Joker to GMA: Repeal death penalty instead to give Erap leeway

Pro-administration Sen. Joker Arroyo suggested yesterday that President Arroyo ask Congress to "repeal" the death penalty law to allow deposed President Joseph Estrada to "get away" with the plunder charges filed against him.

Senator Arroyo, one of the lead prosecutors in the Estrada impeachment trial in 2001, gave Mrs. Arroyo this unsolicited advice in reaction to reports that the government is open to reconciling with Estrada.

In return, Estrada can go on "bail by recognizance."

Recognizance involves the release of an accused without bail to someone of high moral standing in the community.

Arroyo, who is not related to the President, said all the talks "about reconciliation, bail on recognizance are not possible presently because unfortunately for Estrada, he is charged with the crime of plunder and the penalty for that is death."

"With that President Estrada can be released and President Arroyo can start her policy initiatives. More than that, the death row, where hundreds of inmates sentenced to death are quartered, will be eliminated," he said.

Under present circumstances, the only remedy that can be made available for the Arroyo administration to be able to accommodate Estrada is to repeal the death penalty law, he added.

Senator Arroyo noted that one who is charged with a crime that carries the death penalty cannot be granted bail.

"Thus, there are constitutional and statutory roadblocks," he said. "So all these loose talks about reconciliation and bail on recognizance are plain and simple politicking."

Neither can Estrada be pardoned because he must first be convicted before Mrs. Arroyo can exercise her constitutional power to pardon, he added.

Arroyo said asking Congress to repeal the death penalty law would do the trick.

"A one-sentence law or amendment to existing laws can be enacted that prescribes that the penalty of death in any of the existing laws is hereby abolished and those already sentenced thereby shall carry the penalty of life imprisonment," he said.

Arroyo said more than giving Estrada a leeway to "freedom" this move will also eliminate the long festering stigma the Philippines has suffered.

"We are, a Christian country, ranked among the less progressive countries that still carries the archaic death penalty," he said.

Mrs. Arroyo, a devout Catholic, has not implemented the death penalty since she assumed the presidency in 2001.

Compared to Estrada who implemented the death penalty law for the lethal injection of convicted rapist Leo Echagaray, Mrs. Arroyo has pardoned a number of death convicts during her term.

Last weekend, Environment Secretary Michael Defensor revealed that reconciliation talks had begun between Mrs. Arroyo and Estrada, with Estrada seeking his release from house arrest in Tanay, Rizal, on recognizance as a condition.

Mrs. Arroyo and Estrada last came face to face on May 29, 2001, when she visited him in detention in the presidential suite at the Veterans Memorial Medical Center in Quezon City, in the early stages of his plunder trial.