A presidential pardon that’s unpardonable; The toxic byproducts of worship

Philippines

A presidential pardon that’s unpardonable

Editorial

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Philippine Daily Inquirer

The president has a message for us all: Crime pays, said the Manila Philippine Daily Inquirer in an editorial. President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo has granted a full pardon to convicted plunderer Joseph Estrada, a former movie star who was elected president in 1998 and proceeded to rob the state treasury of millions. Why did Arroyo pardon him? She hasn’t given us a single good reason. Arrested in 2001, Estrada never acknowledged his guilt, much less expressed remorse or repentance, and he never gave back the money. Arroyo can hardly cite humanitarian reasons for the pardon: Estrada may be 70 years old, but he was not doing hard time. Instead, he was under house arrest in his well-appointed villa on the beach, and he was frequently allowed to leave to visit relatives or get medical care. Is Estrada’s six-year detention, under such comfortable conditions, punishment enough for the crime of plunder committed by the highest official of the land? Obviously not. Arroyo simply may have wanted to divert attention from her own misdeeds—after all, she is currently being investigated for allegedly accepting bribes and kickbacks. And for some reason, Estrada himself remains a popular figure in some circles. This pardon is not about justice. It is solely intended to help prop up a regime that is being pummeled by scandal after scandal.

India

The toxic byproducts of worship

Jaideep Mazumdar

Outlook India

Surely the goddess Durga would not approve of her worshippers’ behavior, said Jaideep Mazumdar in Delhi’s Outlook India magazine. Each year, Hindus build hundreds of platform tents, decorated inside and out with metal, plastic, and flowers, to house brightly painted clay idols of Durga and her children. At the end of the five-day festival, the idols are immersed in the nearest body of water—and left there to rot. This year, authorities in Calcutta set up huge trash bins where worshippers could dump their debris at the close of the festivities. Apparently, hardly anyone was so civicminded. When the festival ended last week, the banks of the Ganges made a sorry sight, clogged with litter, including a large amount of plastic. Next year, authorities plan to enforce anti-litter regulations more stringently. And they’d do well, too, to ban the use of synthetic paints containing lead and zinc, which pollute the river and destroy aquatic life. The endangered Ganges dolphin, for example, suffers every year in the wake of the Durga festival. Idols will have to be immersed, but there are decent and environmentally friendly ways of doing so.