Regressive, repressive Duterte policies to stunt dev't —Lagman

Opposition lawmaker Albay Representative Edcel Lagman believes that the "repressive" and "regressive" policies and proposed legislation of the Duterte administration will only stunt the country's human development.

"The Duterte administration’s irrepressible campaign to reimpose the death penalty, reduce the age of criminal responsibility, delete libertarian safeguards in the Human Security Act, revive the Anti-Subversion Law and liberalize wire-tapping are counterproductive roadblocks to human development," Lagman said in a statement on Sunday.

According to Lagman, the death penalty is an "inhuman and archaic sanction" that, for the longest time, has not been proven as an effective deterrent of crimes.

Lowering the age of criminal responsibility, meanwhile, will only make children "felons" even as less than 2% of crimes are committed by them, he added.

Removing human rights safeguards in the Human Security Act, such as the liberalization of wire-tapping, will "open the floodgates to inordinate abuses," Lagman said.

"Revival of the Anti-Subversion Law will violate the constitutional guarantees on freedom of association, freedom of speech and dissent, and peaceable assembly for redress of grievances," Lagman said.

"Even as the now repealed Anti-Subversion Law, which was amended by the dictator Ferdinand Marcos as an instrument of martial law, failed to contain insurgency," he added.

Lagman said a rights-based approached to legislation and policy-making should be espoused to foster development.

"If the human, civil, and political rights of the people, the very intended beneficiaries of development, are derogated and denied, development would be a farce and far-fetched," he said. —Erwin Colcol/LBG, GMA News