Miriam Defensor Santiago's Fatal Attraction

Is it a case of fatal attraction by Sen. Miriam Defensor Santiago to Interior and Local Government Ronnie Puno?

it sort of feels like it because she's been digging up anything madly simply to get Puno's attention.

First, she requested a Senate enquiry into the infomercials of cupboard officials, with the most obvious target being Ronnie Puno, because she suddenly had the desire to conduct the investigation following the mates of Ronnie or FOR came out with TV adverts heralding the accomplishments of the Department of the Interior and Local Government ( DILG ) in the peace and order front.

Before that, Santiago had kept quiet about the infomercials of other officers that came out earlier, like those of her fellow senators Manny Villar and Mar Roxas, who had both cornered primetime slots for their TV advertisements.

When the maiden hearing started, Santiago put on a happy face for all of the other cupboard officials, beguiling them with her witty remarks and lenient perspective towards them, even to those that couldn't make it to the inquiry that was declared only a few days earlier.

But she reserved her wrath for Ronnie Puno, who had a legitimate explanation for failing to attend the hearing, which she declined to accept. ( The secretary was in Pangasinan to attend public engagements that were set more than a month before, according to media reports. )

there wasn't any follow-up hearing on the issue, so it appeared plain that the purported inquiry was only staged by the secretary to find a fresh excuse to lash out at the DILG secretary.

After Santiago failed to muster public interest in her infomercials probe and nail down Ronnie on this issue, she turned her sights on the Road Board, which was previously chaired by his younger bro, Rodolfo'Dodie' Puno.

Dodie ceased to be the head of the Road Board in 2008, but it took Santiago a year before she supposedly stumbled into alleged irregularities committed by the Board when Dodie wa still executive director.

Again, her obvious target is not Dodie, but his big brother Ronnie. She wants to drag down Ronnie by using Dodie as her means to her ends.

Ronnie Puno has nothing to do with the Road Board and its directors. But Santiago, for absence of anything to pin him down, is despairingly attempting to link Ronnie to her allegations against the Board by making an attempt to hang his younger bro.

Curiously enough, Santiago called on the Office of the Ombudsman to investigate Dodie Puno, an insignificant executive director of the Board, for claimed irregularities, and yet spared the members of the Board themselves who-as standard company practice will show-approve everything that happens in the said agency.

Why not tell the Ombudsman to also run after the Board members if she were not particularly guilty of selective justice and double standard-or deadly attraction?


In the 1st place, if Santiago were so riled up over the claimed irregularities in the Board, she should have trained her sights not on Dodie Puno, who was only the executive director in the past, but on the cabinet members who basically sit on the Board.

In fact, Public Works Secretary Hermogenes Ebdane was present in the hearing, so it absolutely was a wonder truly the senator did not impose her mercurial temper on him in the hearing-but had unloaded all her ammo on Dodie Puno who couldn't make it to the hearing?

The senator even found a method to blast the DILG secretary anew by casting aspersion on a commendable program of the Philippine National Police ( PNP ) -the OYSTER program on road upkeep work-that is sponsored by the Road Board?

In a below-the-belt blow, the eccentric Miriam Santiago said the PNP could have wrested funds from the Road Board because Ronnie and Dodie Puno are siblings.

What gives, Brenda?