Enough ground to disqualify Miriam

Inquirer’s Oct. 22 editorial (“Privacy vs public interest”) gave us an inkling of a grim scenario should the tandem of Senators Miriam Santiago and Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos Jr. make it as president and vice president, respectively, in 2016. In light of the fact that Santiago’s lung cancer was stage 4 when diagnosed in 2014 and the statistics from the American Cancer Society that “only 1 percent of patients live beyond five years” after being diagnosed to be in that stage, only a miracle, indeed, could save Santiago and enable her to serve out her term as president until 2022.

Should Santiago, God forbid, die in 2019 or become permanently incapacitated much earlier, Marcos will become the president for the remainder of her six-year term; and as an incumbent running for the next full six-year term of the presidency, Marcos will have Malacañang  in the palm of his hand! Santiago is too smart not to have thought of that possibility. Apparently, she has grown very fond of the Marcoses and is urging the nation to let bygones be bygones and move on.

This is really cause for alarm on the part of those who stood up against martial law and the family who brought that scourge upon the entire nation.

But not to worry, because Santiago said she has been cured, is now cancer-free and will live longer. Should we believe that? She is a notorious liar. Need anyone be reminded about the time she said she would jump off a plane if her prediction of a win for all the senatorial candidates running under former President Joseph Estrada’s party in 2010 did not materialize? Fat chance! Well, it did not! To the flippant question as to when she planned to jump off a plane, she responded: “I lied. Hahaha!” That and many more countless instances when nobody took her seriously should be ground enough to disqualify her as a “nuisance”!

—RIMALDO PACIFICO, [email protected]