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GENERAL LUNA, Siargao, Philippines -- President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo has rallied the people to pray for the two overseas Filipino workers (OFWs), who were recently sentenced to death by Kuwaiti courts for allegedly killing their employers.
"I don't want to preempt the cases of the two. So let us pray for them," Arroyo said during a visit here on Wednesday, referring to May Vecina and Jakatia Pawa.
Both Vecina and Pawa are from Mindanao.
Arroyo said the sentencing was bad news for the Filipino people but it did not cause her to lose hope that the two OFWs will eventually be spared from the gallows.
Recalling the case of Marilou Ranario, whose death sentence was reversed by the Kuwaiti high court, Arroyo said she went an extra mile to save the OFW.
"We went through a great length to save Ranario from the death penalty. I went to Kuwait and asked the help of the King," Arroyo said.
But it was not clear if she would again plead for the lives of Vecina and Pawa.
Under the Kuwaiti justice system, the emir or king has the final say on whether a convict would hang or not.
In Zamboanga City, Pawa's kin said they only discovered about her fate from television reports.
"We were already aware of her case but we were all shocked and surprised to discover about her conviction from television reports," Air Force Major Angaris Pawa, brother of the 31-year old OFW, said.
He said the family was worried about the situation. "We don't know what to do about it," he said.
Retired police officer Wares Pawa, the eldest among the nine Pawa siblings, said what frustrated them was the lack of official information from the government.
"If we did not see it on TV, we will never know. There had been no new information coming out of the Department of Foreign Affairs. The last time they wrote us was in 2007, when we were told she was in jail," he said.
Tita Rebollos, information officer of the DFA in Western Mindanao, said they already talked with Pawa's brothers on Tuesday.
