By Fel V. Maragay

After a two-month absence, Senator Miriam Defensor Santiago went back to work yesterday and expressed her readiness to sponsor the floor debate on the bill delineating the country?s archipelagic baselines.

But Santiago, chairman of the committee on foreign relations, said that she is willing to yield sponsorship of the long-overdue bill if it will be too taxing on her health.

Santiago said she is still suffering from chronic fatigue syndrome which, her doctors say, usually lasts for a six-month period.

Despite her health condition, Santiago said she has asked Majority Leader Juan Miguel Zubiri to schedule her sponsorship speech on the baselines bill on Monday, Jan. 26.

She said she has designated Minority Leader Aquilino Pimentel Jr. as vice chairman of the foreign relations committee. And if Pimentel accepts the designation, she said she will ask him to take her place as sponsor of the baselines bill if necessary.

?My most important task is to sponsor the baselines. I am ready to do so, and shall request the majority leader to schedule it for Jan. 26,? Santiago told Senate President Juan Ponce Enrile in a letter.

?But if I am not up to it, I shall request the vice chairman of the foreign relations committee to sponsor the measure.?

Since mid-November last year, Santiago has been absent from work. At that time, she informed Enrile that she was afflicted with intestinal flu.

She underwent treatment at home, but her condition barely improved.

Later, she was diagnosed to be sick with chronic fatigue syndrome, which she said appears to have been caused by her near-fatal car ?accident? during the 1992 presidential campaign.

The symptoms of this ailment are debilitating fatigue, dizziness and head ache, shortness of breath, and heart palpitation. There is no known cause for CFS and therefore no known treatment, the senator said.

In a privilege speech, Santiago claimed that her car was intentionally bumped as part of an alleged attempt to murder her and eliminate her as a presidential candidate in the 1992 polls.

She said that upon the advice of her campaign staff, the extent of her injuries at that time were not made public. Later, she said she filed murder charges but ?because I was fighting the administration candidate, the fiscal immediately dismissed my complaint for frustrated murder.?

Earlier, Enrile said he would request another senator to sponsor the baselines bill if Santiago could not get back to work and is not yet fit enough to resume her duties. He said he may take over the sponsorship of the bill if necessary. Enrile is one of the principal authors of the bill.

Based on the Senate?s schedule, the chamber should have started floor debate on the baselines bill last November after the foreign relations committee reported out the bill.

After a long delay, the committee was able to finalize the bill after the members came up with a compromise to treat the Kalayaan Group of Islands and Scarborough Shoal as a ?regime of islands? outside the archipelagic baselines but subject to the sovereignty of the Philippine republic.

The approval of the Malaca?ang-certified baselines bill is being rushed to meet the May 13, 2009 deadline set by the United Nations for countries seeking to expand their maritime territory by virtue of the UN law of the sea.