Pimentel knows that the revival of the death penalty is a violation of our country’s legal commitments to existing international treaties to which the Philippines, as a sovereign state, is a formal signatory, more particularly the Second Optional Protocol to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR).
Pimentel rationalizes Duterte's desire to railroad the revival of the death penalty by the erroneous theory that our country must not and cannot surrender our sovereignty to the jurisdiction of international treaties and conventions when the same would impede our fight against crime.
A bar topnotcher, Pimentel misleads the Filipino people.
He fails to state that our country has the legal and moral obligation to comply with and perform all our legal obligations under the treaties and conventions that we, as a sovereign state, have voluntarily and intelligently adhered to in the past.
This act of good faith in the performance of a legal duty or obligation on the part of a sovereign state in its international relations is covered and commanded by the sacred principles of "pacta sunt servanda", "jus cogens", and "opinio juris".
Pimentel fails to state that under the "incorporation clause" of the 1987 Constitution, our country recognizes the constitutional doctrine that the generally accepted international principles and norms form part of the law of the land, more so when the same have been freely accepted and recognized by our country as a national policy or by practice or when the same have been formally entered into and ratified by our country in the exercise of its free will as a sovereign state.
