On This Day - June 15, 1945 - Miriam Defensor Santiago was born in the city of Iloilo.
On June 15, 1945, Miriam Defensor Santiago, a public servant, a judge and legal scholar, and an outstanding Philippine senator, was born in the city of Iloilo.
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| (Senator Miriam Defensor Santiago) |
Miriam learned to take charge early in life. As a precocious child and the eldest of seven, she was running the household well before she was out of grade school. Her mother was a career woman who eschewed housework, so responsibility for the daily marketing, for supervising the family's untrained village maids, and for organizing her younger brothers and sisters to do their chores devolved upon her.
She also saw to it that the Defensor brood arrived promptly and well-scrubbed for weekly catechism classes and Catholic mass. Discipline was her mother's watchword, and young Miriam came to accept her authoritarian, achievement-oriented environment as "the natural working of the universe".
The Defensor family enjoyed high status but little wealth. Her father, Benjamin Defensor, was a lawyer and trial judge; her mother, Dimpna Palma, was a locally prominent educator. They circulated socially among Iloilo's elite, but the family budget had to be managed carefully to make ends meet, and, until Miriam was nine years old, the family occupied a modest house with a nipa (palm frond) roof. Miriam's playmates were equally poor; together they fashioned homemade toys from sardine cans and bottle caps and played happily in the sand. "We enjoyed the luxury of filth", Miriam says looking back.
Miriam Defensor was enrolled in the kindergarten of Lincoln School, later called Lincoln College, the private school where her mother was dean. She quickly demonstrated her insistence on fair play. When her kindergarten teacher's niece teased her one day by repeatedly erasing her work from the blackboard, Miriam lost patience, grabbed the girl's hair, and wrestled her to the floor. "My teacher never forgave me", she says, explaining why she graduated only sixth in her kindergarten class—one of the few times in her school career when she was not first.
Miriam continued in Lincoln until her mother quarreled with the school president and resigned. At grade five, therefore, Miriam entered La Paz Public Elementary School. There she took her turn minding the canteen at recess time. Students who did so were permitted to select one food item in lieu of pay; this delighted Miriam, who had no money to buy school snacks. As her reward she always chose banana cake, "because for me," she says, "it was the height of luxury."
Defensor was a voracious reader and, unable to afford books of her own, became a frequent patron of the United States Information Service (USIS) library in downtown Iloilo. Her deepest childhood anxiety, she says, was that "the world's book supply would run out and I would, in my middle age, have nothing left to read."
She also excelled at writing and, in the fifth and sixth grades, was student editor of the elementary school newspaper. When she entered Iloilo National High in 1957, she immediately bested all others in the examination to be editor of its paper, The Ilonggo. She held this post for all four high school years. The literary pages were also filled with her work, and as a freshman she won a school-wide spelling contest.
Defensor's precocious talents made her an instant high school celebrity. This was probably a good thing, she thinks, since it permitted her to stand out without arousing the jealousy of her friends— "it habituated them to the things I would do later". The latter included graduating as valedictorian and receiving the "All-Around-Girl Award".
Her mother had long since instilled in Miriam a drive to fill every moment with worthy activity. This drive propelled her into a life of super- achievement. But alongside her brilliance in school, and her diligent management of household and siblings, MIriam Defensor began to develop a deep spiritual life. This she did quite on her own, since neither parent was devout, and her father had virtually abandoned the Roman Catholic Church in anger over the high-handed behavior of some Spanish priests.
At Lincoln MIriam had been inspired by the serene voices and ethereal personalities of the teaching nuns. For a while she yearned to be one herself, but she remembers her father telling her, you wouldn't be serving God very much that way." She abandoned the idea but in high school began a lifelong habit of going to mass daily; she had, as she says, "the gift of faith."
In 1961, at age sixteen, Defensor entered the University of the Philippines, Iloilo campus (UP Visayas). Here she began to prepare for the study of law, since her father had advised her that she would never be able to support herself with literary pursuits. Political science the usual pre-law curriculum, was "embarrassingly easy".
She speeded through the four-year curriculum in three-and-a-half years so that she could devote her final semester to her love, literature.
