What legacy?

When Grace Poe first claimed that her adoptive father, the actor Fernando Poe Jr., was cheated in Cebu in the 2004 presidential elections, I thought she was just a misinformed woman getting overly emotional. When she repeated the claim after topping the 2013 senatorial race, I began to suspect the woman has delusions of grandeur, who thought her adoptive father could never lose unless he was cheated.

Then she decided to run for president herself, egged on by no other compelling reason than that she was topping the surveys, convincing me that this woman must have a lot of air between her ears. But when she said the real reason for her running is to actually continue the legacy of her adoptive father, I said that's it, this woman poses a real danger to the country if elected.

Let us measure Poe by her statements. When first she claimed her adoptive father was cheated in Cebu, maybe she was just a sore daughter who was unhappy and cannot accept the results, her emotions obscuring the unassailable and verifiable facts that no claim of cheating was ever noted either by the Cebu media or the Cebu Comelec, or even the Cebu police, all of whom were on top of the situation before and after the polls.

It might also do well for Poe to check on her own memory and try to remember if her adoptive father FPJ had any viable candidate in any of the towns and cities in Cebu that could help carry his candidacy. She might also do well to research the fact that in Cebu, Gloria Macapagal Arroyo had every local official, from governor down to the last barangay councilor, under her wing.

In other words, there was absolutely no need for Arroyo to cheat in Cebu. If she cheated elsewhere, I do not know. But Arroyo did not have to cheat in Cebu. There was no need for her to because she had the Cebu vote, the biggest in the country, in the bag. But I do not expect Poe to do this much research, or would care to, appearing as she does to prefer shooting from the lip.

But if she does need to know -- Cebu is home to one of the freest and most vigilant press in the country. Yet the Cebu press never reported any cheating in 2004. And that was because no cheating happened. What did happen was that Cebuanos made a clear and resounding choice, which was that they preferred a better qualified candidate to a movie star.

That Arroyo chose to take her oath in Cebu is an indication of the legitimacy of the Cebu election result, which gave her more than a million majority. If she cheated in Cebu, why would she feel honored enough to make it the place to take her oath? That would have been so hollow and a sham. But Cebuanos gave to Arroyo what they could not give to FPJ and no matter how Poe tries to rewrite history, she cannot alter events as they truly happened.

I should know. I am a true blue Cebuano. Poe is not. In fact, nobody is sure what she is, she not being a natural born Filipino despite the Senate Electoral Tribunal ruling that she is. Poe was not in Cebu during the elections and during the counting. I was, as were the rest of the Cebuanos. Poe cannot be allowed to insist on her version of the FPJ story solely on the strength of her emotional attachments.

As to her wanting to continue the legacy of FPJ, that is the most preposterous statement I have ever heard. What the heck is Poe talking about? What FPJ legacy does she want to continue -- a string of heroic movie roles? Is that the world she lives in, the movies? If she wants to cavort in the imaginary fields of filmdom, that is her choice. But please spare the rest of the Filipinos from her version of her own fiction.