EDITORIAL — Death penalty for dumping garbage

This is definitely one for the books.

The officials of Barangay Calaba in Bangued Town in Abra were recently ordered suspended by their mayor. For what offense? Grave misconduct, grave abuse of authority, gross neglect of duty, gross dishonesty, and conduct prejudicial to the best interest of the service.

The reason? Last February the barangay officials crafted a barangay ordinance setting the penalties for illegal dumping at ?1,000 for the first offense, ?1,000 and eight hours of community service for the second offense, and getting shot for the third offense.

Yes, you read that right. Third-time offenders of their ordinance against illegal dumping of garbage will get the death penalty.

There is no doubt as to how funny this story is. Imagine a barangay deciding it has the power of life and death over its constituents. Sure, illegal dumping of garbage is an offense, but surely not one that we must kill an offender over.

We aren’t sure how the barangay officials came up with this idea or how they even unanimously agreed to it. Did they think this up during a drunken binge and just forgot about it the next day? Or are they that desperate when it comes to preventing dumping of garbage in their barangay?

The humor aside, this is also a sad story. Sad because it seems to show the caliber of some of our elected officials, sad because some people in public office don’t know the limits of their power, or seem to be unfamiliar with the extent of their authority over their constituents, or don’t know that there are limits to the laws that they can craft.

Only a court of law can hand down a death penalty and only for the most heinous of crimes. And that was way back when the death penalty was still a law. And the death penalty has been abolished in the Philippines.

It’s sad when those who are supposed to craft or enforce the laws are not familiar with them. We are glad that those officials were only at the barangay level and that their superiors found out what was wrong. Imagine if someone higher up in the government hierarchy, say in the Lower House or in the Senate, actually crafted a law that gave them the power over who lives or who dies over something so trivial?