As a college student, Defensor studied so efficiently that she had plenty of time left for other activities. From her freshman year onward she edited the college monthly magazine. She also competed in debating and, in summers, took outside courses in journalism and stenography. Having decided that she could write better stories than the ones she was reading, she proceeded to do so and began selling them to national magazines. In everything, she was brilliantly successful. She won award after award. For example in 1963 she won first prize in the university competitions in orator poetry, short stories, and essays. All the while she maintained excellent grades, so that when she graduated in 1965 she did so magna cum laude.
Miriam at the University of the Philippines
Early in her college career Defensor had undergone a prolonged, debilitating illness. From a stubborn case of amoebic dysentery, she slid into a serious bout of depression: "I felt that my physical energy were totally exhausted and that I had nothing left to give." Having been taught by her mother always to be doing something useful, she believed herself to be utterly worthless, and lay in bed for weeks on end and wept. She attributes her recovery to her maternal grandmother who patiently and lovingly nursed her back from the depression. By the time she recovered MIRIAM had missed all but one month of the school semester and was still so weak that she had to write holding her pencil with both hands. With gritty determination she took her final examinations—and earned the highest average in the college.
After university graduation Defensor went directly to the UP College of Law in Quezon City. In fact, she acknowledges, she studied law mainly "out of a sense of filial duty". At UP she found the law courses tedious, and she became scornful of the approach of most the professors, who simply "spoon- fed" the students, pointing out necessary readings, probable issues, and correct responses.
This was a boon for Defensor however. Her superior memory made the courses relatively easy. Still, she studied industriously. While others students read their law books once or twice, she read hers five times. Even so, she recalls, "it didn't take that much intellectual energy". Once again she found lots of time for other things.
Defensor was a sparkling success at UP, thereby breaking ground for other women students. She was the first female to win the Ferdinand Marcos Gold Trophy in debate and the first female editor-in-chief of UP's Law Register. In 1968 she became the first female editor-in-chief of the hallowed and influential Philippine Collegian as well. She was chosen corps sponsor for UP's Reserve Officer Training Corps and, in both 1968 and 1969, won the prestigious Vinzons Achievement Award for leadership. She also managed to find time to write short stories for the nation's leading weeklies. The money she earned from writing supplemented her competition-won scholarships so that she was virtually self-supporting in law school. One journalist referred to her as, "Super Girl at the UP Campus".
The mid-to-late 1960s were days of great political ferment at UP. A campus leader of high profile, Defensor nevertheless shunned the radicalism popular at the time in favor of the more moderate stance of the UP Student Catholic Action. "I never could really bring myself to hate the Americans as much as my rabid friends did", she says, attributing this to her childhood gratitude for the USIS library in her hometown. "The radical leftists always criticized me for being wishy-washy, but I just stood my ground." However, Defensor did join in objecting to Philippine military participation in the war in Vietnam and, as editor of the Philippine Collegian, she exposed UP involvement with the Dow Chemical Company in Vietnam-related chemical weapons research. Based on purloined university documents given to her secretly "in the dead of night", her editorial, "Dow is Here", revealed that the company had leased research facilities at the UP College of Agriculture at Los Banos. The editorial was reprinted verbatim in a popular Manila daily. Embarrassed, UP President Carlos Romulo tried to persuade Defensor to reveal her midnight source. She refused.
As an honor student at UP College of Law, Defensor was courted by Manila's most prestigious law firm, the law office of Alexander Sycip. Sycip entertained her in his lavish home, but he warned her that in his office one often had to work all night and through the holidays. Far from being put off, Defensor was impressed. But in the end she declined his offer. As the recipient of a largely state-funded education, Defensor felt obligated to repay the public's investment, and "the best way I could do it", she says, "was to work in government".
As it happened, she had also been approached by Secretary of Justice Juan Ponce Enrile. Upon graduation in 1969, she became his special assistant. When Enrile moved to the Defense Department Defensor stayed on under the new secretary of justice, Vicente Abad Santos. Abad Santos had been dean of the College of Law at UP, although Defensor had not known him there. For the next several years she would work in daily contact with Abad Santos, and he became her professional mentor.
