center with alien criminals, and ordered construction of another detention center. She extended to legal aliens protection from widespread extortion by requesting President Aquino to issue an executive order that authorized the "alien legalization program". She received serious death threats, but proclaimed: "I eat death threats for breakfast". A member of the House of Representatives, Laguna Rep. Nereo Joaquin, delivered a privilege speech in 1992 and denounced her raids against pedophile communities in Central Luzon run by alien pedophiles. Defensor Santiago responded by calling him "fungus face". The Rockefeller Foundation named her a laureate of the Magsaysay Award for government service – "for bold and moral leadership in cleaning up a graft-ridden government agency." Agrarian Reform Secretary President Corazon Aquino promoted Defensor Santiago to member of her cabinet, as Secretary of Agrarian Reform. Under a controversial law passed by Congress and signed by President Aquino, all agricultural landholdings were taken by the government and divided among the farmers. Each landowner was allowed to keep only five hectares, and each farmer received three hectares. Payment was in bonds of the Land Bank. To subvert the law, big landowners applied for conversion of the classification of their land as agricultural, to classification as commercial, residential, or industrial. The process became the widespread "conversion scandal of agrarian reform". The DAR officials themselves were the biggest culprits, because they sold conversion permits for bribes on a market rate set at certain amounts per hectare involved in the conversion. Defensor Santiago stopped the conversion scandal, and appeased the landowners by enhancing the incentives for voluntary offers by the landowners for the sale of their landholdings, which entitled them to an additional five percent cash payment. When asked if the hacienda belonging to the president's family should be covered by agrarian reform, Defensor Santiago replied that the family's hacienda should be distributed among the farmers. Shortly thereafter President Aquino accepted Defensor Santiago's resignation. 1992 presidential campaign Defensor Santiago's candidacy for President of the Philippines was confirmed on February 19, 1990. She later organized the People's Reform Party (PRP) and ran with a senatorial ticket during the 1992 presidential campaign. Ramon Magsaysay Jr. was her running mate. While campaigning on April 28, 1991, she was severely injured in car crash, which she claimed was an assassination attempt. She was wearing a white bush jacket which became splattered with blood that gushed from a wound to her head.