UNA: Poe unqualified to run for president, vice president

Sen. Grace Poe – Llamanzares. Photo from Poe’s official Facebook page.

MANILA – According to the United Nationalist Alliance (UNA), Senator Grace Poe is not eligible to run for president or vice president as she did not meet the 10-year residency requirement for the said positions.

Vice President Jejomar Binay, who is a member of UNA, has earlier expressed his political interest in seeking higher office and running alongside Poe. The neophyte senator, however, has rejected his interest as she believes that they have different styles of leadership.

UNA later on finds out that Poe is unqualified to be a candidate for presidency and vice presidency. The Philippine Constitution rules that a candidate for the said positions should be ‘a resident of the Philippines for at least 10 years immediately preceding the elections.’

Poe, however, would have resided in the country for nine years and six months when the 2016 national election comes. This is found out when UNA interim president Toby Tiangco has gotten a copy of the senator’s certificate of candidacy (COC) for her senatorial bid in 2013.

“If this (COC) is fake, shoot me now in my seat,” Tiangco said, adding that he will raise the matter to court.

Aside from Poe’s residential issue, Binay’s camp also claimed that Interior Secretry Mar Roxas’ group will target Poe as they wanted the presidential bid to be between Binay and Roxas only.

“They want for Mar Roxas and I to have a one-on-one [fight]. For that to happen, they have to destroy Grace Poe,” Binay said.

Sincere and trustworthy running mate

Meanwhile, Poe elaborated what qualities she wanted to see in a running mate if she was running for president or vice president.

“We could be campaigning together and I wouldn’t want him or her to abandon me in the middle of the campaign,” she said, wanting to run alongside someone she could trust.

“Is he/she good? Does he/she do well in his job? Does he/she work hard? Does he/she have any plunder case?,” she added. “Can he/she help our objectives for the people? It is nothing if he/she is the best but the character is questionable.”

Poe also wanted a running mate who exuded characteristics of her late father Fernando Poe Jr.

“My father, when he had to shoot a film in the mountains, he would work for the irrigation of farmlands because the farmers there are poor. He helped even the NPA (New People’s Army) rebels because they, too, are Filipinos,” she said, admiring her father for being ‘decent, sincere, close to poor people, [and someone who] did not take advantage of others.’

Should Poe run and be allowed to run, she believed that her surname was her biggest ‘capital,’ but she also wanted to establish her own political identity.