Miriam met Narciso
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| Miriam and husband Narciso on their 40th wedding anniversary (Photo credit: http://raiisthename.blogspot.com/ ) |
They met one day when Defensor, arriving late to class because of a meeting with President Marcos, slipped quietly into the back of the room. There sat Narciso with his friends, gambling and rating the legs of their women classmates. "I was absolutely flabbergasted", she remarks, "because I always thought all students were like me, terrified of the professors ... in his case, he was having a grand time." Their romance was a case of the attraction of the opposites. Although she had many other beaus, Santiago was especially ardent. After finishing law school Miriam agreed to marry him.
On June 1970 their wedding took place. Senator Benigno Aquino, Jr., a friend and provincemate of Narciso, was the sponsor.
"My husband had very flexed ideas about marriage", Miriam recalls. He believed that a marriage must produce a child. So I accommodated him and my mother-in-law, who gave me a cash reward for my efforts. Their first child, a son, Narciso III, was born 13 April 1971. Defensor Santiago, who had added her husband's name to hers, took two months' maternity leave and then plunged back into her work at the Justice Department.
As special assistant to the secretary, Defensor Santiago now found herself very close to the center of her country's political life. Ensconced in a little room beside the secretary's office, she was assigned to do everything his regular staff members could not do, or could not do quickly enough. She researched materials, drafted speeches and memoranda, and prepared him for television interviews. Moreover, she often drafted speeches on law and justice for President Marcos.
Abad Santos monitored her work closely and, in academic fashion, graded it, noting "good," "very good," or "excellent," as the case might be. From Abad Santos, Miriam Defensor Santiago acquired her own, now famous, management style, which she candidly calls "headbashing." Miriam herself, was spared Abad Santos's tantrums, however; in fact, he had the much appreciated habit of complimenting her in public.
Defensor Santiago was not content to meet the demands of a full-time job, marriage, and motherhood. (In one of her short stories written about this time, a young lawyer says of herself, "Adrenalin runs in my veins.") In 1971 Miriam accepted an evening teaching position at Trinity College in Quezon City and also began to write law articles and legal textbooks.
Her most sensitive assignment as special assistant to Enrile had been to prepare a confidential memorandum for President Marcos on the advisability of declaring martial law. Locked away in a room, she and three others pored over their law books. "Our conclusion", she recalls, "was that the president was better advised not to avail [himself] of this drastic measure. We felt that the many crises that had surfaced at that time did not yet suffice to mandate such a dramatic action."
Two years passed before Marcos decided that the time had come: he declared martial law on September 21, 1972. Congress was dissolved and many of the president's political opponents were arrested. Abad Santos, who, like Defensor Santiago, was not personally in favor of the declaration, managed to resolve his doubts in favor of the president and cooperated. Following the lead of her mentor, Miriam "almost automatically adopted the same attitude." Like many others at the time, she nourished the hope that the urgent problems of the day could better be solved "in one bold stroke".
Marcos adopted a new constitution and declared it legal on the basis of a voice vote in villages around the country. Defensor Santiago's book, The 1973 Constitution, was an analysis of the new constitution for students and lawyers. Bowing to the strict censorship of the times, she refrained from expressing her doubts about the legitimacy of the document in print. However, with her law students at UP—including, at one point, the president's son—she held that the constitution had not been validly ratified. The Supreme Court justices who upheld the constitution, she said, "were suffering from a state of doctrinal confusion." Despite such reservations, she carried on as special assistant to Abad Santos, who had become minister of justice in the martial law government.
By 1974 her Saturday morning writing had resulted in a scholarly study on "The Archipelago Concept in the Law of the Sea" and a textbook entitled International Relations. She was also writing regular columns for the Philippine Daily Express on the subject of feminism. At that time she believed "there was an authentic need for a women's liberation movement," since "women were generally oppressed by the social and cultural system. Now that I am older," she says fifteen years later, "I don't think it is relevant or that it is cost efficient ... you alienate more people than you win over."
