EXPLANATION OF NO VOTE

Mr. Speaker, I beseech our people to not judge each of us here on the basis
merely of our vote. We are a nation of intelligent and literate individuals, so I beseech
our people to examine our reasons further.

After much deliberation and soul-searching, I am voting No against the

measure, Mr. Speaker.

My objection to the measure is based on the objection of my conscience. In this

regard, with my eyes ever on the developments in the sphere of public opinion, I am
apprehensive that my stance might be perceived to be borne out of deference to a
particular group or, worse, to a lack of empathy for the victim.

I assure you, however, that I arrived at this vote not due to any of the
aforementioned. This vote is as much the call of my conscience as it is of every human
being clamouring for equal justice for everyone. This stance is in consonant with my
constituents collective conscience for which I am constrained to give voice.

I believe, Mr. Speaker, that the death penalty continues to be a divisive issue on
this land because of the lingering flaws in a death penalty system. We all know that
those who can afford the most cunning and expensive lawyers, no matter how
murderous and evil, can escape justice while even those who are truly innocent are
sacrificed in the altars of retribution and so-called deterrence.

Mr. Speaker, I give my full support, without any reservations, to the common aim
that criminals, those who committed the most heinous of crimes, must be punished and
that alternatives to the death penalty may not be sufficient to protect our people from
these criminals. I assure our people, Mr. Speaker, that this representation is aware of
the deterrent and retributive functions of death penalty.

However, the current state of our judicial and penal system give credence to the
claim that death penalty can morph into a state-sponsored machinery of death, as one
eminent justice of the Supreme Court of the United States, a country which sanctions
death as a penalty, put it. In cases of wrong convictions, cases when the moneyed, the
lawyers, and the courts conspired to put to death a poor but innocent man, the State
itself becomes a murderer.

Our current realities make inevitable factual and legal errors that wrongly convict
some defendants. This is a system that is intolerable to a nation, a constituency who
endeavours to make peace with its conscience at the end of each day. And, Mr.
Speaker, I am proud to say that I represent such a constituency. The people of Tarlac
whom I represent would not put to death an innocent man.
 Errors in the imposition of penalties like fines and imprisonment are also
abhorrent. The death penalty, however, is of a different specie because a mistaken
imposition of death as a penalty is final by its very nature. When an accused is wrongly
convicted and wrongly put to death, such error is irreversible. Can anything be more
final than death?

Our nations collective and inherent conscience gave rise to the maxim: it is
better to set a guilty man free than to imprison an innocent person. In the context of the
debates on the imposition of death penalty, we can translate the maxim into: it is better
for the State to let the guilty person live than to put to death an innocent person.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker and esteemed colleagues.