Death is Easy, Life is Difficult

The Philippines has had enough. And we Filipinos have more than our fair share of cruel injustices for the past decades. We have known crimes. We have seen deaths. We have tasted blood. And we have hungered for justice through all these years. And where exactly have the politicians taken the justice we deserve? Anyway, there shall be no more worries now.The long agony has ended when the 16^th president of the Republic of the Philippines finally took oath last June 30, 2016. Bless the Philippines! We now have a president who supports the death penalty.

                                                                                      

Well, don’t get me wrong. I voted for Duterte and heaved a sigh of relief when he won the presidency. But I’mnot in favor of the capital punishment that he is pushing through. I believe in justice of course. But the kind of justice I believe in is not attained through a quick and clean death. Yes, death is the wage for sin as what’s written in the Bible. And only death can pay for life. However, what’s the point of the capital punishment when all of us will die anyway? Through death penalty, we give the rapists, murderers, drug peddlers, kidnappers, and robbers their early freedom. Yes they have erred against the law and humanity. They get defeated when they are captured and thrown into prison. But if we sentence them to death, then they will finally rest with their lifetime debts not fully paid. That is not justice.

It is after all better that they suffer for the rest of their lives to atone for the heinous crimes they committed. Killing them won’t make everything alright. Their deaths won’t make the pain of the bereaved families go away, and won’t make the dead victims come back to life. And if you believe that the death penalty is the only way to sow fear among the criminals, then remember this, a man who does not fear God, the law of the land and even the humanity does not have the right to fear his own death.

That’s why I still favor the lifetime imprisonment. Even if a criminal murders only one person, or rapes his own wife, or kidnaps his own daughter, he should be imprisoned for the rest of his life. Let him rot and waste his life in prison. Let him be bored and hopeless and frustrated to the point in which he will want to threaten his own life. Let him drown in his own miserable debts. Let him suffer. However the most important thing is that, with life imprisonment, we give a chance for the criminals to have that change of heart. Corny as it may sound. But then we have to remember that there is a life after death. We either go to heaven or to eternal damnation. And just because the criminals have done such heinous deeds doesn’t mean they don’t have the right to be forgiven and be saved. In life imprisonment, we give them enough and perhaps more time to realize and repent for the wrongs that they have done. We give them a chance to ask for forgiveness and be forgiven. We give them a chance to go back to God and to be good again even if they are surrounded with walls and bars. And only then can true justice be attained.

We may have different views in life and I respect that. But I still believe that criminals or not, we are all victims of the times we now live in. There is still goodness inside people, as well as there is the bad. Yin and yang, to balance everything. The good and the bad coexist. And that means we cannot totally eradicate criminality even if the death penalty in our country becomes a law once again. What I wish to happen in our country is that we Filipinos must really obey, fear and live by the laws especially those that concern human lives. And that every Filipino must live his life with all his honor and integrity. That teachers and parents for example will educate the hearts of the young Filipinos that they will not turn out into savage individuals. That religious leaders will never tire teaching us about faith and God. That the police and military won’t shy away when they will have to capture the perpetrators of our society and keep the peace in our nation. And that our political leaders will no longer betray us all and play games with our lives. With all these, I believe it will be a difference. It may appear as just mere ideals to some people especially the self-confessed realists. But then, bloodshed cannot be the only solution to set things right for a country that has had enough. As what Mahatma Gandhi once said, “An eye for an eye will only make the whole world blind.”Kill the person who killed your loved one and a loved one of the person you killed will kill another one of your loved ones and the cycle will never end.