In the fall of 1974, with the blessing of Abad Santos, Defensor Santiago took a leave of absence from the ministry to study at the University of Michigan in the United States. She and her husband and son moved to Ann Arbor where, as a Dewitt Fellow, she began work toward a master's degree. (Her desire to study abroad dated from her disappointment with the UP College of Law. At that time, she had wondered, "how could U.S. Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes have achieved such stature if he went to a law school like mine?")
At Michigan, Defensor Santiago enrolled under Professor William W. Bishop, a distinguished legal scholar of international law. Under his rigorous but kindly tutelage, she honed her analytical powers and, for the first time, enjoyed law as an intellectual discipline. "Michigan is where I really went to school," she says. "It was like graduating from a fishbowl into the ocean." Bishop encouraged her to work for a doctorate, which she achieved by disciplined study during the academic year 1975-76. Her thesis was published in 1977 as Political Offenders in International Law, followed over the next decade by seven other articles on major legal questions.
In Ann Arbor, Defensor Santiago and her family joined in the social life of the local Filipino community. For parties she cooked rellenong bangus, a stuffed fish dish requiring painstaking preparation. Normally, she recognized, someone in graduate school did not take the time to do that, but her perverse streak compelled her to prove she could.
The Santiagos returned to the Philippines in 1976 and Miriam joined Abad Santos at the Ministry of Justice. When he moved to the Supreme Court three years later, she stayed at the ministry but, on occasion, helped him draft decisions. But when later in 1979 she was offered the post of legal officer with the United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) in Geneva, Switzerland, Abad Santos encouraged her to accept, and she did. Thus, with her son and "most competent maid", Defensor Santiago moved to Europe, while her husband—who was not permitted to work under Swiss law—remained in Manila. Her duties involved planning and attending conferences on refugee law and analyzing draft treaties affecting refugees. In 1980, however, her father developed terminal cancer and she returned to Manila to care for him; he died six months later. Nevertheless, she remained in Manila and became consultant to the UP Law Center. On October 2, 1981, her second child, Alexander, was born.
The young lawyer was then invited to become legal consultant at the Philippine Embassy in the United States, where President Marcos's brother-in-law was ambassador: "that was an invitation I couldn't refuse," she notes. When she reported for work, however, she found she had little to do but attend cocktail parties.
Quezon City Trial Court Judge
On leave in Manila a few months later, ostensibly to arrange to move her children and husband to Washington, Defensor Santiago learned of an impending nationwide reorganization of the judiciary. She seized the opportunity to fulfill a deathbed pledge to her father—"that I would do my best to serve my country as a trial judge, as he had." She sought an appointment as regional trial judge in Quezon City, the part of Metro Manila housing the legislature of the Philippines and many of the government offices.
This was considered a plum post. Appointments to trial judgeships anywhere in Metro Manila were generally awarded only to those who had served in the provinces for seven to ten years. In her case, she had not seen a courtroom in her entire adult life.
With characteristic forwardness, Defensor Santiago went directly to the chief justice of the Supreme Court, Enrique Fernando, who had once offered her a judgeship on Mindoro Island, and asked to be nominated for Quezon City. She requested Quezon City, she told him, so that she could continue teaching at the UP College of Law. ("Fernando was known to be very, very partisan in favor of UP.") Her mentor (now Associate Justice) Abad Santos was also enlisted to support her candidacy. Leaving nothing to chance, she sought the help of Juan Tuvera, an old, personal friend, who was President Marcos's executive assistant. It was Tuvera who approached Marcos with the appointment letter and who stood by and watched as the president signed it.
As a regional trial judge, Defensor Santiago heard major cases in criminal and civil law and handled special proceedings. In any given week, she might hear criminal cases ranging from bad checks through drug dealing, robbery, rape, and murder, and civil suits involving adoption, probate, or large claims between competing businessmen. The Philippine judicial system follows the European system in eschewing jury trials: the judge determines guilt or innocence and metes out sentences.
Defensor Santiago assumed her new post, determined to redeem the reputation of her country's judiciary. Philippine judges were then widely perceived to be corrupt—a perception she believes to have been all too accurate. She was determined "to prove that a party could go before me and rest assured that I would decide the case on the merits, that I would never receive a bribe to decide a case."
