The daughter also rises

It isn’t easy being Sen. Pia Cayetano.

Her late father Sen. Rene Cayetano wasn’t only one of the topnotchers in the Senate polls, he was also a beloved figure to the masses because of the legal advice he used to dispense in both TV and radio programs. And though she acknowledges the headstart her father’s name gave her, Pia Cayetano found out that once she got to the Senate, she was on her own.

"It was up to me to prove what I was capable of, and acknowledge what I was not capable of," Pia, who wears a locket with her father’s photo in it around her neck, said at last Tuesday’s Bulong Pulungan at the Hotel Philippine Plaza. "It was up to me to show what I was good at."

Statuesque at 5 feet and 8 inches, Pia (whose real name is Pilar Juliana) says being taken seriously by her more senior colleagues, especially the males, was no problem because the men in the Senate show a high regard for their female counterparts.

"As far as equalizing men and women is concerned, my mentor is Sen. Miriam Defensor Santiago," she reveals.

The genes of Rene Cayetano and the guidance of the brilliant Miriam. How lucky can Pia get, and she’s not letting her headstart go to waste.

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Pia, chairman of the Senate Committee on Health and Demography, has sponsored a bill that makes basic immunization services against hepatitis B mandatory for infants within 24 hours after their birth. She is raising the alarm on Hepa B because "it is endemic in the country and currently affects more than eight million Filipinos, or around 10 percent of the population."

Starting tomorrow, she will start a series of hearings on various legislative measures on reproductive health. She believes the hearings are timely because the Church has warned that the Department of Education’s plan to include sex education modules into the high school curriculum may lead to more teenage pregnancies and abortion.

Pia, whose own father was afflicted with liver disease, is the spokesperson for the Philippine Cancer Society. She was also recently elected first vice president of the Coordinating Committee of Women Parliamentarians, the highest position earned by any Filipino lawmaker at the 117-year-old Inter-Parliamentary Union (IPU). Her election took place at the 114th assembly of the IPU in Nairobi, Kenya.

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Pia, an accomplished athlete (she recently led some 500 bicycle enthusiasts on a 100-km. road trip through several towns in Misamis Oriental), describes herself as a multi-tasker who makes full use of the benefits of communications technology. She also unwinds by running and a devoted mother, she believes her best legacy will be her children.

Asked what important lessons her parents taught her, Pia recalls her dad taught her never to quit, while her mom Sandy Schramm, a former schoolteacher, taught her that one should be smart enough to know when to quit. She quips that she has learned to balance both pieces of advice.

Pia, who struggled with unspeakable grief with the death of her infant son Gabriel from a chromosomal disorder and her dad’s death a few years after, shared with the forum her own favorite piece of advice: "When you wake up and things don’t seem right, just lean forward, take a step and you will definitely move forward."

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