OPPOSITION lawmakers on Tuesday asked the House leadership to allow a “conscience” vote during the deliberations on the Palace-backed death penalty bill.
The group also disclosed the alleged attempt of the House majority bloc to silence its members by not allowing them to interpellate during the plenary discussion of the measure scheduled next week.
Akbayan party-list Rep. Tom Villarin said they received information that neophyte lawmakers, specifically members of the House committee on justice as well as members of the House committee on rules, have “no right to interpellate.”
“This move to silence members of the House not to speak up is alarming. We are looking at it; this is an attempt to stifle [us on the death penalty bill],” Villarin told a news conference.
But Fariñas said there was no such thing.
“I did not know that Rep. Villarin is the spokesperson of the Committee on Rules,” Fariñas said in a text message to The Manila Standard.
Lagman said the reimposition of death penalty violated the Constitution and a state treaty, or the United Nations Convention Againsg Illicit Traffic in Narcotics Drugs and Psychotropic Substances of 1988, where cirmes related to illegal drugs shall only be punishable with imprisonment and not death.
Earlier, Speaker Pantaleon Alvarez said the Lower House would pass the death penalty bill at all cost as the bill was one of the priority measures of the Duterte administration.
Alvarez said the House would pass the measure either through a “party vote” or a “conscience vote.”
“We will allow debate to hear all sides of the issue. Hopefully, we will pass it in less than 30 days,” Alvarez said last week.
Alvarez said he was confident he had the “supermajority” vote to pass the measure.
The death penalty bill proposes to impose death penalty on more than 20 heinous offenses, such as rape with homicide, kidnapping for ransom, and arson with death.
Alvarez earlier stressed the need for Congress “to reinvigorate the war against criminality by reviving a proven deterrent coupled by its consistent, persistent and determined implementation, and this need is as compelling and critical as any.”