Man cannot play God

There seems to be a renewed agitation to re-impose the death penalty, a form of judicial execution, a variant of the extrajudicial variety, in my view.

I oppose it in the same way I opposed it in my time in the Senate. From a majority of senators, we were down to four as the 1992 elections approached. But Manong Johnny (Enrile), Mike Tamano, Joey Lina and I succeeded in blocking it. Death penalty was reimposed the year after I left the Senate in 1992.

If really the death penalty deters, we may as well impose it on every crime, to have a crime-free society. But I don’t buy the supermarket theory of criminal law, as if one has a copy of the Revised Penal Code and choose to commit only any of those that are not punishable by death. A criminal mind does not operate that way.

I have long opposed the death penalty for rapists. It is antipowerless, antipoor and antismall fry. The poor boy fries, the rich boy flies, so it has been said.

Most of those who may deserve to be sent to the Promised Land may be in the legislature, for their heinous crimes against the people.

One should not underrate the capacity of anybody for subjective growth and change. By the time one is sent to death, he may very well have reformed.

No matter what Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo’s motivation was in 2006 prior to visiting Rome with the repealed death penalty law, she must be commended for her decisive stand on the basic human right of all, the right to live, in contrast to her previous wish-washy stand on the issue as a senator.

The Old Testament saw the exchange rate as ranging from 7-1 to 77-1. Then the Lex Talionis came. An eye for an eye. It was a forward step. Parity, proportionality or equivalence.

But the New Testament introduced the Law of Love or Charity, of turning the other cheek.

Well may we ponder these thoughts after the Holy Week recently past. Man cannot play God and decide who will live and who will die. We cannot murder, judicially or extrajudicially.

—RENE SAGUISAG,

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