IT was hard, nay, verily impossible for reporters to mention her name without preceding it with the adjective they could not do without, so much so that Feisty Senator Miriam Defensor Santiago sounded like the name she was born to carry.
Ms. Miriam gave up the fight peacefully, in her sleep. Not a form of the surrender she had dreaded submitting to, for she would have preferred to rage, rage against the dying of the light, but as our grandparents believe, sleep without waking is “a good way to die.”
Already how we miss her august presence in the Senate, imagining how in a few well chosen sentences she would have berated the politicos who are shamelessly pressing for the screening of a sex tape and behaving like adolescents in the throes of their first taste of pornography. In words only she could weave together to laugh at them until they folded up in pain, how she would scold them to act like men if they cannot be gentlemen!
Her entire life dedicated to the law, the teaching and practice of it, and specially in the defense of the Constitution, she later sought to understand the highest law by studying theology, forthwith renaming God as the Intelligent Designer. Intelligence was a virtue she valued, which in turn inspired the youth to value her, presidential candidate and Netizens connected by social media.
Miriam, the only candidate to seek the presidency three times. A Filipina who would’ve added color, vitality, and charisma to the International Criminal Court. A true celebrity of whom it could be said that by her enemies you knew what she stood for. An outstanding legislator whose quips and quotes were awaited like manna from heaven by media, she who made fun of experts who were not and clowns who should not have left the circus. For all her wisdom and experience in the law as in life, Miriam was young at heart and always, always a gritty wit. The only way to escape her sharp tongue was to not understand English while the whole world was enjoying the joke.
People who were really close to her adored a different Miriam, sweet, caring, loving. In heaven, she will either shake things up or maintain the status quo as any feisty angel would. (Jullie Y. Daza)