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Wikipedia Summary for Miriam Defensor-Santiago
Miriam Palma Defensor-Santiago (née Defensor; 15 June 1945 – 29 September 2016) was a Filipina academic, lawyer, judge, author, and politician who served in all three branches of the Philippine government: judicial, executive, and legislative. Defensor Santiago was named one of The 100 Most Powerful Women in the World in 1997 by The Australian. She was known for being a long-serving Senator of the Republic of the Philippines, an elected judge of the International Criminal Court, and the sole woman recipient of the Philippines' highest national honor, the Quezon Service Cross.
In 1988, Defensor Santiago was named laureate of the Ramon Magsaysay Award for government service, with a citation for bold and moral leadership in cleaning up a graft-ridden government agency. After being appointed by President Corazon Aquino as Secretary of Agrarian Reform from 1989 to 1990, she ran in the 1992 presidential election but was controversially defeated in events that involved a car crash injury and power outages during voting process. Defensor Santiago would then serve three terms in the Philippine Senate, where she was known for supporting progressive laws, and authored or campaigned anti-corruption bills.
In 2012, Defensor Santiago became the first Filipina and the first Asian from a developing country to be elected a judge of the International Criminal Court. She later resigned the post, citing chronic fatigue syndrome, which turned out to be lung cancer.
On 13 October 2015, Defensor Santiago controversially declared her third candidacy for President of the Philippines in the 2016 election after her doctors from the United States declared her cancer "stable" and "receded", but lost the election due to public concern for her health. In April 2016, her last appointed post was part of the International Development Law Organization Advisory Council (IDLO), an intergovernmental body that promotes the rule of law. She died from complications from her cancer on 29 September 2016, and was buried days later at Loyola Memorial Park in Marikina. In December 2018, the prestigious Quezon Service Cross was posthumously conferred upon Santiago, making her the first and, so far, only woman and the sixth person ever to be enthroned in the country's highest roster.
Defensor Santiago was known as the Dragon Lady, the Platinum Lady, the Incorruptible Lady, the Impregnable Lady, Feisty Senator, The Doctor of All Laws, the Omniscient Woman and most popularly, the Iron Lady of Asia. She is colloquially known in Philippine pop culture as simply Miriam or MDS, and is positively cited for her lifelong dedication to public service in the Philippine government.
Energy is always a matter of psychology for every individual.
I thought you would have to be insane to go into politics.
No one has ever seen God. So, for me, it is acceptable that if you don't understand a thing, just call it God.
Since we all know that death is inevitable, I don't really see the difference between dying now and dying a decade later. So if I'm threatened with assassination, I welcome it!
Entering politics is a fate worse than death.
I have passed all the physical hardships known to man.
Although I may not be sweet, I am full of passion.
I'm not in the habit of going to a psychologist. I psychologize myself.
I have no one at my side except God and His angels. I pray to God that He will turn my enemies into pillars of salt.
What makes me angry is when people know what is right but have, over the years, attuned themselves to the fact that what they're doing, stealing money from government, is acceptable.
I don't think so-called high technology matters in death. I think they had high technology before Noah's Ark. And it got lost because that was the first Ice Age.
I refuse for any person or organized group to dictate to me what God is. That is really the height of insufferable hubris. I believe in just immediately putting to death or just putting over the cliff people who assume they know about God.
My father said, 'Aren't you going to do anything to help people? We have a whole rack of relatives who are always breaking the law. At least help your relatives.' And so that's what I did.
I eat death threats for breakfast!
There is nothing wrong with centralizing the budget in Manila. We are such a small country.
The Dalai Lama has taught me that the best way to live life is to try and avoid desire. Desire is really the basic source of unhappiness.
I want to be known as Terminator 2.
I articulate the deepest need of the Filipino people, which is reform of a corrupt culture.
Numerically, half of our high-ranking government officials should be women, and half should be men. And yet the division between the sexes is highly disproportionate in favour of men.
The Philippines will have to once and for all abandon its full-spectrum dependence on America as a guarantor of its national security.
Society leaders have urged me to seek the presidency.
I have licked cancer, and I'm actually thinking of several career options.
Originally in the United States, there were no laws regulating behavioral advertising. As a result, like in the Philippines, government has relied on industry self-regulation.
As a factual matter, as in countries all over the world, technology and business practices have been running faster than legal responses and developments.
Everything in politics is politically motivated, didn't you know?
That's the very essence of pork barrelism, when you give a huge lump sum to a person and say, 'Well, tell us what you want it for, but you are free to decide where to spend it on.'
Sisyphus, you know, had an easy life.
My style is confrontational: when I see evil, I want to remove it right away.
There is simply too much corruption, too much money available for the taking.
Barring public demand, any person who pursues the presidency out of personal ambition must be suffering from a basic genetic defect.
Sexy is the attraction that is given as an encomium to women or men, or the capacity to attract the attention of the opposite sex because of their physical attributes.
I do not have any strong desire to remain in government. When my task is done, I shall be happy to leave and enhance my love life with my husband.
Research shows that when women are empowered as political leaders, countries often experience higher standards of living with positive developments in education, infrastructure, and health care.
We are legislators, not public works contractors. People look up to us to make serious laws that could change the lives of a great number of people or could change the way society is run or managed.
There are five requirements for an accused to turn state witness. One of the requirements is that the accused does not appear to be the most guilty.
In effect, the Internet is a global connection of interconnected computers. It has been described as truly a peer-to-peer system with many distributed nodes and no central point of control architecture.
The cancer that demands our urgent attention is corruption and poverty.
It is illegal for the budget department to discriminate among senators.
A smart wife is one who makes sure she spends so much that her husband can't afford another woman.
I will jump headfirst from a helicopter in Luneta if Estrada gets removed from power.
I shall be honored to go to jail. Under a dictatorship, the detention cell is a place of honor.
Handbags, I don't at all like them because they occupy my hands. My hands always have to be ready in case I need to slap somebody.
A true teacher does not terrorize ignorant students, because a true teacher knows that it is his job to cure ignorance.
In my view, leadership is the courage to take risks in defense of a position that is both legal and moral. The politician who tries to become a wise guy by becoming friends to everybody -- corrupt or not -- is not a leader.