Erap likely to endorse Poe if qualified to run

MANILA, Philippines - Manila Mayor Joseph Estrada said he would most likely endorse his goddaughter Sen. Grace Poe for president if she would not be disqualified with finality by the Supreme Court (SC).

“I cannot turn my back on my best friend, the late actor Fernando Poe Jr., whom I love and regarded as my own brother,” Estrada told The STAR in a telephone interview over the weekend.

Poe and actress Susan Roces adopted Sen. Poe after she was found in a church in Iloilo when she was still an infant.

Grace Poe is facing disqualification as senator and as presidential candidate due to citizenship and residency issues, the same problems her adoptive father faced when he ran for president in 2004. He died after losing to former President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo amid allegations of massive cheating in the elections.

“She is just experiencing what they did to her father. I hope she will recover from it. I hope the SC will rule very soon. As far as I am concerned, she is a Filipina because she was born in the Philippines. She was elected as senator. Vox populi, vox Deis. The voice of the people is the voice of God. Let the people decide,” Estrada said.

Estrada, titular head of the opposition and founding head of Pwersa ng Masang Pilipino, also said that he would run for president again if Poe is disqualified and if Vice President Jejomar Binay is also disqualified due to corruption charges against him.

“I will be forced to run for president again if the opposition will have no presidential candidate. It is like they are eliminating all the possible contenders just to ensure (Liberal Party presidential bet) Mar Roxas’ victory. We will lose democracy if Mar Roxas will be allowed to run unopposed. I will run again to preserve democracy in the country,” he explained.

Estrada also expressed belief that the legal issues thrown against Sen. Poe are politically motivated.

“The way I see it, if she’s not a candidate for president, these complaints will not be put to the fore, or these will not be scrutinized as such,” Estrada said in an earlier interview with ABS-CBN news.

“But because she is now a candidate for president, they are trying to find ways to discredit her. She was born here in the Philippines. She was found in the vicinity of a church… She got elected as a senator and she showed good performance. I believe she is very much qualified,” he added.

The leaders from the vote-rich Pangasinan province have also expressed support for the candidacy of Poe after the Commission on Elections (Comelec) Second Division disqualified her from the presidential race.

The three Comelec commissioners in the second division considered Poe to be short of six months to complete the 10-year minimum residency required by the Constitution for presidential candidates.

Leaders of the Ang Grasya ng Masang Pilipino Movement (AGMPM) urged the Comelec to “do your math, be fair and don’t abuse your authority to favor the administration candidate.”

“It was unfortunate that the Comelec Second Division ridiculously concluded that Sen. Grace Poe lacks two months to complete the residency requirement since she returned here in 2005 and enrolled her children in Philippine schools,” said Rosendo So of AGMPM in a statement.

“It also misses the very essence of re-acquisition of Philippine citizenship under the law when it starts to count the residency only on the date of approval of the petition for re-acquisition and not on the date of actual residency in the Philippines,” Adonis Samson of AGMPM said in the same statement.

“The same forces behind the massive cheating of Fernando Poe Jr. in 2004 are at it again, robbing the people of their fundamental right to elect the president they want by excluding Grace Poe, his daughter, from the presidential race,” they added.

Meanwhile, election lawyer Romulo Macalintal said there is no reason for Associate Justice Antonio Carpio, one of the three justices in the Senate Electoral Tribunal who voted to disqualify Poe as senator, to inhibit from the disqualification case when it reaches the SC. – With Eva Visperas, Non Alquitran, Mayen Jaymalin