Senator Miriam Defensor-Santiago.
INQUIRER FILE PHOTO / NINO JESUS ORBETA
Elated by her high ranking in a presidential survey, Senator Miriam Defensor-Santiago reiterated anew on Wednesday her desire to run for president in 2016.
Santiago said she was “happily surprised” that she emerged as one of the three top choices for president in a survey conducted by Publicus Asia and published in a news website.
READ: ‘I’ve licked cancer, I may run for president’ – Santiago
Senator Grace Poe emerged the voters’ top choice for president in the said survey followed by Santiago, Vice President Jejomar Binay, Senator Francis “Chiz” Escudero, Davao City Mayor Rodolfo Duterte and Local Government Secretary Manuel “Mar” Roxas.
Santiago noted that all four — Poe, Escudero, Duterte, and Roxas—are active in government service, unlike her, who has been on leave from the Senate due to stage 4 lung cancer.
READ: Santiago decides to finish term ‘on qualified medical leave’
“To remain in the consciousness of voters despite an absence of over a year is certainly a challenge, including remaining in public service. And I consider it in that light,” the senator said in a statement.
The senator has been under treatment by her correspondent doctor, Dr. Mark Kris, a distinguished medical oncologist who serves as chief of the Thoracic Oncology Service at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York.
Kris, she said, holds the Joy Ruane Chair at the same Center and is a professor of medicine at Weill Cornell Medical College specializing in lung cancer.
Santiago said Kris had a consultation with her team of local doctors last Friday, July 17, and examined all the PET (Positron Emission Tomography) and CT (Computed Tomography) Scans which the doctor had already fully studied in his New York clinic
Although no patient can be pronounced cured of cancer, Santiago said Kris told her that she has been able to control the cancer, “meaning that cancer growth in her left lung has been arrested.”
While she occasionally participates in Senate work, Santiago mostly stays in her La Vista house, where she has produced two best-selling joke books and the latest 2015 editions of over two dozen law books.
The senator also exercises by walking some two kilometers every day, the statement from her office said. IDL
READ: Cancer-stricken Santiago now feeling better