Miriam says Bongbong Marcos ‘ripe’ for vice presidency

Presidential candidate Senator Miriam Defensor-Santiago on Tuesday again defended Senator Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos Jr. from criticisms, saying that her running mate was ready become the country's vice president.

Santiago said Marcos had shown his competence in the Senate especially when he conducted a hearing on the controversial Bangsamoro Basic Law (BBL) which seeks to create an autonomous political entity in Mindanao.

“He tore apart the bill and asked relevant questions,” Santiago said at the Meet the Inquirer Multimedia forum in Makati City.

It can be remembered that Marcos rejected the Malacañang-proposed version of the BBL and instead filed a revised version of the bill claiming that the original version had many unconstitutional provisions.

“So I have nothing against him (Marcos). And when we were together in the Senate, he was a competent senator….I think that he is ripe to become vice president,” Santiago said.

Marcos has been topping the latest pre-election surveys of research firms Pulse Asia and Social Weather Stations.

Marcos is being criticized due to his refusal to apologize on behalf of his family over the human rights abuses and corruption committed during martial law under the dictatorship of his late father and namesake.

“I don’t think that the sins of the father should be visited on the children,” Santiago said.

“I don’t see him either in any video or photograph, actively participating at his young age when the Marcoses were announcing their various policies for our country,” she added.

“I think he just got caught up in the actions of the adults,” Santiago said.

Santiago admitted that before she decided to ask Marcos to be her running mate, she thought of the backlash she would be getting from human rights activists.

Santiago said Marcos’ intellectual competence and performance in the Senate made her stick to her decision to have Marcos as her running mate.

“Of course the thought of human rights activists protesting entered my mind immediately, but I know Bongbong from when he enrolled in the UP College of Law and I was a professor there,” Santiago said.

Santiago said that while Marcos chose not to finish his law studies, she had seen the senator’s intellectual brilliance. —Elizabeth Marcelo/NB, GMA News