Senator Manny Pacquiao, who is running for president in next year’s national elections, has backtracked on his position to revive the death penalty in the predominantly Catholic country.
“About the death penalty, before, I filed a bill in the Senate. But right now, I’m just holding it. I’m not pushing right now because of the situation of this country,” he said in a Vice News Asia interview as quoted on an Inquirer report.
“I don’t want… innocent people [to] be punished by death. So we want to fix first our judicial system in this country and arrange everything and make sure that the government is performing their duty,” he said.
Pacquiao, a born-again Christian, has been an advocate of the revival of capital punishment for heinous crimes, including the manufacture and sale of illegal drugs.
When asked about his position on same-sex marriage, the boxing champ said, “Being a Christian, I’m against that. In terms of belief. I’m against that but that doesn’t mean that you condemn them.”
“To be clear about that issue, I love them,” he said, adding that he was misquoted in a previous interview about the issue.
On Saturday, Pacquiao was quoted in a news article saying that only convicted plunderers and drug traffickers deserve the death penalty.
He said the problem of corruption in the country is worse that the drug problem.
“This is the real cause of poverty,” he said in Filipino. “We will punish them and give back their ill-gotten wealth to our people,” said Pacquiao.
He said that if elected president next year he would push for wide-ranging reforms on law enforcement, prosecution, and the judiciary.
“We should fix the three pillars of our justice system so that we will only punish those who are really guilty,” he said.
