It may be ill-timed as the Philippines is still fighting the COVID-19 pandemic, but Senator Richard Gordon said Monday he will fairly conduct hearings on the proposed bills seeking the restoration of capital punishment in the country.
He is against the death penalty but Gordon, the chairman of the Senate committee on justice and human rights, said he would also sponsor the committee report in the plenary after conducting hearings on the bills.
“I will chair fairly. You will see that I will call everybody, but this is what I will say: Is it timely?” Gordon said.
Once passed, Gordon says, he will sponsor the death penalty and they will debate it.
But he again questioned the need to restore the death penalty, which many countries had abolished when it did not deter crime and its implementation proved to be prone to abuse.
“In the whole world, they generally do not like the death penalty. In America, there’s the death penalty, but the executions takes place very seldom,” Gordon said.
He says he does not believe that capital punishment is a deterrent to the commission of crimes.
“They [convicts] should instead be punished with hard labor,” Gordon said.
What the public should demand, he says, is for the authorities to perform their duty of protecting the people and preserving peace and order by putting a stop to the unabated killings.