To emphasize this position, she established strict procedures limiting access to her chambers by litigants: "You can always tell me everything you want to tell me ... in the courtroom when the other party is present," she announced. Those who tried to bribe her, she threatened with citations for contempt of court. To make the point, she sent some immediately to jail, ordering them released, relieved but shaken, shortly thereafter. She admonished her staff against accepting or forwarding to her any gifts from interested parties. In a procedure manual she wrote, now used widely by other judges, she stated: "The first rule of this courtroom is no bribes, no extortion." To a judge who sent her unsolicited advice about one of her cases, she replied through his messenger that, "if he wants to decide my case, then I should take steps to have the case transferred to him." Rebuffing influences from all sides, Miriam Defensor Santiago eventually got her message across. After six months people stopped trying to influence her decisions.
Defensor Santiago'S most famous case pitted her stubborn independence against the government forces of Ferdinand Marcos. By presidential decree, criticizing the government in a public assembly was an offense punishable by death. And, as she points out, "an illegal public assembly was defined as a gathering of two or more people."
Following the assassination of Benigno Aquino, Jr., in August 1983, rallies, demonstrations, and strikes against the Marcos government proliferated. The government made selective arrests. During a military rally on the occasion of a jeepney driver's strike in 1985, several speakers who criticized the government—and in particular the First Lady—were rounded up by the police and military. They were held under a Preventive Detention Action Order issued by the president himself. Those arrested included film director Lino Brocka. When he and his companions requested release on bail, Defensor Santiago faced the question: "In a martial law situation, can a mere regional trial jury overrule the president of the republic ?"
Judges in the past had prudently sustained such arrests a denied bail. Defensor Santiago now experienced indirect intimidation from military men and anonymous death threats. She knew that a decision against the president might place her in jeopardy assassination ("at that time people had a mysterious habit of getting killed in vehicular accidents") or of being detained herself. Having scrupulously examined the issues, however, the judge ordered Brocka and the others released.
In the severely repressive climate of the times, her decision was sensational. Because of it, she became a hero to those opposing the Marcos regime, and she welcomed the publicity because "it represented an opportunity for me to demonstrate that the judicial system was working, that it was intellectually honest."
Aside from restoring integrity to the judiciary, Defensor Santiago was eager to restore efficiency. Among the problems she found was interminable delay. Delays occurred, in part, because there were too many litigious Filipinos. But aside from this, there was the habit of postponement of cases. Lawyers routinely appeared in court on their appointed days, only to request postponement, usually pleading "diarrhea" on the part of themselves, clients, or witnesses. (Lawyers were paid by clients whenever they appeared, even though the case was not brought to trial.) In many courtrooms this habit was so entrenched that the vast majority of cases scheduled to be heard on any given day would be postponed.
The young judge moved decisively to break this habit, refusing to grant postponements without real cause. In so doing, she says, "I created my own monster". The faster cases were tried, the sooner her decisions had to be rendered. She had to work doggedly to prevent a backlog and was under great personal stress. Nevertheless, she had a case disposal rate of fifty per month, one of the highest in Metro Manila. What is more, her meticulously constructed decisions were rarely appealed; three are pending before the Supreme Court. During this period, she received four major awards: Outstanding Woman in Iloilo in 1984, and in 1986 the National Police Commission Distinguished Achievement Award, the Lion's Club Award to Outstanding Women in the Nation's Service, and the prestigious Jaycee TOYM (Ten Outstanding Young Men) Award, opened to women the previous year.
As the crisis attending the later years of the Marcos regime deepened, Defensor Santiago carried on her personal battle for judicial integrity in her courtroom and addressed constitutional issues in her classrooms. But she adhered strictly to the prohibition barring judges from taking part in partisan political activities. Privately, she came to feel that the downfall and disgrace of Ferdinand Marcos was inevitable, but also rather sad. In her years in the Justice Department she had come to admire him as a truly gifted Filipino, "a man with the law at his fingertips ... and a masterful politician."
Commissioner, Commission on Immigration and Deportation
By the time of the February Revolution of 1986, however, Defensor 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.
