SEN. MIRIAM Defensor Santiago has always confounded me. When she first burst into the limelight, as a judge who released two accused subversives toward the close of martial law, she gained accolades for her courage in challenging the Marcos regime. She wrote a column for a weekly magazine and gained my respect and admiration not just for her humor and wit, but also for her willingness to challenge stereotypes and assumptions.
And then she won a Senate race and made a name for herself with her put-downs of fellow senators and political rivals. Always a magnet for media attention, she was a favorite of reporters, having seemingly mastered the art of the zinging sound bite. At the Senate hearing on the impeachment charges against former President Erap, she publicly chastised two women sitting in the gallery who, she claimed, were smirking at her comments.
She sniped against Sen. Raul Roco and anti-Erap witnesses, but stood her ground even in the face of growing public clamor for a conviction.
But then during the deliberations on the Reproductive Health Law and before then, on the Magna Carta of Women, she showed herself to be an articulate champion; and despite what some people said of her, she could be counted on to deliver ringing defenses of the rights of women and their struggle for reproductive rights.
Throughout her stint in the Senate, people said that her colleagues in the chamber most feared being interpellated by her. She would ask the most incisive, sharpest and difficult questions. She came prepared, and surviving a questioning by Miriam meant a legislator could easily count on the passage of the measure.
So that’s Miriam for you, by turns feisty and abrasive, arrogant and fearless, but also a legislator of substance who refused to accept mediocrity and a reliance on popularity on the part of her fellow senators. Her political loyalties may have been questionable (not just Erap but also Gloria Arroyo), her sanity questioned, her grandstanding deplored, but she was respected and feared.
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SO that’s why when she announced her health problems—chronic fatigue syndrome, lung cancer—I for one felt a twinge of sympathy and, yes, sadness.
She is such a vital spark of controversy that she even found time to write (perhaps with the help of a ghostwriter) two (now three) best-selling books that were really nothing more than funny one-liners that she had lately taken to sprinkling her speeches with, interspersed with cartoons and “serious” excerpts from her talks.
But by and large, people, including me, thought she was taking a slow, lingering exit from political life, given her health issues. And no one could blame us, or her. It was about time she was given the space and opportunity to leave a hectic political life and recover and recuperate, and enjoy her remaining days in peace and quiet.
Still, we should have known better. Leave it to senadora Miriam to surprise us once more, announcing that not only was she NOT leaving politics after receiving some good news about her illness, but also that she was making a third stab at the presidency. And then, shocker of shockers, that she had chosen, of all people, Sen. Bongbong Marcos as her running-mate.
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WHAT are we to make of the senadora?
She appears to be serious this time, trooping in a flaming red Filipiniana outfit to the Comelec offices to file her candidacy, and issuing even more provocative statements, including a sturdy defense of the Marcos reign.
There are those who point out that, despite her brave judgment on the subversion case early in her judicial career, Miriam was never really part of the sturdy band of oppositionists, the likes of the recently-passed Sen. Joker Arroyo, who risked their lives, professions and reputations to confront the Marcos regime.
She also, time and again, defied expectations for her to take an activist stance, proving that rhetoric does not a human rights champion make.
One seeks to make sense of this latest adventure of Senator Miriam. Is this really how she plans to bring her career in public service to a close? Is this how she wants to be remembered?
I suspect she doesn’t really care, since what other people thought of her never did seem to concern her much. But surely she is concerned about how her legacy will be weighed, for one doesn’t invest in politics without an eye on the future, or the judgment of history.
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A FRIEND of mine, Dr. Sylvia Estrada Claudio, a psychiatrist who once headed the UP Center for Women’s Studies (she is chair of Likhaan, an NGO where I sit on the board), has already called for the senator to publicly disclose her medical records. Citing studies that show that people diagnosed with Stage 4 lung cancer, from which Miriam claims to have been “cured,” have on average only a few months left to live, Dr. Claudio wants to know if Miriam has told voters that she may only be paving the way for a new Marcos presidency in a few months’ time.
Of course, Senator Miriam may have “misdiagnosed” herself; perhaps she was not afflicted with lung cancer but some other slow-acting cancer, or that it hadn’t reached Stage 4. Whatever the story, whether it was told for dramatic effect or if, as Dr. Claudio suggests, a genuine miracle occurred, Miriam should follow the call for full disclosure if only to help us make better choices next year. After all, it isn’t just her credibility at stake here, but all our futures as well.