ILOILO City – The Police Regional Office 6 (PRO-6) and Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency (PDEA) in Western Visayas support the proposed re-imposition of the death penalty.
Despite the police’s campaign, illegal drugs remain rampant in Western Visayas and some people still venture into drug trafficking, said PRO-6 spokesperson Police Colonel Gilbert Gorero.
President Rodrigo Duterte urged Congress during his State of the Nation Address on Monday to revive capital punishment via lethal injection with the goal of stopping drug trafficking and heinous crimes caused by illegal drugs.
Gorero assured Western Visayans that policemen respect human rights, especially the right to life and constitutional freedoms.
But he stressed heinous crimes and illegal drugs destroy lives and society in general, thus these must be stopped, and the death penalty is a deterrent.
“The PRO-6 will always be committed to implement laws, most especially those that protect life, property and ensure peace and order,” said Gorero.
PDEA Region 6 director Edgar Apalla said his office, too, supports the revival of the death penalty and echoed the position of PDEA director general Wilkins Villanueva that capital punishment on drug traffickers should depend on the volume of illegal drugs traded and the subjects’ role in the drug trafficking chain.
Foreign and local drug offenders, including drug protectors found guilty of manufacturing, trafficking, and pushing dangerous drug, warrant capital punishment, according to the PDEA chief.
“Execution by lethal injection is for big-time drug traffickers and not for the street-level pushers. I strongly suggest that seized drugs weighing one kilogram or more should be the threshold volume,” Villanueva said.
The absence of capital punishment is favorable to drug peddlers who continue their nefarious activities despite being in detention, he lamented.
“We have intercepted drug transactions perpetrated by convicted high-profile inmates while inside the national penitentiary. They have found ways to communicate with the outside world and give orders to their people,” he revealed.
Tougher penalties will send a clear message and force drug traffickers to have second thoughts about peddling illegal drugs, stressed Villanueva.
Capital punishment in the Philippines was legal after independence in 1946 and increased in use under the Ferdinand Marcos regime.
After the fall of Marcos in 1986 there was a moratorium on capital punishment from 1987 to 1999, followed by a resumption in executions from 1999 to 2006 that was followed by a law ending the practice.
The last convict to have been executed by lethal injection – during the administration of President Joseph Estrada – was Leo Echegaray, a rapist.
During the 2016 election campaign, then presidential candidate and frontrunner Davao City mayor Rodrigo Duterte campaigned to restore the death penalty.
In December 2016 a bill to revive capital punishment for certain heinous offenses swiftly passed in the committee level in the House of Representatives; it passed the full House of Representatives in February 2017.
However, the proposed measure stalled in the Senate in April 2017 where it did not have enough votes to pass./PN
