAN

Press Statements

The trumpeted victory of the House leadership in the passage on second reading of the death penalty bill with unconscionable haste is actually hollow for the following reasons:

  1. Threats, intimidation, pressure and enticement prevented the Members of the House, particularly those belonging to the supermajority, from casting a conscience vote;

  2. Dissent and debate were stifled in the wake of the bill’s railroading; and

  3. Established House rules and honored traditions in the consideration of a measure have been flagrantly violated with impunity.

An empty victory is no victory at all.

 

EDCEL C. LAGMAN

Press Statements

The exclusion of plunder, treason and rape from the death penalty bill and the retention only of serious drug-related offenses must have been a premeditated ploy to make the bill acceptable to those originally opposed or hesitant to vote for the bill.

The eventual converts were taken for a ride because the House leadership knows that the bicameral conference committee could restore the excluded crimes.

The bicameral conference committee of handpicked Representatives and Senators is traditionally known to have successfully amended or even supplanted the respective House and Senate versions of a bill in order to come out with a so-called “reconciled version”.

President Duterte, the chief architect for the revival of capital punishment, has already given the signal for the restoration of plunder and rape in the bill’s coverage.

This malevolent eventuality in the bicameral conference committee must be seriously considered by the Members of the House when they vote on third reading on the death penalty bill this week.

But for the anti-death penalty advocates, as long as the proposal includes even one crime punishable by the maximum penalty of death, such projected legislation is a debasement of the right to life and a violation of the country’s treaty commitment not to reimpose the death penalty.

 

EDCEL C. LAGMAN

In the News

These days, it is easy to get politically disillusioned as it is easy to distrust politicians. The people are bombarded with too many important issues that need addressing. Sometimes, in frustration, one feels it is easier to just become apolitical and simply busy ourselves with personal concerns.

I have heard people say that our situation is hopeless.

We expect our politicians to be our champions. We give them our trust to represent our interests. We vote for them hoping that first and foremost, they will work for the people’s welfare and protect our rights. We bestow them the power to make decisions on condition that they are accountable to us.

Press Statements

The search for the naked truth does not justify stripping convicts naked like what happened in the Cebu Provincial Jail.

The en masse humiliation and ill-treatment of the convicts in the Cebu penitentiary is influenced by President Duterte’s oft-repeated declaration that criminals are not human, a curse echoed by Justice Secretary Vitaliano Aguirre.

Prisoners can be frisked for contrabands but it is against their humanity and privacy to be laid bare.

Prisoners have the right to humane treatment and due respect.

Even caged animals are treated better.

Prison officials and personnel are principally liable for not detecting and confiscating contrabands like drugs and weapons at the prison gates before they are clandestinely brought inside the prison compound.

 

EDCEL C. LAGMAN