The Senate went on a six-week break on Wednesday, with one of the Duterte administration’s pet bills—reviving the death penalty—hanging in midair, after senators suspended committee hearings and Senate President Aquilino L. Pimentel III acknowledging the vote in the 24-member chamber is “too close to call”.
This, despite the overwhelming number of solons who passed the bill on third reading in the House of Representatives.
The death-penalty bill was expected to be reported out by the Senate’s Justice and Human Rights Committee for plenary deliberations. However, panel hearings have even been deferred, as senators await a Department of Justice (DOJ) opinion on whether a treaty banning the imposition of capital punishment—known as the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, to which the country acceded—is part of the law of the land and, hence, would be violated by passing this pending measure.
Sen. Richard J. Gordon, committee chairman, tossed the question to the DOJ, after Senate Minority Leader Franklin M. Drilon raised the matter of conflict with the treaty in the last hearing. Earlier, Drilon’s incarcerated Liberal Party ally, Sen. Leila M. de Lima, had also warned against violating the country’s commitments to such international conventions that reflect the growing trend worldwide to shun capital punishment.
Gordon, who replaced de Lima as Justice Committee chairman last October, elicited an admission from a resource person at the last hearing that treaties and international conventions to which the Philippines accedes become part of the law of the land.
That threw the hearing into a tizzy, prompting Gordon to suspend further panel hearings. The senators present agreed to his initiative to ask the DOJ for a formal opinion.
Voting 50-50
Pimentel had earlier acknowledged that voting on the bill in the upper chamber appears to be “50-50”.
He told the BusinessMirror in an interview the votes for or against the measure could be 10-14 for either side, or even end up with a split “right down the middle” at 12 senators for and 12 against.
The Liberal Party (LP), to which Drilon and de Lima belong, constitutes a solid bloc against death penalty. The party’s president, Sen. Francis Pangilinan, categorically declared: “We will vote against it in the Senate.” Besides Pangilinan, Drilon, de Lima and Bam Aquino, the LP bloc counts in the antideath-penalty group Sens. Risa Hontiveros, Antonio Trillanes, Francis Escudero and Senate President Pro Tempore Ralph Recto.
Drilon had made clear the party’s stand early on. “When it [death-penalty bill] comes to the Senate floor, we will state our position, and we will accordingly express our opposition,” Drilon told reporters in February, adding that their position is “nonnegotiable”.
While the House leaders had rushed their vote on the measure last week, Drilon said the same thing happening at the Senate could not be predicted.
Besides the fact that committee hearings were suspended by panel chairman Gordon to await the DOJ opinion on the treaties, Drilon observed: “The Senate has always been an independent body and the senators have always taken positions on the basis of their own beliefs.”
Sen. Panfilo Lacson Sr., who favors death penalty, agreed, describing the chamber as consisting of “24 republics”. Lacson admits it’s not easy to predict how the Senate vote would go. “’Di pwede na magbotohan based sa usap-usapan lang. Dito sa Senado all 24 of us would like to be heard and would like to argue kung ano ang kanilang conviction on certain issues.”
Nancy Binay’s list
For her part, Sen. Nancy Binay, though not an LP member, has declared herself against death penalty, and was quoted earlier in one interview as having ticked off at least nine names she knew would vote against the measure.
Besides herself and the LP bloc, she also listed Trillanes, Escudero and Recto, whose wife, Rep. Vilma Santos-Recto, voted against the measure in the House. She, thus, lost her committee position in the purge enforced by Speaker Pantaleon D. Alvarez on March 15. Sources confided that Gordon himself, who presides as justice panel chairman, is also seen to be against death penalty.
No hard-sell pitch
Meanwhile, despite the perilous count of support in the Senate for his pet measure, President Duterte did not seek the senators’ support to vote for the death penalty during the “intimate” dinner he hosted at the Presidential Guest House on Tuesday, even when he discussed his war on drugs—the main justification he has been using for the reimposition of capital punishment.
“He did not mention anything that seeks support for any subject matter,” Senate Majority Leader Vicente C. Sotto III told the BusinessMirror. Sixteen senators attended the dinner meeting with Duterte, but not one committed anything to the President, Senate sources privy to the meeting said.
Image credits: AP/Aaron Favila, AP/Bullit Marquez