A MANDATORY prayer will be offered during masses in Manila before new government officials take office on June 30, calling on them to shun the “culture of death” and to lead with a “spirit of heroic sacrifice.”
Cardinal Luis Antonio Tagle of Manila has issued an “oratio imperata” for government officials, which will be recited nine days before the assumption into office of the country’s newly elected leaders, including President-elect Rodrigo Duterte, who has vowed to wipe out crime by killing more suspected criminals and to reinstate the death penalty.
“Bless our leaders with true reverence for human life and unyielding opposition to the culture of death,” reads the oratio imperata for government officials.
Reginald Malicdem, chancellor of the Manila archdiocese, said the call to prayer is also in accordance to the proposal of the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of the Philippines.
In a circular to the archdiocese’s priests, chaplains, superiors of religious communities and Catholic schools, he said the oratio imperata “is to be prayed at the prayer of the faithful of all masses” from June 21 to 29.
A church ally, Buhay party-list Rep. Lito Atienza, said Sunday he would push for a new law that would impose a minimum jail term of 40 years for heinous crimes, instead of death.
“Our alternative [to death] is tantamount to locking up a convict and throwing away the key,” he said in a statement.
“Just the same, we categorically maintain that raising the certainty of punishment as opposed to increasing the severity of the penalty itself is the strongest deterrence to potential offenders.”
A lifetime imprisonment could deter the commission of more crimes, he said.
“If there is a 100 percent assurance of being apprehended and imprisoned for committing a crime, fewer people would do so,” he said.
Atienza said he would file a bill defining a new mode of life imprisonment for serious offenders after Congress opens in July.
Under Atienza’s proposed measure, anyone who found guilty of any grave crime will be sentenced to “qualified reclusion perpetua.”
The lawmaker said the death penalty being proposed by Duterte has long been abandoned by at least 140 countries, including the Philippines.
“The problem with the death penalty is that it leaves no room for rectification. We cannot bring a dead convict back to life even if another party later on confesses to having committed the crime for which the convict had been wrongfully condemned,” Atienza said.
Under qualified reclusion perpetua, such a convict would stay in prison for an absolute minimum of 40 years, and would only be eligible for parole upon reaching 70 years old.
Atienza said under the present set-up, the Revised Penal Code imposes reclusion perpetua or a simple life term of 30 years to 40 years in prison with the convict becoming eligible for temporary parole after serving just half of the term, or after 15 to 20 years of imprisonment.
“But under our proposal, all these allowances [good conduct or loyalty allowances] and the benefit of reduced sentence for preventive detention would not apply to convicts sentenced to qualified reclusion perpetua,” he added.
Atienza said his proposal, if passed, would compel convicts to perform productive labor and indemnify their victims or relatives of their victims through their earnings.
Also on Sunday, a youth group expressed alarm that more local government units and their respective police forces are trying to duplicate Duterte’s Oplan Rody (Rid the Streets of Drunkards and Youth) in an effort to curb vice and petty crime.
The Samahan ng Progresibong Kabataan or SPARK has asked city officials to suspend the implementation of their ordinances and make them in tune with recent societal changes brought about by programs of the national government such as the K-12 program of the Department of Education as well as the student employment program of the Labor Department which began in 2009.
Oplan Rody is reportedly in full swing in the cities of Quezon City, Las Piñas, Manila, Pasay, Caloocan, Malabon, Mandaluyong and Makati.
Recently, the cities of Bacoor in Cavite and Lipa in Batangas have also activated their long-standing ordinances to prohibit minors outside their homes from 10 p.m. to 4 a.m. Police in Mandaue City in Cebu province also intend to implement a curfew ordinance passed in 1999. The mayor of Baguio City has also publicly expressed his support for Oplan Rody.
“On one side, we admit that local government units have the responsibility to curb petty crime and vice but then again it counteracts other programs that the national government has implemented only recently,” said Joanne Lim, member of the National Secretariat of SPARK.
The Dilim an-based activist lamented that the city mayors and police have mindlessly and indiscriminately enforced their “Jurassic” ordinances in an effort to get on the good side of the next administration without taking into account the day-to-day struggles of commuting and working students.
“If Oplan Rody’s implementation in Metro Manila systematically and indiscriminately victimized students in the past weeks, how much more if implemented as well in the cities and municipalities around Metro Manila where they are enrolled and employed,” Lim said. Rio N. Araja
“If only students do not suffer from horrendous traffic jams, flooded streets in the rainy season and inadequate public transport systems on a daily basis then it can be implemented as early as 10 p.m. but that is not the case. The immense volume of people traveling to and from Cavite, Rizal and Laguna, many of them students, will require longer traveling hours”.
“Senior high students as well as working students will need more latitude and consideration from authorities,” she said.
“To implement the curfew in the manner which is done as seen on television is not only traumatic but also indiscriminate,” she said. “Such draconian measures and methods cannot be implemented without violation of human rights because all minors found past 10 p.m., are under the presumption of criminal activity.” –