Although President Aquino's husband had been a sponsor Miriam's wedding, the two women had never met. Defensor Santiago first came to the attention of Aquino as the Judge who stood up Marcos in the Lino Brocka trial. The president offered her several positions, but Defensor Santiago declined them all so that she could continue to work close to her home in Quezon City—she treasured having lunch with son Alexander—and to the UP campus where she was still teaching. Finally, faced with finding a new chief for the country's notoriously mismanaged Commission on Immigration and Deportation (CID), Aquino made a special appeal to Defensor Santiago to accept. Miriam likes to say that her first instinct was to say, "insanity does not run in my family!" But in a heart-to-heart talk with the president she relented, although not before express her preference for a Supreme Court justiceship. "I told her ... if you think this is the best way for me to help you, so be it. It's my duty to accept."
On January 4, 1988, the "fighting judge" of Quezon City took charge of the CID and showed how a "traditionally corrupt government agency can be reformed."
With breathtaking decisiveness, she threw out the fixers, transferred suspected bribe-takers from sensitive positions, and filed administrative charges against corrupt employees. She swept away corruption-breeding disorder and red tape. She declared war on crime syndicates and exposed drug pushers, pedophiles, gunrunners, and passport forgers.
During this time, Miriam Defensor Santiago received the 1988 Ramon Magsaysay Award for Government Service.
Secretary, Department of Agrarian Reform
Impressed with her performance in the CID, President Aquino appointed Santiago as Secretary of Agrarian Reform in 1989. Miriam lost no time in overhauling the department's policies. She instituted three major policies in agrarian reform.
- First, to concretize the basic philosophy of the Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Law (CARL), she stressed that all doubts on the inclusion of lands in the Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program (CARP) should be resolved in favor of inclusion.
- Under her term, the DAR policy was to prefer the contract-growing principle over the lease-back arrangement, particularly with respect to corporate farms or plantations. Under the lease-back arrangement, the tiller would end up as the lessor who receives rent and remains a mere laborer of multinational corporations. In contrast, the principle of land to the tillers would still be practiced under the contract-growing scheme. The contract grower would have a say on how much would be produced and in marketing the produce.
- Most important, under her term, the DAR shifted its land acquisition thrust from the voluntary offer-to-sell (VOS) scheme to compulsory acquisition of lands to hasten the pace of the CARP. The VOS scheme implemented during her predecessor's term was riddled with anomalies and corruption. Miriam assumed her duties when the DAR was being rocked by the highly controversial and fraudulent Garchitorena land deal. The former agrarian reform secretary was forced to resign due to the scandal. One of Miriam's first acts as agrarian reform secretary was to halt all land transactions under the VOS method, and order the investigation of all past and pending transactions.
Miriam's boldest move as agrarian reform secretary was to ask President Aquino to inhibit herself from deliberations of the Presidential Agrarian Reform Council (PARC) on the stock distribution scheme of Hacienda Luisita. The president was the chairperson of PARC, while Santiago was its vice chairperson.
The Cojuangcos availed themselves of the CARP's stock-transfer option scheme allowing the President's family to distribute shares of stocks to the Cojuangco corporation instead of distributing land titles from the estate. Critics decried the scheme, saying it allowed the owners to retain control of the estate.
Miriam endorsed to Congress an alternative "people's agrarian reform program" (Parcode) drafted by the Congress for People’s Agrarian Reform, a coalition of farmers' groups including the militant Kilusang Magbubukid ng Pilipinas (KMP) and the conservative Federation of Free Farmers (FFF). She said the Parcode was a "superior piece of legislation" and "rational, highly logical, and consistent". The Parcode put land retention limits to five hectares. Under the CARL, the retention limit was 11 hectares, which virtually exempted 75% of all agricultural lands from land reform. Miriam’s endorsement was hailed by farmers' organizations.
Santiago ran for President
After President Corazon Aquino declared her intention not to seek another term in the 1992 elections, Santiago ran for president, seeking Aquino's endorsement. She founded the People's Reform Party (PRP) as her vehicle, inviting Ramon Magsaysay, Jr. to be her running mate. The party did not have any other candidates at the national level and endorsed only two local candidates Alfredo Lim and Lito Atienza for the position of mayor and vice mayor of Manila.
