In 1997, Romeo Jalosjos was convicted of raping an 11-year-old girl. He was sentenced to two life terms for child rape. Prison was an air-conditioned suite with cable television, air conditioning, burger stands, and tennis courts; all to serve his functions and responsibilities as a member of the House of Representatives. After 12 years of paying his debt to society – his sentence commuted for good conduct – he walks free, and this child rapist seeks full pardon from no less than the President of the Philippines, Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo. Romeo Jalosjos, a convicted child rapist, is seeking his seat back in the hallowed halls of Congress.
There must be some feeling of outrage, no matter how silent or repressed, in the gall of one Romeo Jalosjos – convicted child rapist – to seek pardon from something that, beyond all reasonable doubt, he was found guilty of. Jalosjos, for the longest time, has been portrayed as the most privileged prisoner in the Philippine penal system; surrounded by every deduction to human society, Jalosjos still enjoyed a life unimaginable for many even outside prison walls. Jalosjos was the epitome of it all: when crime pays, it pays good. With the brazen pride expected of unrepentant criminals who are imprisoned precisely to be restituted and rehabilitated, Jalosjos flaunted about. For all intents and purposes, he got away with it.
