three convicts scheduled to die before the end of the year gained a temporary stay

three convicts scheduled to die before the end of the year gained a temporary stay on their executions and over one thousand other death row inmates were to have the benefit of a review before they were executed after President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo gave a commitment to have their cases reviewed. 
Akbayan Rep. Etta Rosales, chairperson of the House committee on civil, political and human rights said Ms. Arroyo made the promise during a luncheon meeting with the Lady Legislators League at Malacañang.
"The President assured us there would be no execution before year end. She may not have given a moratorium on all executions but she said she would grant a reprieve on a case-to-case basis while Congress was deliberating on the bill seeking to abolish the death penalty," said Rosales.
Las Piñas City Rep. Cynthia Villar, president of the league, led some 20 of 36 women legislators in discussions with the President over lunch.
The execution of 161 other convicts on death row had been affirmed by the Supreme Court.
Rosales and fellow Akbayan Reps. Mario Aguja and Risa Hontiveros-Baraquel filed House Bill 1320 seeking to abolish the death penalty in the Philippines. They said that after 10 years, death penalty had no deterrent effect.
Albay Rep. Edcel Lagman, human rights lawyers, welcomed the President's decision after Rosales broke the news to fellow lawmakers during a dawn marathon hearing of the house committee on appropriations, chaired by Camarines Sur Rep. Rolando Andaya Jr.
Catanduanes Rep. Joseph Santiago, a crusader against capital punishment, lauded the President. He said the government already experimented with the death penalty in 1999 and that "it failed to put crime in check."
Santiago said official records showed that seven convicts had been executed -- four for rape and three for robbery -- between February 1999 and January 2000.
Despite the executions Philippine National Police statistics showed nationwide crime volume increased from 82,538 in 1999 to 85,778 in 2003.
Santiago said cases of robbery, for which three convicts were put to death in July 1999, actually increased from 5,740 in 1999 to 5,884 the following year. The numbers increased even more to 6,164 in 2001 and 7,708 in 2002.
"When rape convict Leo Echegaray was put to death by lethal injection on Feb. 5, 1999, rape cases actually increased to 3,177 in 1999 from only 3,031 in 1998," Santiago said.
Rosales said death penalty is the most inhuman, cruel and degrading punishment man could impose on his fellow human being. "Death penalty has no deterrent effect. Rather it is an act that has a brutalizing effect and which incites the violent tendencies of persons," Rosales said.