THE POWER OF TWO : 2016 PRESIDENTIABLE MIRIAM DEFENSOR-SANTIAGO

3:13:00 PM

How do you select the most deserving persona to be elected as the 16th President of the Philippines? Do you know who you’re voting for?

In less than two months, the entire nation will be voting for the next honourable ruler of the country — the leader who continues in making good policy decisions for our country’s future for the next six years after the elections.

You are now probably contemplating to know more about the most interesting bits on these ‘presidentiables’, and there is still much to know about their platforms. Since we don't know them on a personal level, as Filipinos, we must do our stint by knowing their past and present notion on issues that affects us as a nation.

Comelec declared a 90-day campaign period and the countdown has just started for the 2016 Philippine elections slated for May 9. Whether you already have a Presidential candidate in mind or not, it’s very important to research about them.

In this article, I give you a ‘precis’ at the profiles of the two women contenders for the presidential race in the Philippines this year namely Senator Grace Poe- Llamanzares as an independent candidate and Senator Miriam Defensor Santiago of the People’s Reform Party.

This article is compiled not only to give incentive for the ‘presidentibles’ to be further known, but it would also educate and encourage voters to use a new norm in voting based on morals and principles of the candidate. We need someone who can identify ideas and who can really put those ideas into action.

We can prepare; we can think and we can focus; and make sure that your vote is a precise vote.

Please choose wisely and vote responsibly.

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Senator MIRIAM DEFENSOR SANTIAGO
Age: 70
Education:

1976 Doctor of Juridical Science (Barbour Scholar and DeWitt Fellow), University of Michigan. Requirements (except publication), fulfilled in six months, with “A” average.
1989 Doctor of Laws, honoris causa, Centro Escolar University; Doctor of Laws, honoris causa, Xavier University, Ateneo de Cagayan de Oro; Doctor of Humane Letters, honoris causa, University of San Agustin

1975 Master of Laws (DeWitt Fellow), University of Michigan, with “A” average
1996 Master of Arts in Religious Studies, Maryhill School of Theology, Quezon City
1969 Bachelor of Laws, cum laude, University of the Philippines
1965 Bachelor of Arts in Political Science, magna cum laude, University of the Philippines

Political Background Highlights:

She’s widely recognized as one of the brainiest in government today—and with her trenchant words which divided into equal parts eloquence, wit, and barb. In December 2011, she was elected by States Parties to Rome Statute as Judge of the International Criminal Court for nine-year term. Santiago was the First Filipino and first Southeast Asian from a developing state to be thus elected but she waived the ICC privilege, after she was diagnosed with lung cancer, stage 4 (last stage). After weeks on new medication, doctors found her cancer has regressed. She returned to work in the Philippine Senate. She served in all three government branches; authored academic textbooks, an autobiography, a dictionary, and even two bestselling humour books; received honours including the Magsaysay Award; and eaten death threats for breakfast.

She also worked in the Regional Trial Court and was appointed as the youngest judge in Metro Manila. During the regime of President Corazon Aquino, she was appointed as the commissioner of immigration and deportation. In the same year, she was promoted as the secretary of the Secretary of Agrarian Reform under the cabinet of the former first lady President. In the 1995 election, she won as the first elected senator. She had also become the chairwoman of the of the foreign affairs committee of the Commission on Appointments.

Furthermore, she had authored some of the laws filed such as Reproductive 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, Archipelagic Baselines Act of 2009.

Now, she is making her third run for President despite her defeats in 1992 and 1998 and still a prominent figure in important national matters Miriam served 10 years in the Department of Justice and later to be the Legal Officer of the UN High Commissioner to help the refugees in Geneva, Switzerland.

