Excessive payment for PH legislators’ ‘wisdom’

In his letter, Sammy Santos of the Senate’s media office assured the public that the lawmakers were only thinking of what is best for users of mobile telecommunications devices in cars (“No ‘misery’ with Anti-Distracted Driving Act,” Opinion, 4/25/17). He wrote in reaction to a letter (“One more law to make people miserable,” Opinion, 4/17/17) which pointed out opportunities for abuse by traffic enforcers who are either incompetent or bent on making motorists more miserable with higher kotong for imagined violations.

So how bright are our legislators really? Santos may do well to reread Republic Act No. 10591, aka “An Act Providing for a Comprehensive Law on Firearms and Ammunition,” the single most notorious piece of legislation that made the lives of local and foreign travelers more miserable. It created one scandal after another that spilled over to the global community and made us the laughingstock of the whole world.

Severely penalized in that law is mere possession of firearms—and ammunition. Firearms are clearly defined. So is “ammunition”: It includes “a complete unfixed (unfired?) unit consisting of a bullet, gunpowder, cartridge case and primer, or loaded shell for use in any firearm.” Mere possession of a single bullet is made punishable by its Section 28 (g), (i) and (k), even in the absence of any firearm. Never has the widespread suspicion about authorities “planting” evidence for kotong purposes earned so much opprobrium here and abroad.

In the wake of such embarrassing incidents at the airport where many innocent travelers were detained for being found to have a single bullet in their person and effects, senators and congressmen were falling all over each other in saying that was not what they meant in passing the law—and yet that is exactly what the plain language of their “law” says! And we, the people, pay billions of pesos for such “wisdom”?

DINO M. CAPISTRANO, [email protected]