Miriam cries harassment

Sen. Miriam Defensor-Santiago asked the Estrada impeachment tribunal yesterday to cite for indirect contempt of court the "psychologically disturbed" anti-Estrada rallyists who picketed her home in Quezon City.

Santiago, in a press statement, said some 40 members of the Akbayan Action Party staged a lightning rally in front of her house at 29 Maalindog St., UP Village, Quezon City late yesterday morning.

The senator said the protesters "banged on my gate and threw objects against it" in an effort "to force and intimidate me to render a vote of conviction" in President Estrada’s ongoing impeachment trial.

"My two four-year-old daughters were so startled by their loud and angry chanting that the two girls ran to me in panic and burst into tears," Santiago said.

She said she ordered her security guards not to take any action against the rallyists but called on barangay officials to ask the rallyists to disperse in a supposed absence of a rally permit.

For its part, Akbayan, in a statement signed by its secretary general Melay Abao, admitted that some 30 of their members staged an "orderly and non-violent picket to demonstrate our sentiments against her obvious bias for the President in the impeachment trial."

"We picketed Senator Santiago first because she is our neighbor and thus part of the community we live and work in," the statement said.

Akbayan, however, denied that its members threw anything at her home: "We merely knocked at her gate and milled around in the street carrying our placards."

"We find it ironic that Senator Santiago proclaims herself to be such a stickler for legal procedure when she virtually predicted the outcome of the trial before it even started," the statement said.

In response to Santiago’s speech before her colleagues, Chief Justice Hilario Davide, the impeachment trial’s presiding officer, asked the Senate to hold a meeting to discuss possible action against the unidentified demonstrators. – Cecille Suerte Felipe