Claiming victory over cancer, Miriam goes for the presidency anew

If Senator Miriam Defensor Santiago pushes through with her plan to run for president in 2016, it will be the third time that she will seek the highest elective post in the country.

She will also do it after, as she claimed, defeating Stage Four lung cancer that kept her from attending sessions of the Senate but not from participating in inquiries which she felt strongly about.

Santiago first ran for president in 1992. She claimed to have been cheated after leading the canvassing for days before Fidel Ramos was eventually declared the winner of the presidential elections.

She also ran for president in 1998 but only finished seventh behind the winner Joseph Estrada and five other candidates.

Elected senator in 1995, Santiago ran for re-election in 2001 but lost. She, however, returned to the Senate when she won a seat in 2004 and re-election in 2010.

Santiago, 70, might have lost twice in the presidential elections, but the three-term senator already won awards in the public service even before she entered politics.

She has served in all the branches of government—judicial, executive, and legislative and won several awards including the Ramon Magsaysay Award for Government Service in 1988.

After graduation from law school with honors, Santiago refused to join a private law firm and instead served as special assistant to then Justice Secretary Juan Ponce Enrile and his successor Vicente Abad Santos as a payback to the public’s investment as she was an alumna of the University of the Philippines.

She also worked as a legal officer at the United Nations High Commission for refugees in Geneva, Switzerland where planned and attended conferences on refugee law and analyzed draft treaties affecting refugees.

Santiago was later appointed as a judge at the Quezon City Regional Trial Court where she became known for releasing arrested anti-Marcos rallyists, including director Lino Brocka, which was considered a bold move during the Martial Law.

She also pushed for the efficient and speedy handling of cases.

Her biography posted on the Ramon Magsaysay Awards website said, “By the time of the February Revolution of 1986, however, Santiago was seen as an exception in Marcos's corrupt government. She seemed to represent the spirit of integrity that many Filipinos hoped to see restored under the new president, Corazon Aquino.”

Aquino appointed Santiago as head of the then graft-ridden Commission on Immigration and Deportation. Her mandate was “to clean up” the commission which she did." Her work earned her the Ramon Magsaysay Award in 1988.

Santiago also served as Secretary of Agrarian Reform in 1989.

Santiago ran but lost in the 1992 presidential elections. Up to this day, Santiago maintains that she was cheated in her first presidential elections.

She then ran for Senate in the next elections in 1995 and served until 2001. She claimed that she was the  first senator in Philippine political history to decline a pork barrel allocation, on the ground that it was unconstitutional because it lacked an appropriation law.

Santiago also exposed building contractors who solicited public works projects from Congress members, with a promise to give an advance ten percent kickback.

Santiago, however, lost her bid for a second term in Senate in 2001. She ran again in 2004 and 2010 and won in both elections.

She remains to be the senator with the most number of bills and resolutions filed.

Among the laws she either co-authored or sponsored were the Republic Health Act of 2012, Sin Tax Law, Climate Change Act of 2009, Renewable Energy Act of 2008, Philippine Act on Crimes against International Humanitarian Law, Magna Carta of Women, Cybercrime Act of 2012, and Archipelagic Baselines Act of 2009.

Some of her pending bills include her versions of the anti-dynasty bill; an act institutionalizing an age-appropriate curriculum to prevent the abduction, exploitation, and sexual abuse of children; anti-epal bill; freedom of information bill; and magna carta for Philippine internet freedom.

Santiago was also the first Filipino and the first Asian from a developing country, to be elected in the United Nations as judge of the International Criminal Court.

Unfortunately, her chronic fatigue syndrome forced her to waive the privilege of being an ICC judge.

In June 2014, she announced that she was diagnosed with lung cancer, but months later said that the cancer has regressed. A year later, Santiago said that "cancer growth in her left lung has been arrested.”

Santiago has always been an achiever. She was class valedictorian at all levels – elementary, high school, and college. She earned the degrees Bachelor of Arts, magna cum laude; and Bachelor of Laws, cum laude, from the University of the Philippines.

She also went abroad and earned the graduate degrees of Master of Laws, and Doctor of Juridical Science, from the University of Michigan, one of the top three law schools in the United States. She finished the academic requirements for the degree Master of Arts in Religious Studies, at the Maryhill School of Theology.

At the University of Michigan, she was a Barbour Scholar and DeWitt Fellow. She finished her master’s degree in only one year, and her doctorate in only six months.

Santiago also has postdoctoral studies in Oxford University, Cambridge University, Harvard University, University of California at Berkeley, Stanford University, and Academy of Public International Law at the Peace Palace (the seat of the International Court of Justice), at The Hague, Netherlands. —NB, GMA News