EDITORIAL — Holy Week violence

There was no Holy Week break for murderers. On Black Saturday, a Lakas candidate for governor of Kalinga was killed in the provincial capital of Tabuk. On the same day, a grandson and a supporter of a mayoralty bet in Isabela province were also murdered.

The killings came on the heels of the murder last Tuesday of a Commission on Elections official in Palawan. Police have arrested a suspect – a cop serving as a bodyguard of retired police general Eduardo Matillano, who is challenging incumbent Mayor Edward Hagedorn in the May elections.

Suspicion inevitably focuses on politics as the motive for these murders. As in the killings of left-wing activists, journalists and legal professionals, political assassinations continue because many of the murders remain unsolved. In some cases, the triggerman is caught but the mastermind is never identified. The few times that a politician is actually arrested and convicted of murder, as in the case of former Occidental Mindoro Rep. Jose Villarosa whose wife Amelita inherited his House seat, his relatives can sustain his political influence even while he is behind bars. If that influence is strong enough, they can even get the government, through the solicitor-general, to work for a reversal of his conviction.

For Romeo Jalosjos, conviction by a lower court for statutory rape did not stop him from running and winning re-election to Congress. Thus we had the spectacle of a congressman holding office in a prison compound, entitled to pork barrel allocations and other financial perks of a member of Congress.

Allowing felons to hold public office while their conviction is on appeal betrays a lack of confidence in the integrity of the lower courts and the judicial system itself. Because it can take a generation before a conviction is affirmed by a higher court, allowing convicts to hold public office behind bars can be a miscarriage of justice. If conviction and imprisonment do not diminish political clout or at least suspend the right to seek public office, it defeats the purpose of the penal system.

Members of the next Congress should stop protecting fellow politicians and make the necessary legislative amendments to correct this defect. Crime, especially murder, must be discouraged in every way possible. Apart from putting murderers behind bars, the administration should also stop courting the political support even of convicts. Such courtship betrays the bankruptcy of an administration that lacks the political will to end extrajudicial and political murders.