AFTER granting actor Robin Padilla executive clemency, President Duterte is also considering giving similar presidential pardon to elderly prisoners “if they still want to go home.”
“I am contemplating. They are preparing it,” Duterte said, when asked if he will grant similar executive clemency to the aging detainees in the country. “All the elderly and those who have illness, those with rheumatism, they can no longer run, those 80-years-old above. If they still want, if they still have family to go, I will grant them pardon also so that they can return.”
Duterte said the prisoners serving sentences for 40 years “deserve to be released.”
The President said it is also one way to “decongest jails” in the country, amid his all-out war against illegal drugs and criminality.
Duterte granted Padilla with absolute pardon following their meeting on Tuesday night at Malacañang.
The President said the executive clemency would restore all the actor’s political and civil rights, including privilege to travel abroad.
“The pardon is restoration of all of his political and civil rights…he has suffered enough,” the President said.
Padilla was convicted for illegal possession of firearms in 1994, but was released three years later after former President Fidel V. Ramos granted the actor conditional pardon.
With the executive clemency granted on Padilla, Palace Spokesman Ernesto C. Abella said the actor “may now run for any public office and may also exercise his right to vote. He is also eligible to be appointed to any public position or office.”
Padilla wanted to travel to the United States to visit his wife, television host Mariel Rodriguez, who gave birth to a baby girl.