MANILA, 29 November 2007 — President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo yesterday said she is sending Vice President Noli de Castro to Kuwait in a last-ditch effort to save the life of condemned Filipino maid Marilou Ranario.

De Castro will personally deliver Arroyo’s letter to Kuwaiti ruler Sheikh Sabah Al-Ahmad Al-Sabah asking that Ranario be given a full pardon and be allowed to return home.

The Philippine ambassador to Kuwait, Ricardo Endaya, said if the appeal fails, Ranario will be executed within four to five months. Malacañang Palace said the president’s attempt to contact the Kuwaiti ruler by telephone failed, but she was not giving up.

On Tuesday, Kuwait’s highest court, the Court of Cassation, affirmed a lower court ruling condemning the maid to death to death by hanging for killing her 46-year-old female employer over salary disputes and maltreatment. in September 2005.

The 35-year-old teacher from the southern Philippine province of Surigao Del Norte, left to work in Kuwait in December 2003 in hopes of giving her two young children a better life, only to find herself being maltreated and shortchanged. Her lawyers said she has been suffering from paranoia.

She is among 73,000 Filipinos, including 60,000 women employed mostly as maids, working in the Gulf state.

The government-prepared tanazul, an affidavit of forgiveness, was already signed by the victim’s family members. An undisclosed amount of blood money was also given to five of six relatives of Najat Mahmoud Faraj Mobarak, the employer Ranario killed. But Mobarak’s estranged husband refused to accept the blood money.

Arroyo met with Ranario’s mother, Encarnacion, in Cebu yesterday and promised that the government would do its best to save the maid.

Migrante International, on the other hand, said in a statement that the Emir of Kuwait has not reversed any decision of the Court of Cassation, so far. Still, the activist group said it was hopeful that Ranario’s case would be a first.

Together with the protesters who have been holding vigils in front of the Department of Foreign Affairs in Pasay, Marilou’s sister Wilfreda blamed the government for not working hard to save Ranario.

As the nation worried over Ranario’s case, Sen. Miriam Defensor-Santiago urged the government to seek a treaty with Middle Eastern countries on the exchange of convicted citizens. “The case emphasizes the importance of a transfer of sentenced persons (TSP) treaty, which we just have concurred with respect to Spain,” said Santiago, noting that the Philippines also has such a treaty with Hong Kong and Thailand and two more are being worked out with Canada and Cuba.

Some 5,000 OFWs are said to be languishing in jail in various countries abroad, with 35 on death row, including about a dozen in Saudi Arabia.