The Philippines President, Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo, has announced a plan for ending the death penalty with immediate effect. Over the Easter weekend, she directed that all the country?s 1,205 ?death-row? convicts should have their capital sentences commuted to life imprisonment. Then, last weekend, she initiated a bill to abolish the death penalty outright by June this year. The presidential reprieve halts 17 executions scheduled for the end of this month.

The news was given a guarded welcome by Catholic bishops. Her principal critic, Cebu?s Archbishop, Cardinal Ricardo Vidal, expressed ?pleasure that the President has seen fit to enter into the spirit of the holy season with an appropriate gesture of clemency?. Cardinal Vidal has long voiced concern over the way poorer Filipinos can reach death row without having benefited from what he would see as an adequate legal defence.

Since capital punishment was reintroduced in the predominantly Catholic country in 1994, seven prisoners have been executed, all by lethal injection. The last was in January 2000. On seizing power in January 2001, Mrs Arroyo announced a moratorium on executions, but in 2003 ? in the face of ardent opposition from the Catholic bishops and human rights activists ? she revived the practice for convicted murderers, rapists, drug traffickers and kidnappers.

The move is doubtless aimed at rebuilding bridges with the Catholic Church, several of whose bishops ? including Cardinal Vidal and the anti-gambling crusader Archbishop Oscar Cruz ? have regularly questioned her economic policies and her democratic legitimacy. Manila?s newly elevated Cardinal Gaudencio Rosales has kept silent, but appears to show less enthusiasm for the President than his late predecessor, Cardinal Jaime Sin. Mrs Arroyo is currently under fire for alleged cheating in the 2004 presidential contest that saw her retain office by fewer than 1 million votes.
Vincent McKee in Cebu