Aquino decided instead to back her Secretary of National Defense Fidel V. Ramos in his bid for the presidency.
Santiago was leading the canvassing of votes for the first five days. Following a string of power outages, the tabulation concluded, and Ramos was declared President-elect.
Santiago filed a protest before the electoral tribunal citing the power outages during the counting of votes as evidence of massive fraud. Her election protest was eventually dismissed. Many believed that this election was marred by fraud because of the nationwide power outages.
The public outrage over the presidential results prompted Newsweek to feature her and her rival on the cover with the question:
"Was the Election Fair?"
In another cover story, Philippines Free Press magazine asked:
"Who's the Real President?"
Senator of the Philippines
Santiago ran for the Senate of the Philippines in 1995 elections, again as a candidate of her own PRP. She was elected to the senate and served as a senator from 1995 to 2001. As a Senator, Santiago became a vocal critic of the Ramos Administration. She filed the most number of bills in the Senate during her term. Santiago again ran for president in the 1998 elections and invited former Marcos crony Francisco Tatad to be her running mate against Pwersa ng Masang Pilipino candidate Joseph Estrada but lost by a landslide. After losing the election, Santiago returned to the Senate. In 2001 Santiago ran for reelection but lost.
In 2004, Miriam won her second term as senator. In late 2006, a group of her former students nominated her for Chief Justice of the Supreme Court. All candidates were requested by the Judicial and Bar Council, the nominating body, to submit an application and bio-data and undergo an interview. No one showed up but Santiago. Deeply humiliated, she threw a series of public tantrums and tried to save face by saying she would give way to the senior associate justice, because at age 61 she was "too young for the post".
Santiago ran for reelection in the Philippine Senate election in 2010 under the her PRP and as a guest candidate for six different political parties. She finished third among other senatorial candidates, she garnered more than 17 million votes.
In 2012, Santiago proved to be the most important personality in the Impeachemt trial of the Chief Justice Renato Corona. She, along with fellow Senators Joker Arroyo and Ferdinand Marcos, Jr., were the only senator-judges to vote to acquit the chief magistrate.
Also in 2012, Santiago sponsored two controversial bills: Sin Tax Reform Act of 2012 (with Senator Franklin Drilon) and the Responsible Parenthood and Reproductive Health Act of 2012 (with Senator Pia Cayetano).
Judge of the International Criminal Court
On December 12, 2011, Senator Santiago was elected to a nine-year tenure as judge of the International Criminal Court (ICC) based in The Hague, Netherlands. Although she is currently listed as a judge by the ICC, she has yet to take her oath and assume her office there. Santiago was absent during the March 9, 2012 oath-taking of new judges due to medical reasons, citing her elevated blood pressure and bone marrow aplasia, but later went on to reveal that she had written the president of the ICC to request that she be the last of the six newly elected judges to take her post to allow her more time to fulfill her responsibilities as a Philippine senator.
Senator Miriam Santiago died on Thursday 8:52 in the morning, September 29, 2016.
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Defensor Santiago, Miriam. The Archipelago Concept in the Law of the Sea Problems and Perspectives. Makati: Development Academy of the Philippines, 1982.
The Archipelago Concept in the Law of the Sea." Philippine Law Journal 49 (1974).
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Paunlaqul, Milagros D. "CID Boss Cracks Down on Corrupt NAIA Personnel." Journal (Manila). 23 June 1988.
"CID Busts International Swindling Ring." Journal (Manila), 20 February 1988.
Pelaez-Marfori, Berry. "I Was Born to Raise Hell." Chronicle on Sunday (Manila). 8 May 1988.
Republic of the Philippines. Commission on Immigration and Deportation. Accomplishment Report. January to August 1988.
"SC Upholds CID on Pedophiles." Manila Bulletin, 20 July 1988.
Severino, Horacio. "The Wrong Way to Fight Aids." Chronicle on Sunday (Manila), 10 April 1988.
"Tough Job, Tough Lady." Asiaweek, 1 April 1988.
Various interviews with and letters from persons acquainted with Miriam Defensor Santiago and her work. )
"I can not take refuge in Japan at this critical moment when my people are in distress. I will stay in my Motherland to the last."