We find it shameful that United Nations Special Rapporteur Agnes Callamard has again dipped her fingers on the domestic affairs of our country. This time, she poked on the issue of lowering the age of criminal liability without educating herself on the contents of the proposed bill that she may have the intellectual wherewithal on the whys and wherefores of the contemplated legislation, which she incorrectly and arbitrarily described as “dangerous and potentially deadly.”
What is “dangerous and potentially deadly" is her intrusive and ignorant theorem on how a sovereign state deals with its problem with criminality.
Under the proposed law, the maximum penalty for individuals and criminal syndicates found guilty of exploiting children to be youth offenders is reclusion perpetua or life imprisonment. Further, NO PENALTY OF IMPRISONMENT would be imposed upon children nine-years old and below while those juveniles who are above nine-years old but below eighteen years of age who commit any of the ten exclusive offenses, such as murder or rape, would be brought to youth care facilities (not prison facilities) supervised by a multi-disciplinary team, which includes doctors, psychologists and social workers, among others.
We are confident that Congress in legislating such law will ensure that due considerations on the protective rights of the child are weighed in.
Statistics show that there is a surge of offenses committed by children. The intent of the proposed bill is precisely to protect children against criminals who victimize and coerce them to become offenders. The proposed law will deter criminals from using children as their accomplices or in treating them as pawns in committing crimes.
Evidently, the legislative proposal is being drowned by the critics and detractors of the Administration. They simply have not read the provisions of the bill hence their opposition is based either on blissful ignorance or pretended misinformation. They are either unaware or ignore the reality that criminals have become smart as to use the present law in exploiting the children to assist them in committing their crimes.
To the mind of the President, the current law has laid the foundation for the emergence of a new generation of criminals. When minors are released in as many times as they are arrested, criminality becomes a part of their lives and thereby evolving into being full blown criminals.
The President remains committed in providing our children a safe and peaceful environment by going after the principals and main actors of crime groups.
At the inception of his presidency, PRRD has treated peace and order a priority of the country and has been unsparing in going after the criminals and other menaces in society.
As in the present law, discernment in the proposed bill remains the determining factor on whether a child who has committed a crime may be held accountable. Children who do not have the discernment to distinguish right from wrong at the time of the commission of the crime are not held criminally responsible based on Article 12 of the Revised Penal Code and related jurisprudence; hence, may still use such as a defense despite the passage of the subject bill. Children, on the other hand, who acted with discernment but committed a crime under the compulsion of an irresistible force or an impulse of an uncontrollable fear of an equal or greater injury, such as when threatened by a syndicate to commit an offense, are likewise exempt from liability under the same article of the penal code. What the intended legislation does is actually to provide means of rehabilitation in favor of those youth who have freely and discerningly committed a crime.
Dr. Callamard would do well by restraining herself from using her UN post in continuing her interference in the country’s domestic affairs while waging a political agenda of demolition against the President through her obviously unstudied accusations and parroting false information, a process that certainly diminishes the credibility and respectability of the UN Special Rapporteur mechanism.
Salvador S. Panelo
Chief Presidential Legal Counsel
& Presidential Spokesperson
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