I HAVE now started serving as a prayer guide of the Prayer and Life Workshop (PLW) at the Metro Bacolod District Jail.
Twenty inmate participants took part in the first session of the PLW. They listened to the message about the God of tenderness based on several verses in Hosea 11:1-4 about our Father Abba who speaks to us not like those of a father but rather of a mother. God is like a mother who picks up her child off the ground and holds it close to her cheek to caress and feed it.
Some of the participants admitted they have been black sheep that have committed crimes such as drug trafficking and are behind bars. They are paying the price for what many of them did.
As Archbishop Socrates Villegas, president of the Catholic Bishops Conference of the Philippines (CBCP), asserted, “Though the crime be heinous, no person is ever beyond redemption, and we have no right ever giving up on any person.”
It seems House committee on justice chair Reynaldo Umali agrees with the Monsignor. That is, as far as the crime of plunder goes.
Otherwise, Umali is supporting the proposed death penalty that is currently being deliberated at the House of Representatives.
Where I sit, the Umali proposal is self-serving in nature. It gets politicians off the hook on the maximum penalty. Plunder is covered by Republic Act (RA) No. 7080 or known as An Act Defining and Penalizing the Crime of Plunder, as amended.
RA 7080 targets “public officers” that hold any public office in the Government of the Republic of the Philippines by virtue of an appointment, election, or contract. The law was passed supposedly to deter public officials from stealing money from the government.
Why excise plunder from the proposed bill? Is stealing big time taxpayers’ money not heinous enough?
If a convicted plunderer is meted 20 years and one day to 40 years imprisonment, can we say the same thing to felons convicted of rape, drug trafficking, murder, kidnapping, and carjacking?
You mean carjacking of an over a million of an SUV is worse than a theft of P50 million of government money? After all, the bottomline of carjacking and even drug trafficking is also “pera-pera” lang.
I agree with the CBCP on its stand against the death penalty. When I was assigned as a PLW prayer guide for the inmates, it provided me an opportunity to lead the participants back to the warm embrace of the Father.
I want to be able to say to them, “Your brother, was dead, and is alive again. He was lost, and is found.”
(bqsanc@yahoo.com)