Senator, Republic of the Philippines   1995 - 2016
• Chair, Committee on Foreign Relations
• Chair, Committee on Constitutional Amendments and Revision of Codes
• Chair, Joint Congressional Oversight Committee
on Automated Election System
• Chair, Joint Congressional Oversight Committee on the
Overseas Absentee Voting Act
• Chair, Commission on Appointments, Committee on Foreign Affairs
• Chair, Legislative Oversight Committee on the Visiting Forces Agreement
• Chair, Committee on Economic Affairs
• Chair, Special Oversight Committee on Economic Affairs

Senior Partner, Defensor Santiago Law Firm   1992 – Present
Opinion Columnist, “Gadfly,” Today newspaper   1994
Presidential runner-up (Ranked close No. 2 in scandalous canvassing), 1992 Philippine presidential elections 1992
President and founder, People’s Reform Party   1991 – Present
Chair and founder, Movement for Responsible Public Service   1990 – Present
Secretary of Agrarian Reform • Chair, Presidential Agrarian Reform Council Executive Committee
1989

Commissioner of Immigration and Deportation
Member, Board of Directors:   1988 – 1989
• Public Estates Authority 1988 – 1989
• Philippine Retirement Authority 1988 – 1989
• Ninoy Aquino International Airport Authority 1988 – 1989
• Land Bank of the Philippines 1989

Campaign Slogan:
“Stupid is not forever!”
Aangat Tayo Kay Miriam Defensor Santiago

Political Platform:
“I commit to invest in people, in public infrastructure and in political institutions. I commit that the Philippine economy will grow faster than ever before, that it will be truly inclusive by making sure that real incomes of workers will increase over time. We will achieve the goal of higher and sustained economic growth by investing heavily in public infrastructure. Our roads, bridges, urban transit systems, airports and seaports are crumbling. We need to build them up at par with, if not better than, our ASEAN neighbors. We need to prepare our people for a more modern, more competitive global economy. We need to educate them, take care of their health, and feed them so they will become productive members of a growing work force.”

•   A clean and courageous government
•   Continuing the Conditional Cash Transfer Program, but also bring in local governments for efficiency and plugging the program’s leaks.
•   Reforming the 19-year old Philippine tax system
•   Heavy investments in public infrastructure such as: a modern, international airport, an entirely new railway system from Manila to Sorsogon, an integrated urban transit system in Metro Manila with lines reaching urban communities in Bulacan, Rizal, Cavite and Laguna
•   Investments in people through education, health services, and food security.
•   A vibrant and more productive agriculture hand in hand with a strong manufacturing. Agricultural investments for the productivity in enhancing projects such as irrigation, farm-to-market roads, water impounding facilities, post-harvest facilities, new seed varieties and research and development.
•   Strengthening political institutions, and passing law that allows the use of public funds on dominant political parties.
•   Certifying the passage of the Freedom of Information Act. Pending
•   Fight against safety threats and the illegal drug trade.

INTEGRITY:
It was Senator Santiago who in effect started the national plunder investigation among top government officials. As per COA records, Santiago’s “pork barrel,” also known as PDAF, was never fouled up by any kickback controversies. She has been called the incorruptible lady, the platinum lady, the tiger lady, the dragon lady, the iron lady of Asia, the queen of popularity polls, and the undisputed campus hero. Millions of her fans, best known her for the unique brand of charismatic leadership that media likes to call “Miriam Magic.”

“As president, I will support the recent Supreme Court decisions on Priority Development Assistance Fund, more popularly known as pork barrel, and the Disbursement Acceleration Program. They espouse the appropriate roles of the President and Congress in the use of public funds. The decisions ought to be supported, not resisted. Freedom of information is also an important tool to promote public accountability. I will also restore meritocracy in government. Political parasites, incompetents, and unproductive workers will have no place in my administration. I will recruit the best, the most competent, the most experienced, the most honest men and women to assist me run my administration.”

