Solomonic

Mary Jane Veloso, convicted drug trafficker, will be returning home soon.

- ALEX MAGNO

This represents the triumph of diplomacy and goodwill over all else.

We all know the story. Mary Jane comes from the humblest roots in Nueva Ecija. Despite being a nursing mother, she was convinced to work abroad by an illegal recruiter. She left her very young children behind, expecting to earn enough to secure their future.

After arriving in Malaysia, she was told to proceed to Adisucipto International Airport, Yogyakarta, Indonesia and bring a bag along with her. The bag, it turns out, contained 2.6 kilos of heroin. Mary Jane was made an unwitting mule. She was intercepted at the airport.

There is no contesting the facts of this case. Mary Jane, although unaware of the dangerous contents of the bag she was asked to carry, was serving as a drug mule. She is fully responsible for the contents of the bag she carried.

Indonesia, like most of Southeast Asia, has tough drug laws. The illegal drugs found in Mary Jane's possession merited the death penalty under Indonesia's laws. The law may be harsh, but it is the law.

Filipinos tend to treat the law as elastic, sometimes negotiable. Human rights activists are particularly vulnerable to this frailty: to see poverty as something of a mitigating factor in every crime. But judges are not supposed to perform sociological analysis on every defendant. They simply evaluate the evidence. This is how a legal system operates.