Quezon City welcomes renaming 2 roads after Miriam

MANILA, Philippines — The Quezon City government has welcomed the passage of a bill renaming Agham and Bureau of Internal Revenue (BIR) Roads after the late senator Miriam Defensor-Santiago.

“We wholeheartedly support this move by the Senate to name after the late senator Miriam Defensor-Santiago two of the roads here in our city,” Mayor Joy Belmonte said in a statement in Filipino yesterday.

With 22 affirmative votes and zero negative votes or abstention, the Senate last week approved on third and final reading House Bill 7413 seeking to rename Agham and BIR Roads to “Senator Miriam P. Defensor-Santiago Avenue.”

“It is a great honor for our city to carry the name of our senator, who bravely fought against corruption and stood firm for the rights and welfare of the people,” Belmonte said.

Santiago, who passed away in September 2016 after a long battle with lung cancer, held various positions in the three branches of government.

She served as a Quezon City regional trial court judge, Bureau of Immigration commissioner and Department of Agrarian Reform secretary. She was thrice elected senator.

“She was also the first Asian judge to be elected to the International Criminal Court, the first Filipino to be chosen as commissioner of the International Development Organization and serve as legal officer of the United Nations High Commission for Refugees in Geneva, Switzerland,” Belmonte said.

“These positions she held only proved her excellence. Thus, it is just fitting to pay her tribute for her exemplary work as a civil servant,” the mayor added.

Defensor was a recipient of the Magsaysay Award for Government Service, known as the Asian equivalent of the Nobel Prize, in 1988, for her “bold and moral leadership in cleaning up a graft-ridden government agency,” the BI, formerly known as the Commission on Immigration and Deportation, Belmonte said.