BY PRINCE GOLEZ
Manila Reporter
MANILA – Though stricken with stage 4 lung cancer, Iloilo City’s Sen. Miriam Defensor-Santiago remains her feisty self, dishing out witty punch lines that people love to hear.
Yes, she has not dropped the plan of running for president in 2016.
But she’d only reconsider it if “God will send me another disease.”
“Pag galing ko next month, if there is nothing else to do. I am supposed to be in remission, I am going to announce my presidential candidacy,” Santiago said.
She said she is Volunteers from the EcoWaste Coalition and other environmental advocates put signages along the shores of Manila Bay to mark the area where plastic bags were found, in calling for a national legislation against plastic bags in observance of the 5th International Plastic Bag-Free Day on Thursday (July 3, 2014) in Roxas Boulevard, Manila. (PNA photo by Avito C. Dalan)LAM/acd the public has given her through various social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter.
With her “high number” of followers, Santiago said, she does not have to cheat to win “unlike other candidates.”
The Ilongga senator said she already has “more than one million likes” on Facebook alone.
Her Facebook page (Sen. Miriam Defensor Santiago) has a total of 1,673,583 likes yesterday.
“That is enough,” she joked.
On Twitter, the senator has 778,000 followers.
So who will be Santiago’s vice presidential running mate?
The irrepressible senator just gave out a loud laugh.
Santiago said she will make an announcement this August. She expects to recover from cancer within “six weeks.”
In a previous interview, Santiago urged the voting public to elect a female president in 2016 because a male-dominated Congress is “corrupt.”
She also said then that she won’t run for the presidency because she could not afford the expenses.
“I don’t have P1 billion or P2 billion, which was an estimated budget in the 2010 elections. And, there is an excessive estimate of P15 billion to P20 billion for 2016,” Santiago said.
The next President can come from the Senate, she hinted.
“(Cynthia) Villar will have the money. It could also be (Sen.) Grace Poe because she is No. 1 in the last (senatorial) election,” she said.
Senators Nancy Binay, Villar and Poe believe Santiago is the “most-qualified” female contender for the presidency.
Poe said she is not ready to run for President because she “has yet to prove herself as a senator.”
Vice President Jejomar Binay has long declared he will run for president.
Other possible “presidentiables” are Interior and Local Government Secretary Mar Roxas, Senators Alan Peter Cayetano, Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos Jr. and Ramon “Bong” Revilla Jr./PN
