Former Senator Miriam Defensor Santiago, who reformed the immigration bureau and won Asia’s version of the Nobel Prize, died of cancer Thursday at the age of 71.

“She died peacefully in her sleep,” her husband, Narcisco Santiago Jr, said in an interview over radio station dzBB.

Santiago, who couched her legal expertise using her biting wit, was one of the youngest judges in the early 1980s before being tapped by then President Cory Aquino to run the Bureau of Immigration and Deportation. She cleaned up the bureau, and she won the Ramon Magsaysay Award for government service in 1988.

Santiago ran for president for the third time despite battling cancer this year. She narrowly lost the 1992 presidential election, her first, against Fidel Ramos, the winner.

But Santiago was elected three terms as senator. Hearings in the Upper House became lively as she grilled resource persons with humor and sarcasm.

“There is no senator, past or present, who can match Senator Santiago’s uncommon brilliance and fiery dedication to her principles and beliefs,” said Senate President Pro-Tempore Franklin Drilon, Santiago’s classmate from high school to law school.

Santiago was selected to be a member of the International Criminal Court in 2014 but she had to decline because of her illness, which was diagnosed that year.

Speaker Pantaleon Alvarez said the country lost its most vocal defender of our sovereignty and national interest.

“We would also miss not only her trademark colorful language that stung foes and chastised incompetent officials, but also her cutting intelligence and wit that endeared her to a horde of youthful followers,” said Alvarez. Ella Dionisio, DMS