Here and There
Death penalty not anti-Christ
By Gerry Garcia
AT least there are still many other level-headed Christians, not necessarily Catholics, here in the province as elsewhere who had guts enough to stand up solidly against the move to abolish the death penalty – a move initiated by the powerful (daw) Catholic Bishop Conference of the Philippines (CBCP) and loyally being pushed by its pet dog in the Palace.
The Philippine Council of Evangelical Churches and the Volunteers against Crime and Corruption (VACC) who had successfully lobbied for the reimposition of the death penalty following public outrage over rampant heinous crimes in the early ’90s, put their foot down in support of capital punishment, saying it’s not against God’s will and, further, it had truly been effective deterrent to capital crimes.
VACC head Martin Dino in turn accused GMA and her lapdogs in Congress, who expedited the bill abolishing the death penalty, of betraying their mandate to protect the public from danger and harm.
In our more progressive neighbors nearby, like Singapore and Malaysia, death is, and has always been, imposed on perpetrators of heinous crimes, like drug using and pushing. And it has worked like a charm. Nobody’s complaining because there are not many Catholic bishops in their neighborhood.
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In the meantime while Administration is bent on leaving no stone unturned in its drive for a shift to a parliamentary style of governance, we feel doubly worried about Malacañang’s avowed drive to lick graft and corruption in the government — a long festering sore that has eluded decades of treatment.
Malacañang has allocated P1 billion for its anti-corruption campaign, another addition to the $21 million US grant to finance an anti-corruption program.
Our worry over possible mis-use of this awfully big amount of money is not helped any by the unexplained failure in 20 years of the Presidential Commission for Good Government (PCGG) to fully regain billions of stolen Marcos wealth.
Further sources of our worry: the P1 billion outlay from PGMA for the military to crush the NPA in order to accelerate economic development; World Bank approval of $200 million loan to improve basic education in the country.
The government projects are in themselves good but we have cause to be worried just the same . . . given the government’s notoriety for non-implementation.
For once the Opposition may be right in claiming the anti-corruption campaign would get no where because Administration “has no political will”. Even then, we still have our fingers crossed.
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