President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo said she may restore...

President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo said she may restore the moratorium on the death penalty should the execution of two death row convicts at the end of January serve its purpose of teaching kidnap-for-ransom groups a lesson and deterring crime. "I hope that after these two executions, they will learn their lesson and we can go back to our policy of no executions," Ms. Arroyo told dzRH radio. Bureau of Corrections officials said two unnamed prisoners would be put to death by lethal injection in the last week of January unless the President granted them a reprieve or Congress passed a law abolishing capital punishment. In December 2003 the President lifted a moratorium on executions which had been in place since March 2000, imposed by then-President Joseph E. Estrada after pressure from the Roman Catholic Church, which opposes capital punishment. Ms. Arroyo, a devout Catholic, made the decision amid a surge in kidnap-for-ransom cases and other violent crimes.