Miriam, now in different tune

Senator Miriam Santiago was among the 18 senators during Estrada administration who defended and voted for the RP-US Visiting Forces of Agreement (VFA).

Now, Sen. Miriam, who chairs the Senate foreign relations committee, sings a different tune.

She is now saying that the VFA should be terminated because it “continues to foster an attitude of dependency on our part and an attitude of arrogance on the part of the US.” This was the same argument used by anti-VFA protesters 10 years ago!

She changes her mind with a blink of an eye. One time, she said she would jump off a helicopter head first if then President Estrada were removed from office. When Estrada was ousted via Edsa Dos and the lady senator was reminded of what she promised to do if she was proven wrong, she laughed hysterically and said, “I lied.”

Sen. Santiago was reprimanded by the Supreme Court when she used foul language, calling members of Tribunal “a Supreme Court of idiots”. Yet, she claimed that she was commended by the Tribunal’s member.

How can Miriam deny the fact that she wasn’t censured by the high court when it pointed out that she had violated Canon 8 and Canon 11 of the Code of Professional Responsibility, which enjoins lawyers from using abusive and offensive language and from disrespecting the courts and judicial officers?

Who would say that the Tribunal’s members commended her in this speech she bestowed:

"I am not angry. I am irate. I am foaming in the mouth. I am homicidal. I am suicidal. I am humiliated, debased, degraded.

“And I am 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 on the face of Chief Justice Artemio Panganiban and his cohorts in the Supreme Court, I am no longer interested in the position [of Chief Justice] if I was to be surrounded by idiots.

“I would rather be in another environment but not in the Supreme Court of idiots."

That’s her – Senator Miriam Defensor-Santiago., unique, intelligent and ‘brenda’ (brain damage in short).