Santiago advises rookie lawmakers to ‘go back to school’

Senator Miriam Defensor-Santiago. INQUIRER FILE PHOTO

MANILA, Philippines — Neophyte senators would do their countrymen a favor by going back to school and not making the mistake of entering the Senate with guns a-blazing (“huwag magpasiklab agad”).

The unsolicited advice came from Sen. Miriam Defensor-Santiago who, despite her already impressive academic background, said she requested a personal tutorial from the late Sen. Arturo Tolentino before jumping into the Senate arena in 1995.

Once the dust of victory has cleared, Filipinos who voted for the new senators would be scrutinizing them to see whether they made the right choice in electing these newbies to the upper chamber, she warned.

“The adulation is temporary,” Santiago said in Filipino.

For starters, there are three things that a new senator needs to keep in mind always—honesty, competence and professional excellence.

“Honesty means one will not steal. Competence does not simply mean being qualified.  A senator has to have academic excellence and not be simply a graduate.  A senator should have graduated with honors from a revered (“tinitingalang”) university known all over the world (and that would mean the University of the Philippines), Ateneo, or La Salle. Sana, nag-graduate sa anuman sa tatlong ito,” she explained.

Meanwhile, Santiago defined “professional excellence” as one’s experience “of practicing what one has studied “at naipakita sa karamihan. Otherwise, anong kuwenta ng degree? (and  demonstrating it  to the public, otherwise, of what value was the degree)?”

And then she added a fourth requirement—one that a senator should have achieved before he or she joined the legislature.

“You should have efficiency.  Whatever it is you did before you became a senator, were you able to achieve the results that benefited a lot of people,” she asked.

Santiago’s advice was solicited during a radio interview on Sunday.