Two convicted kidnappers are scheduled for execution...

Two convicted kidnappers are scheduled for execution in the Philippines in August and President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo is definitely not granting them a reprieve.
Moreover Arroyo is now inclined to lift the moratorium on the execution of convicted drug lords and pushers. In a talk with journalists over dinner at Malacanang, the Chief Executive, who is a self-confessed pro-lifer, conceded that the death penalty was a legal weapon that should be used by the state to arrest the upsurge of crimes.
Scheduled for execution by lethal injection at the national penitentiary in August are Roderick Licayan and Roberto Lara, whose sentencing has been upheld by the Supreme Court in a final judgment.
These will be the first two executions to take place since Arroyo became president [in January 2001]. At the start of her term, she imposed a moratorium on the death penalty in deference to the wishes of the Catholic Church.
But when kidnap-for-ransom incidents escalated in her first eight months in office, the President changed her mind and dropped convicted kidnappers from the list of death row convicts covered by the moratorium. This was also her commitment to the Chinese-Filipino community whose members accounted for the biggest number of abduction victims.
In saying that she now favours the execution of drug traffickers the President explained that the illicit drug trade is as grave as kidnapping as a scourge to society and a threat to the economy.
On June 7, Arroyo signed Republic Act 9165 imposing death as the maximum penalty for the manufacture, possession and sale of prohibited drugs. The new law amended the Dangerous Drugs Act.
She was also disturbed by reports that nearly two million Filipinos are hooked on illegal drugs as a result of the unabated drug smuggling.
Arroyo directed presidential adviser on media and ecclesiastical affairs Conrado Limcaoco to coordinate with the Department of Justice and get a listing of death row convicts, those whose convictions have been upheld by the high tribunal.
More than 1,100 people have been sentenced to death since the death penalty was revived in 1994. Most of them were convicted for drug-related crimes, murder and rape. More than 30 of them are women and 12 are minors.
In 1996, Congress approved lethal injection as the mode of execution of condemned felons. But it was not until 1999 that convicts were sent to the death chamber. Since then only four executions of six men have taken place.
Senator Robert Barbers, chairman of the Senate committee on law and order and illegal drugs, has urged the President to order the execution of at least one death convict per month.
But 15 senators have filed a bill seeking the abolition of the death penalty on the ground that it is inhuman, unconstitutional and ineffective in deterring crime.