Highest nat’l award for Sen. Miriam pushed

Two senators have sought to bestow the highest national award for the late Senator Miriam Defensor-Santiago in commemoration of her legacy as a lawmaker.

Senators Juan Edgardo “Sonny” Angara and Grace Poe have filed separate resolution asking the Senate to posthumously bestow upon her the Republic’s highest civilian service award, the Quezon Service Cross, for her 50 years of selfless service to the nation.

Angara, in Senate Resolution 517, not only enumerated the late feisty senator’s service in the three branches of government but also her work as a law professor, a constitutional expert, and “as a fictionist who wrote short stories.”

“As senator, Senator Miriam had bipartisan respect and support, and this resolution in her honor will be passed in the same manner,” Angara said.

“If she were alive today and a sitting senator, I am sure that she will cast the lone dissenting vote, and will berate me for trying to flatter her,” Angara said in jest.

“But seriously, she deserves the Quezon Service Cross. Because rare is the Filipino who had served in the judiciary, the Cabinet and the legislature, and the rarest is the one who served in all with brilliance and distinction. She was a class of her own,” he said.

Angara’s resolution is expected to be consolidated with Poe’s Senate Resolution No. 508, and is expected to be passed unanimously by senators, almost all of whom had served with Santiago in her 18 years in the Senate.

In his resolution, Angara said the late senator “exceeded the qualifications” set for a Quezon Service Cross recipient, of having served “in such a manner and such a degree as to add great prestige to the Republic, or as to contribute to the lasting benefit of its people.”

“Throughout the nearly five decades she served the public, Miriam Defensor Santiago exemplified academic, professional, and moral excellence—values that she herself demanded not just from fellow public servants, but also fellow Filipinos,” Angara’s resolution read.

Poe, in her resolution, said that throughout her 46-year career in public service, Santiago embodied values that she herself demanded of leaders: academic, professional, and moral excellence.

She also noted that as Presiding Judge of the Quezon City Regional Trial Court (QCRTC), Santiago implemented a no-postponement policy which allowed her to dispose of a record number of cases and unclog the court of old cases.

Poe also hailed Santiago for instituting reforms in the then notoriously corrupt Immigration Commission at the time she was its commissioner, earning her the Ramon Magsaysay Award for Government Service—the Asian equivalent of the Nobel Prize, “for bold and moral leadership in cleaning up a graft-ridden government agency.”

They also lauded her election in 2013 as Judge of the International Criminal Court (ICC), making her the first Filipina and the first Asian from a developing country to hold such a seat.

“Wherefore, be it hereby resolved by the Philippine Senate to respectfully urge His Excellency, President Rodrigo Duterte to nominate Miriam Defensor-Santiago for conferment of the Quezon Service Cross, in recognition of her exemplary contribution to the nation through a life dedicated to public service,” Poe stated.

Santiago died peacefully on September 29, 2016. She was 71 years old.