Cojuangco to create laws protecting women prisoners

MANILA, Philippines - Many women prisoners have spent years in jail waiting to be tried. Most of them have already served time longer than their sentences, years they should have spent raising their children.

United Nationalist Alliance (UNA) senatorial candidate Margarita “Tingting” Cojuangco saw how these women suffer in prison. For this reason, the former Tarlac governor vows to push for enactment of laws that will increase protection of female prisoners.

“I have gone to several jails for women and I would like to legislate into law how to protect these women. Most of the offenses committed by those detained have penalties of only two years, but they have been in jail for eight years and their cases have not come to some kind of a conclusion,” said Cojuangco, who has a doctorate degree in criminology from the Philippine College of Criminology.

“I think the justice system must go faster and we should not forget those women who are in jail, who are married and have children,” she added.

Cojuangco, who also has a master’s degree in national security administration from the National Defense College of the Philippines and served as president of the Philippine Public Safety College, plans to push for higher funds for the Philippine National Police for the purchase of new equipment.

“We have to increase our police force. We have to buy them the equipment in order to be more efficient because they are in need of more cars, equipment in order to solve cases,” she said. “We have to ensure that we get good quality servicemen.”

The former undersecretary of the Department of the Interior and Local Government also stressed the important role of villages in economic development.

She said that the “P200,000 to P1-million funds should be given directly to each village so that they could implement projects and provide jobs.”

She also noted that the government must provide employment to hundreds of Filipinos displaced by the armed conflict in Sabah.

“The 850 refugees from Sabah have no work. At least in the barangay level, there will be job opportunities. That is what I intend to do,” Cojuangco promised.

Cojuangco also said she plans to review laws that have not been fully implemented, including a law providing subsidies to farmers sponsored by her husband Peping.

“When my husband was a congressman he sponsored a law that would help farmers. We have to help our farmers sell their produce so that they would have money to send their children to school and put food on their table. These could somehow help eradicate the poverty that we now suffer,” Cojuangco said.

Peping is an uncle of President Aquino, who heads the Liberal Party. In spite of Cojuangco’s senatorial bid under UNA, she said in a previous interview that the Cojuangco family remains supportive of Aquino.