Lawmakers too easy on incest!

ARCHIVES 2009

By admin-s On Aug 26, 2009

By KTemoc Konsiders

The Star Online – Father jailed 15yrs for incest with teenage daughter.

That slimy slug received only 15 years jail and three strokes of the rotan. He would have been punished more severely if not for the disgraceful act of Parliament in lightening sentences for such slugs – read about that in my 2006 post Parliament Reducing Sentence for Incest?

Then I had written:

… the biggest disgrace has been its proposed amendments to the conviction for committing incest. Incest with an underage child would also be aggravated rape. Currently incest carries a jail sentence of between 15 and 30 years with up to ten strokes of the rotan (cane)*. The committee now proposes to reduce the jail term to between eight and 15 years.

* that’s what that slug should have received, if not for Parliament

Their bullshit is that the reduced sentence will encourage the public to report the offence.

Tell me, would a victim or the guardian representing the victim be influenced by the difference between 15 to 30 and 8 to 15? Would they, when reporting to the police, be inhibited by it? Would those poor unfortunates, when testifying in court, be even aware or conscious of the difference in the terms of the sentence?

This is sheer nonsense!

Then continuing on its unsupportable course, the committee wants the punishment for rape cum murder from the present mandatory death penalty to either the death penalty or imprisonment of between 15 and 30 years and not more than 10 strokes of the rotan, because it claims that there might be those who did not intend to cause the death of the rape victim. With the amendment, the courts will have more discretion to decide whether the accused should face imprisonment or a death penalty.

Now, KTemoc is against the death sentence so I am happy even for them to remove that draconian punishment completely.

But judge for yourself its proposal for snatch theft, that it be defined as a specific offence with perpetrators facing up to 14 years in jail. OK, there had been a couple of deaths associated with snatch thefts but in those cases, murder wasn’t intended. The deaths were caused by the victim being hurt when they fell down as a result from the abrupt jerk of the snatch theft. If death occurs as a result of snatch theft, then charge the perpetrator with either murder or manslaughter.