Just another sellout by the country's top salesman

President Arroyo has once again exhibited her obnoxious capacity to prefer personal interests over and above larger ones with her wholesale commutation of the death penalty to life imprisonment.

To be sure, there is a global trend toward abolition of the death penalty. Whether this is good or bad is debatable. But most people would go along with whichever punishment carries the more sensible judicial and moral foundation.

Right now, the death penalty remains in effect although there are urgent moves to have it repealed. Be that as it may, until that happens, the president should have had a firmer respect for the law by allowing the existing law to take its course.

As it is, the president has found a convenient excuse to further her own interests. We believe she could not care any less whether the death penalty stays or not. Her utmost concern is that she herself stays in power.

Arroyo is not out of the woods, so to speak. With the end of her term still way off in 2010, she remains under constant threat of those who constantly seek her ouster by whatever means, for reasons that are either plausible and ridiculous.

But Arroyo is bent on holding on and has obviously vowed to herself to use whatever means within her power to do so. She would sell her soul to the devil, many people think. Whether that is true or not is not for any mortal to say. But the thought is there, and it prevails.

The decision to commute death sentences, to the horror and chagrin of the families of victims of some of the most heinous crimes imaginable, is not in recognition of the value of life as the president would have everyone believe.

In case the whole nation has forgotten, by her own words she has promised to heap fire and brimstone on those who would dare try to topple her by unconstitutional means. Said another way, she was promising death to her enemies.

Now, that is hardly the kind of words one expects from someone who wants people to believe she is a lover of life. Those are words that come from the mouth of someone who would not hesitate to destroy.

The suspicion of many is that the wholesale commutation of death sentences, rather than stemming from a genuine high regard for the value of human life, is actually a desperate gambit to win favors from the Roman Catholic Church, which opposes the death penalty. Whether true or not, the Roman Catholic Church appears to play an influential role in shaping the political destiny of this country. Most politicians, Arroyo included, cannot afford to lose the support of the religious sector. More than anyone else, Arroyo has come to pay particular attention to the Roman Catholic Church and its mood in recent times. Many believe that the lack of crucial church support to moves to oust Arroyo was largely responsible for her being still in office.

But there have been dramatic changes within the church. The archbishop of Manila has recently been named a cardinal. The usually benign Gaudencio Rosales, true to his new-found influence, can start becoming vocal and thus be a problem to problematic political leaders. Those who have no skeletons in their closets have nothing to fear from influential leaders of the Roman Catholic Church. But those who do are usually driven to lick boot in order to appease and acquiesce.

This is the situation Arroyo finds herself in. Stronger leaders would probably hold back a bit longer. But Arroyo is not a strong leader. She is just a lucky one. But she knows luck never holds for long. So she sold out.