COMPETENCE:
One magazine addressed her “Supergirl at the State University.” She is the public official whose face has graced the highest number of magazine covers of famous international publications, including Time, the New York Times, and the Herald-Tribune. Santiago relates when she was the Immigration Commissioner, she was given the Ramon Magsaysay Award for Government Service, also called the Asian Nobel Prize, with a citation for “bold and moral leadership in cleaning up a graft-ridden government agency. At the Commission on Immigration and Deportation, her work manifested in three levels: physical, practical, and theoretical. The physical level was represented by the newly constructed Alien Registration Center, with its brisk workflow posters, neat glass partitions, and full illumination. The practical level was epitomized by the internecine battles with the alien criminal syndicates. And the theoretical level was typified by the three printed manuals issued successively in my first semester as Commissioner.

The booklets, all in yellow covers, were the Immigration Manual, Deportation Rules of Procedure, and Legalization Program. She conceptualized the first and wrote the other two. Each one is only a thin volume, but together they served to open wide the doors to the erstwhile sanctum sanctorum of the graft syndicates—the practical methodology of Philippine immigration law. The manuals abolished secrecy; and since there were no more secrets to sell the uninitiated, the network of graft collapsed.

As trial court judge, she was proud to have disposed of 50 to 80 cases a month, the highest number in Metro Manila after the national judicial reorganization of 1983.

“You see, at that time, all RTC judges in Quezon City were each given an initial case load of 500 old, pending cases. A veteran judge thus had an advantage over a new judge, for the former enjoyed the prerogative of choosing the 500 cases that he would retain, and of disposing for re-raffle all the other cases clogging his docket. In other words, after a reorganization, a new judge—like I was at that time—gets 500 old cases that nobody else wants. In addition to an initial or inherited caseload, in Quezon City in 1983, each RTC judge received on the average fifty new cases each month. To achieve my personal goal of bringing my total caseload to less than 200 cases in all, I imposed a no-postponement policy. On my first day as a trial judge, I ordered the clerk of court to put up inside the courtroom a bog poster that began, “Starting (the next month) this branch will NOT grant postponements. The poster explained that I would schedule every day not the customary 15 or 20 cases, but only five cases, and each one had a definite time slot consisting of 40 minutes. Each time a lawyer would try to wangle a postponement, I would simply point to the poster and order him to proceed, on pain of being cited for contempt. If he pleaded that the transcript of stenographic notes were not yet available, I promptly offered to lend him my own handwritten notes of the previous hearings. If the lawyer was absent, I ordered another to take his place as counsel de oficio.”

ENERGY & ABILITY TO EMPOWER:

Santiago has filed the highest number of bills, and authored some of the most important laws in the country. Her most important pending bills are: 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. She has been fearless in exposing and naming notorious criminal suspects in legislative investigations, particularly in naming ‘jueteng’ lords and illegal logging lords.

Miriam Santiago remains hopeful that good governance will triumph to sustain the concerns of the Filipinos overseas. She filed Senate Bill No. 2739, which seeks to amend R.A. No. 8042, the Migrant Workers and Overseas Filipinos Act, by expanding the legal assistance fund managed by the Department of Foreign Affairs. If amended, the law will guarantee that the legal assistance fund shall at all times be made available from the time of arrest or charging up to the trial, and at all levels of appeal, for migrant workers facing charges with the prescribed penalty of life imprisonment or death.

“Filipinos would not wish to leave their loved ones to work abroad. They are forced to leave the country by the lack of decent jobs. The ultimate solution is job creation, but as the government works toward that goal, we must protect the welfare of those we call modern-day heroes.”

   Santiago’s administration will target:
•   An average real GDP growth of 7.25 percent from 2017 to 2022;
•   An average inflation rate of 3.0 percent from 2017 to 2022;
•   A decline in unemployment rate to 5.0 percent by 2022;
•   To reduce extreme poverty will to 20 percent by 2022;
•   Extreme hunger will be totally eradicated by 2022; and
•   The rate of homelessness will be cut by 25 percent by 2022.

“My administration will bequeath to the next President a better and stronger nation than what I will inherit from this administration. In 2022, I will turn over to my successor a nation that is more prosperous, a people more united and prouder of their leaders, and political institutions that are more stable.”

*Photos courtesy of MDS Media Bureau Public Affairs and Media Relations Officers Office of Senator Miriam Defensor Santiago