How is Miriam Defensor-Santiago regarded by her colleagues in the Senate? No more than a sick joke.
This was obvious in the way they were chuckling and exchanging mischievous whispers while she ranted and roared and called them “gago” to their faces, while rationalizing her verdict of not guilty in the impeachment of ex-Chief Justice Renato Corona.
Perhaps, “rationalizing” is not the appropriate term. There was nothing rational in her ridiculous rant. No wonder none of the targets of her insults took any offense. There’s a term for it in Tagalog: “Hindi dapat patulan.”
But in cyberspace, Santiago succeeded famously in deserving a name change, from Defensor to Offensor. Thousands considered her so offensive, they signed on to the petition that I had written and Rodel Rodis of US Pinoys for Good Governance had circulated a couple of months ago, asking the International Criminal Court to reconsider her election as a judge.
As of March 12, over a thousand had signed the online-petition. But after May 29, the number of signatories soared to over 3,000. And as of June 4, it had reached 3,231 and growing.
People have wondered what prompted voters to elect her to the Senate. Perhaps she wasn’t as irrational when she first became a candidate. Perhaps she was actually impressive when she ran for president. No such luck.
Here’s what I wrote about her in in my column in Business World in Manila on October 30, 1991 – over two decades ago – when she visited San Francisco, as a potential presidential candidate:
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I had never met Mrs. Miriam Defensor-Santiago before. When the opportunity came last Friday, I honestly wanted to be impressed by her.
She has to be better than what I have given her credit for, I told myself. After all, if the surveys are to be believed, she is the leading contender for the presidency. And she has done this with no apparent Big Money backing or an entrenched political machinery.
Hey, anyone who can do this has got to be good.
The reason I had to debate the point with myself was because on at least two occasions, I had been critical of Mrs. Santiago. While I genuinely admired her for her fearless efforts to clean up CID, I thought she had a penchant for cheap grandstanding. Up to the time she got promoted to a cabinet position, I thought she lacked prudence, she had a tendency to telegraph her moves, preferred publicity mileage to results and, if she were a saleswoman, would handle objections by clobbering the prospective customer.
But when I was asked to emcee a press conference and a community reception organized for her last Friday by friends in the San Francisco Bay Area, I decided to erase any preconceptions I had of Mrs. Santiago. In the first place, we so badly need a fair hope of the Motherland, that anyone who appears to have the qualities required should be given a fair hearing.
A hearing Mrs. Santiago did get. It was a packed hall in which she spoke at the Miyako Hotel in San Francisco. She obviously had many admirers in the audience. They applauded every punchline she unleashed and this apparently inspired her to pull out all the stops.
You could not fault her avowed goal – to clean up the government and set the country on the road to political, social and economic reform. She was for God, Motherhood and Country. Applause.
She whaled away at the establishment, particularly the members of Congress: “Low IQ…There is no intelligent life in Congress.” Applause.
The other presidential candidates were not spared: “Akala mo kung sinong matatapang…sa asawa lang nila, takot na sila!” Applause.
She was contemptuous of the people at Customs and Immigration: “…ang hahaba ng buhok…mukhang criminal.” Applause.
The Commission on Appointments accused her of “every crime in the penal code except adultery” to keep her from being confirmed as Agrarian Reform Secretary, she said. She was framed, accused of planning to join a junta should a RAM coup succeed. She was dismissed without cause. She wept for a week. But she decided to go on and fight the good fight. Applause.
Some people tried to kill her. Remember the vehicular accident? That was no accident. It was an assassination attempt. But even while every part of her body was in pain, her youngest child told her, “Mother, don’t give up.” And so she did not. Applause.
She talked about the sad state of the Philippines. The budget deficit. The trade imbalance. The foreign debt. Graft and corruption. She would change that. She recited Invictus – “I am the captain of my fate, I am the master of my soul.” She would see to it that the Philippines would be like that, too. More applause.
Having heard her point out all the things that were wrong with the country, we were anxious to know how she would set them aright. But she ended her speech with no such rewarding revelations. Just more punchlines such as on no longer wanting to be the “Demi Moore of politics” but of now being “Terminator 2.”
Oh, well, perhaps she would explain her platform of government during the open forum. As written questions were turned in, two of her handlers screened them and allowed only the easy and polite ones. No hard ball questions.
But when asked how she proposed to cure the ills of the country and what her economic program was, she recited a hodge-podge of generalities and banal theories which made you wonder if she had been so busy perfecting her jokes, she had no time to ponder the serious issues.
There were no profound ideas. No deep insights. No ideological or philosophical perspectives. Not even inspiring rhetoric.
Oh, yes, she did refer the audience to a two-page document that spelled out her position on a number of issues: the bases, the insurgency, local autonomy, the debt problem and land reform. Except for the last, a subject she understandably has had more familiarity with, she said nothing new or substantive and, in some instances, she betrayed a surprising naivete.
Consider how she would handle the bases problem: “I am in favor of renegotiating the Military Bases Agreement every five years, for certain reasons…Our bargaining chip is the basis while that of the US is its economic aid. We need that aid desperately. To get that aid, we have to extend the Agreement, while building our economy. Once we can survive with reduced economic aid, we would be able to negotiate with the Americans from a position of strength. That time would be about five years down the road.”
They should be glad Mrs. Santiago isn’t a member of the Arab panel at the Middle East peace talks. You can almost see her calling a press conference to announce that the Palestinians would sign a treaty with the Israelis subject to renegotiation every five years, depending on whether or not Yasser Arafat’s forces will achieve a position of strength.
But where Mrs. Santiago turned out to be a total letdown was when she was asked why she so severely criticized the government but refrained from placing accountability on the President.
“I owe her a lot,” was her reply. Poof went the moral high ground.
George Nervez, a former Manila business editor and now publisher of a Bay Area paper expressed the disappointment of many: “Sa utang na loob din pala mauuwi ang usapan, hindi si prinsipyo.”
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