BY PRINCE GOLEZ
Manila Reporter
MANILA – Ilongga senator Miriam Defensor-Santiago has decided not to pursue her job as International Criminal Court (ICC) judge in The Hague, Netherlands.
In a letter addressed to ICC president Sang-Hyun Song yesterday, Santiago said she was “stepping down as elected Judge.”
The former Regional Trial Court judge was elected to the ICC in 2011. She was supposed to serve from 2012 to 2021.
“Since I was elected in December 2011, I have secured neither alleviation nor treatment from the medical profession for my illness, known as Chronic Fatique Syndrome,” said Santiago, the first female judge from Asia to join the international court.
The feisty senator also said she will support the procedures of the Assembly of State Parties so they can already elect a replacement judge.
“My illness has occurred periodically over a period of some 10 years. But it appears that in its present manifestation, things have come to a head and I am rendered virtually dysfunctional,” she wrote the Civil Service Commission last year.
Her condition, she added, will impact her assumption to office as elected Judge of the Netherlands-based court.
In a previous interview with DyFM Bombo Radyo-Iloilo, Santiago said she would ask the ICC to elect another judge if she could not report to them this year.
“I have good days and bad days, like cancer patients. Sometimes they feel better, sometimes they feel worse. Even if I have a good day, I can only work for an hour or two (only),” she shared./PN
