Should government help convicts?

KUWAIT — A policy question is apropos. Should our government, with its limited resources, still spend a lot of money hiring lawyers to defend criminals and pay millions in blood money? Should government allocate its scarce resources to provide defense to people who had been found guilty of heinous crimes beyond reasonable doubt? Shouldn't the money instead be used to help the thousands of maids who are being raped by their employers, OFWs who had been physically abused by barbaric recruitment agency owners and employers? Isn't government conveying a wrong message that it's okay to kill, anyway, there is government that is always ready to help? Which do you think are more deserving of government help - the victims of cruelty or the perpetrators of crimes? These are questions that should be addressed to lawmakers.

To us, who are in the diplomatic service, and deployed here in the front-lines, we have our own opinions but these views do not count at all. Nobody listens to us. Nobody even bothers to ask us. This writer, for instance, is sent here to serve the 140,000 OFWs in Kuwait, out of whom, 65,000 are domestic helpers. We have hundreds of them languishing in jails falsely accused of theft only because they ran away from employers who didn't pay their salaries for years. There are many victims of physical abuse and rape. These are the ones who need most help. Not those who kill their lovers. But nobody cares to ask for our opinion.

Wanted: Legal attaché

In countries where there are many legal problems confronting OFWs, we need a legal attaché, attached to the Embassy to be deployed by the Department of Justice and Public Attorney's Office. The legal attaché should be adequately trained in international law and international conventions as well as legal procedures in transnational and global legal systems. He should be accredited by the host government and the local bar association so that he could practice law in the host country.

Today, not all legal attachés are lawyers. Not all Ambassadors and Consuls are members of the Bar. And even if they are legal luminaries, they are not allowed to appear in the courts of the host country. That is why, we have thousands of OFWs in detention centers who are unaided by lawyers and if they are not death convicts, they don't receive legal assistance. There is an implied message that it would be better for them to kill so that the government would give them a lawyer. Of course, that is not the intention. This is something that our brilliant lawyers in the Senate and the House should, with all due respect, perhaps be focusing on. This is something that IBP members should reflect on.

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