GMA presidency not resolved by commutation of death sentences- Cruz
The Catholic Church may be pleased by President Gloria Arroyo’s recent pronouncement commuting death sentences of all death row convicts to life imprisonment, but Lingayen-Dagupan Archbishop Oscar Cruz said he remains “not happy” with the Chief Executive.
An unimpressed Cruz, a vocal critic of the President, said there are still so many unanswered questions, scandals, jueteng money that ran the 2004 elections, fertilizer scam, use of Marcos wealth, among others hounding Mrs. Arroyo’s presidency.
He strongly suspects that the unexpected announcement was “another gimmick for transactional politics.”
The prelate, a former president of the Catholic Bishops Conference of the Philippines, said the President’s move regarding the commutation of death sentence is “ both right and wrong”.
He said it is “right” because “the state is never the source of life of any citizen and therefore it has no right to take it.”
Then, he pointed out that a life sentence is not really that much less than the death sentence since one suffers only for couple of minutes when the sentence is carried out “while life sentence puts the convict behind bars for his lifetime which is painful,” he pointed out.
“Try to stay home for one week or one month doing nothing and see how it is,” he said.
Cruz said his heart goes to the relatives of the victims of heinous crimes, but offered the consolation that “when we forgive people who offended us, it does not mean that they’re also forgiven by God”.
Suspecting that it was used as “another gimmick for transactional politics,” he recalled that Mrs. Arroyo has been wanting the bishops not to oppose the People’s Initiative.
Cruz added that the bishops continue the search for truth on the legitimacy of Mrs. Arroyo holding the position and the flawed process of Charter change and the commutation does not answer these.
He said if the President is really pro-life,” why is it that there are more and more killings of cause-oriented groups and nothing happened except ceremonial investigation?”– EVA
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