Macon Ramos-Araneta
ADDRESSING “voters and people who will never be stupid forevermore,” Senator Miriam Defensor Santiago said she filed her Certificate of Candidacy for President Friday, and would use social media extensively to reach young voters.
Defensor, who addressed journalists after filing her CoC at the Commission on Elections office in Intramuros, Manila, spent much of her press conference answering questions about her running mate, Senator Ferdinand Marcos Jr., whose father ruled the country under Martial Law from 1972 until his ouster in 1986.
Asked how she could reconcile her views on human rights violations during the Martial Law regime with her running with Marcos, she said, “Life doesn’t have to be a constant straight line from one end to another. We should not live our lives that way.”
She added that the ideology of the millennials now are far different from those of their parents.
“So we need to adjust,” she said.
But Santiago disagreed with Marcos’ view that people should bury the past and move on.
“I don’t agree… that the details of martial law need to be buried and forgotten,” she said.
“It is important to go over the details of martial law in the country so we will know what path we shall take for the millennials,” Santiago said.
“The historians of tomorrow should make the study deeper so that we will know what lessons they hold for our future,” she added.
At the same time, she said the Marcos family did not owe the people an apology.
“In the first place, they did not agree as a family to conduct certain activities that were later viewed with distaste or criticism by other Filipinos,” she said.
“What they were doing were, in their ideas, in the best interest of the Filipino people,” she said, adding that like many Filipinos at the time, she also “did not mind the imposition of martial law” because it instilled discipline and public order.
As a newspaper columnist, she said she praised some of the “happy results” of martial law in the beginning, but said things went wrong later.
Santiago also said she would not oppose proposals to bury former president Ferdinand Marcos in the Libingan ng mga Bayani if that is the consensus.
“Why should we allow something to disrupt the unity of the Filipino people? I myself have no objection,” she said, adding that her father was a guerrilla captain and is buried in the Libingan ng mga Bayani.
“I will not as an ordinary citizen hold it against the community if the consensus by that time is to bury one of our former presidents,” she said. “Why should we let a dead man control the actuations of the living and its new millennial generation? We should let go of the past.”
Santiago wearing a red dress, joked that when people vote for her, “people will never be stupid forever more,” using the title of her latest collection of jokes.
Santiago, who said she had defeated cancer, said she did not think her health would hold back her campaign.
She also highlighted the importance of social media in influencing public perception.
In 1992, Santiago lost a hotly contested election to former President Fidel V. Ramos, but when she ran in 1998, she came in seventh in a field of 10 candidates.
But Santiago said the political landscape–particularly campaigning–has drastically changed, and said social media would play an increasingly important role.
Asked if she can withstand the rigors of the campaign, the senator who has more than 3 million likes on Facebook, said she would campaign online to woo the votes of the young.
“There is more social media. The Internet has radically revolutionized the way people think and how they affect their own families, parents, siblings,” said Santiago.
“Many people have been telling me that I am the voice of the youth.. I hope that this voice will be resurrected and will prevail in the elections,” Santiago said.
Marcos left Friday for Laoag City to accompany his mother, Ilocos Norte Rep. Imelda Romualdez-Marcos, who filed her COC.
“If you’re running for the second highest elective official of the land, you have to make a lot of preparations. But that can wait, family comes first,” said Marcos.
Also on Friday, Senator Alan Peter Cayetano filed his COC for vice president.
Cayetano had hoped to be the running mate of Davao City Mayor Rodrigo Duterte, but the mayor ended speculation Friday when he did not file a COC for president.