Honoring Miriam
MIRIAM Defensor Santiago was 71 when she passed on Sept. 29, 2016. She was on her third term as a senator, but she had been in the Cabinet before then, had won the Magsaysay Award for government service, and in 1992, she nearly became president of the Philippines.
Except for the tragic loss of a young son in college, she and her husband Narciso Santiago Jr. had a fairly blessed family life. She had friends in various places. The Quezon Service Cross, which President Rodrigo Duterte conferred on her posthumously on Monday, seemed a superfluity; she did not need it in her present address.
For some people their name or character alone is enough reward. I would put Miriam in that class. One could learn a lot from what she did in life.
Teaming up in ’98
Miriam and I were next-door neighbors and seatmates in the Senate. I was the Majority Leader and she was chairman of the committee on constitutional amendments and revision of laws. We were never partymates, but we managed to take the same position on many important issues. In 1998, we teamed up to join the presidential race with no illusion of winning but simply to contribute to the debate and enliven the contest.
Without any money, organization, or physical preparation for the race, we toured the country, with her as presidential candidate and me as her running mate. The crowds fell in love with Miriam as she delivered her unforgettable lines on Erap with her quaint Ilonggo accent.
In Iloilo City, her own bailiwick, a mammoth crowd had gathered at the main plaza to listen to our speeches. I spoke in Filipino and took great care to make myself understood by the least instructed in my audience. I highlighted Miriam’s best presidential qualities, at the risk of gilding over what was already well-known to every Ilonggo. Then Miriam followed.
I expected her to work her audience with the sheer power of her native tongue, but as she stood on the empty soda case that gave her a few inches’ additional height, she opened her arms in an extended gesture and began to orate—in English. I couldn’t believe it.
As thunderous applause greeted her, I realized the Ilonggos had come to watch an oratorical performance, and their intellectual idol was there to deliver it. It looked like she had been winning elocution contests all her life, and her fellow Ilonggos had always shared her triumphs. “We love her for this,” said a young matron, who listened to her spellbound, like most of the Ilonggos at the plaza.
The politician as intellectual
Miriam’s campaigners tried to present her as an intellectual par excellence. In all our rallies, a traveling “introducer” introduced her to the audience as “the most talented Filipino politician today, a scholar with a rating of 1.5 percent at the University of the Philippines, who took advanced studies at the University of Michigan, Harvard and Oxford, and then coming home, took up “progressive theology” at Maryhill School of Theology in New Manila, Quezon City.
This introduction normally went off without a hitch, except in Kidapawan, Cotabato, where the regular “introducer” failed to appear and we had to look for someone to take his place. We found a former lady district supervisor who readily agreed to do the job upon reading the prepared text.
So, after my usual speech at our makeshift stage, I called upon the lady to introduce our candidate. And she began: “Miriam is the most talented Filipino politician today. She is a scholar: at the University of the Philippines, she got a grade of 1.5 percent.”
Then the lady stopped: “What? 1.5? I got a flat 1 myself!”
It was totally unexpected. Miriam and all of us had to laugh.
Then the lady continued: “After UP, she studied in Michigan, Harvard and Oxford. These are already very far places. Then she went to Maryhill to study theology kuno. And now she’s running for president. Shouldn’t she be applying to become a nun instead?”
We could not throw her out of our open truck; Miriam and I had to laugh as though we enjoyed it, and the crowd laughed with us. After Miriam’s speech, she asked to speak to the funny lady again, but she had disappeared in the night.
Yet the incident showed us that Miriam was fully capable of laughing at herself.
Theological diversion
She had the same easy manner at the Senate. One day, she showed me a couple of big books on top of her desk. “Kit, these are my books on progressive theology,” she said. One book was by Karl Rahner, a German Jesuit priest and theologian who, along with Henri du Lubac, Hans Urs von Balthazar and Yves Congar, was one the most influential Catholic theologians of the 20th century, until some of his later works were criticized by the Holy See. The other book was by Hans Kung, a Swiss Catholic priest and theologian who rejects the doctrine of papal infallibility; his priestly faculties have been revoked and he is no longer allowed to teach Catholic theology.
To this, I replied, “From the little that I know about theology, there is only good theology and bad theology. There is no such thing as progressive theology.” And we shared a laugh.
Considering our inherent limitations, our campaign proved to be a success. But Estrada’s popularity could not be stanched. In one final rally by Erap’s main opponent, the candidate former Speaker Jose de Venecia tried to make fun of Estrada by talking about his well-known worldly qualities. “Would you like a womanizer to become your president?” the Speaker asked the crowd. “No,” they responded. “Would you like a drunk to be your president?” “No!!!” “A gambler?” “No!!!!” “A gangster?” “No!!!!!”
The Erap phenomenon
Obviously believing the crowd had just eliminated Estrada, de Venecia now asked the crowd, “Who then would you like to become your President?”And the crowd roared, “Erap, Erap, Erap!!!!!” Against this apparent madness, idealism or sanity had no fighting chance. We had to concede Erap’s phenomenal landslide.
But back in the Senate, we could not imagine how the nation would be governed under Erap. We had the choice of criticizing Estrada every inch of the way or helping him avoid unnecessary mistakes. We chose the latter path. Miriam took one step farther: She asked Erap (and myself) to stand as the spiritual “godparents” of her two young “daughters” whom she had adopted from Asilo de Molo, the orphanage in Iloilo.
Our critical collaboration with Estrada would be put to the test in October 2000, after Senate Minority Leader Teofisto Guingona, in a privilege speech, accused the President of graft and corruption and betrayal of public trust, on the basis of accusations aired by Ilocos Sur Gov. Luis “Chavit” Singson, alleging payoffs by the illegal gambling lords in Luzon and illegal kickbacks from the tobacco excise tax in Ilocos.
Investigating the President
As Senate majority leader, I had motu proprio referred Guingona’s speech to the blue ribbon committee, but under the Rules of the Senate the committee was supposed to meet and decide what to do with the speech before any hearing could be held. But without consulting its members, the chairman Sen. Aquilino Pimentel Jr. assumed the rights and prerogatives of the committee and immediately called for a hearing in violation of the rules. He also allowed Sen. Renato Cayetano as chairman of the justice committee to co-chair the hearing even though the matter had not been referred to that committee, which had no jurisdiction whatsoever over the matter at hand.
I wanted to stop the Pimentel hearing because under the Constitution, Congress or any of its committees has no power to investigate a sitting President unless and until he has been impeached; in which case he could be tried forthwith by the Senate. But the political move to oust Estrada was already in motion in and outside Congress, and none of the senators, including the Senate president, seemed to care that raw political passions had already taken over the Constitution.
Only Miriam showed real courage in supporting my call to uphold the Constitution. But we were a minority of two, against the entire deranged institution. There would be other instances after this, when this gladiator of the law would sacrifice popularity and prestige to fight for what was morally and constitutionally correct. This we saw during the Estrada impeachment trial and the Renato Corona impeachment trial. She did not always win the day, but she never gave up the courage and the right to fight for the future.
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