Why, they asked, is she trying to "save" the JPEPA that they had torn apart and should be rejected by the treaty-ratifying chamber? She herself has admitted that the controversial pact contains provisions unfavorable to the Philippines and are even "unconstitutional."

Indeed, the basic issue with JPEPA, as the chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee knows too well, is that the pact favors Japan more than the Philippines, and that it fails to include reservations that Japan had already conceded to neighboring Malaysia, Indonesia and Thailand.

No wonder those people concerned with the flawed pact are bewildered by Santiago’s action in freezing action on it. A majority of her colleagues were prepared to discuss it in plenary last Monday, but she refrained from submitting her committee’s proposal for what she termed "conditional concurrence" of the patently flawed free trade pact.

Santiago must have been afraid that her fellow senators would vote not to ratify it at all. As indeed they were minded to do. But she cynically said that "they are afraid because they don’t know about it (the practice of conditional concurrence). Fear is usually the result of ignorance." One of them riposted that the Vienna Convention of 1969 on the Law of Treaties does not recognize conditional ratification. And had she submitted committee’s report it could have been rejected outright. Another expressed his doubts that Japan would accept the treaty with its conditions.

What exactly was her proposal recommending "conditional concurrence" that confounded her fellow senators?

She described it as "an improved treaty" because the condition (for ratification) requires compliance with at least 15 specified constitutional provisions. She explained that the condition ensured that the JPEPA will observe the constitutional provisions on public health, protection of Filipino enterprises, ownership of public lands and use of natural resources, ownership of alienable public lands, ownership of private lands, reservation of certain areas of investment to Filipinos, and giving preference in the national economy and patrimony to Filipinos.

More, she said, the condition will regulate foreign investments, operation of public utilities, preferential use of Filipino labor and materials, practice of professions, ownership of educational institutions, state regulation of transfer of technology, ownership of mass media and advertising firms.

These and, oh, numerous others, which covered exactly the very same flaws cited by constitutionalists, legalists and environmentalists in the JPEPA, in effect would render the pact practically useless to Japan.

Predictably, the Santiago proposal would be unacceptable to the Japanese government which, it has been reported, has made a "take it or leave it" stance on the JPEPA, especially because she has said "the condition is an absolute necessity."

Yes, indeed, the JPEPA, as its passionate Filipino and even Japanese opponents, have been saying all these years since it was signed by Gloria Arroyo and her Japanese counterpart in far away Helsinki, is really a partnership between "unequals" and "a repressive agreement" that sacrifices the health, the environment, the long-term economic development and dignity and sovereignty of the Filipino people.