The Senator in the News

SANTIAGO SLAMS JBC, SC AFTER BEING DROPPED FROM SHORTLIST

SENATOR Miriam Defensor-Santiago is well-known as someone who does not mince words but on Monday she hit a new low.

After learning that she had been removed from the shortlist of candidates for Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, she lost no time lambasting the Judicial and Bar Council (JBC) which had removed her name from contention, called the present high court members idiots and corrupt, and said she was spitting in the face of retiring Chief Justice Artemio Panganiban and his mentor, former senator Jovito Salonga, for conspiring against her.

In a bright yellow dress, Santiago blew into the Senate like Supertyphoon “Reming” on Monday, and delivered a scathing privilege speech attacking the JBC and the Supreme Court.

“I’m not angry, Mr. President, I am not angry,” she began, addressing Senate President Manuel Villar.

“I am irate. I am foaming at the mouth. I’m homicidal. I’m suicidal. I’m humiliated, debased, degraded. And not only that, I feel like throwing up to be living my middle years in a country of this nature. I am nauseated. I spit in the face of Chief Justice Artemio Panganiban and his cohorts in the Supreme Court.”

Only minutes earlier, Santiago, unaware the JBC had decided to drop her nomination, learned of it when the Inquirer contacted her while she was in her car on the way to the Senate.

“Is that so?” she said.

“I will say that I resent it very deeply. I take it very personally and I will see to it that while I remain in public office that every member of the JBC shall eventually be held to account for their partisanship. For this reason, I will participate in the Con-ass (constituent assembly) for the main purpose of abolishing the JBC for corruption,” she told the Inquirer.

She also made a manifestation on the floor that the Supreme Court’s budget be reduced to its 2005 level.

Santiago said Panganiban was the “mastermind of this thinly veiled plot” to exclude her from the nomination process because she was an “intimate political ally of the President.”

She challenged the SC, which she charged had manipulated the JBC, to point to any provision in the Constitution that said an outsider could not be appointed Chief Justice.

“Wala naman sa loob ng ating saligang batas, saan nila kinuha ang kapal ng mukha nila na magsabi na ang mga sarili lang nila ang maaring Chief Justice ng korte suprema (Where in the law of the land did they get their thick-skinned idea that only Supreme Court justices could be Chief Justice)?” she said.

Santiago said Panganiban was against her because his former boss, Salonga, was against President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo and wanted her [Santiago] out of the picture for being the Chief Executive’s ally.

She said Panganiban had even ordered her to waive her public interview by the JBC to save face for the five incumbent justices who had refused to submit to the interviews.

She said Panganiban had asked Justice Secretary Raul Gonzalez to tell her to tell the media that she was waiving the interview.

“This Chief Justice, this twisted mind, sent Secretary Gonzalez to me so that their colleagues in the Supreme Court would not be subjected to the scrutiny of the public,” she said.

Santiago also questioned Panganiban’s own qualifications to be Chief Justice, saying that he was also an outsider.

“Pinagmamalaki ng Chief Justice na ito na naging bar topnotcher siya. Ha, ha, ha,” Santiago said, adding that bar topnotchers in the United States were laughed at because this meant they were not doing substantial legal work since they had plenty of time to review for the bar exams.

Santiago said she simply wanted to be nominated to the high court to disabuse the public of the myth that only court insiders could become Chief Justice.

“I said categorically to the President that I could not be appointed Chief Justice because I preferred the company of my colleagues in the Senate anytime, any day, any year to the company of those idiots in the Supreme Court,” she said.

“If the Filipino people thought that I was good enough to be president of the republic in 1992 were it not for the devilish and satanic machinations of the septuagenarian (former president Fidel V. Ramos) yet the JBC turned its back on public opinion. Who of them graduated with honors from UP? Let them take the law school aptitude test and let’s see if they will pass,” she said.
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