About Sen. Grace Poe

We all saw it on live TV at the Bahay ng Alumni at the University of the Philippines when Senator Grace Poe Llamanzares formally declared that she was going to run for President by saying, "I am Grace Poe, a Filipino, child, wife and mother and with God's help I'm offering myself to all of you - to be of higher service as President." And so finally, this presidential campaign has entered a new phase in politics with a candidate whom many critics have called "Hilaw" and has a noose on her neck that could yank her out of this presidential race because of her residency issues.

So we ask, why has Sen. Grace Poe attracted so many people? Before I start, let me tell you that I met with Sen. Grace Poe last Aug. 24th when she was in Cebu (I can't forget that date because it was when VP Binay was in town and Pres. Aquino was also here at the Cebu Coliseum in his so-called "Gathering of Friends") to talk to students in a university. I honestly thought that she came to Cebu to attend that gathering of the Liberal Party and their yellow ilk.

Instead, Sen. Grace Poe honored her commitment to be the first guest of the talk show of my good friend Mike Lopez dubbed "Open Mike" in MyTV. After that interview, we had lunch at Mariquita Salimbangon Yeung's residence where we had talked for two hours, which gave me an idea of who Grace Poe really was. It was there that I told her that I had a couple of lunches with FPJ when we showed "Ang Panday" in Oriente Theater, the first Tagalog action movie to be shown in a first class movie house. Also in that luncheon, I told her very clearly why FPJ lost to GMA in Cebu and she understood my explanation, after all it was a pre-PCOS machine era.

So we go back to the question, why has Grace Poe attracted so many people? First, let's go into her negatives. First of all, people say that she is only counting on the memory (and the name recall) of her late actor father, Fernando Poe, Jr. (FPJ) who ran for President in the 2004 elections, but lost to former President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo.

When FPJ ran for president and was interviewed in the ABS-CBN talk show "Impact" by my mentor, the late Max Soliven, I was in a hotel in Manila waiting for Sir Max and after the interview, Max told me that FPJ wasn't a man who was comfortable to be on a TV interview. As Max told me, "I had to coach him the answers." Watching Grace Poe being interviewed by Mike Lopez in our MyTV studio, I saw a person who was not only very comfortable before the camera and she oozed a certain charisma that few politicians could only envy.

The tag that Sen. Grace Poe is "Hilaw" may be true. But allow me to bring you back to memory lane to February 1986 when we members of the United Nationalist Democratic Organization  accepted the decision of then Senator Salvador "Doy" Laurel to run for vice president, while the housewife of the late Senator Benigno "Ninoy" Aquino  Jr., Mrs. Corazon "Cory" Aquino ran for President against the Marcos Dictatorship with the tag "Talagang Walang Alam." So picture this, a Cory Aquino who was "Talagang Walang Alam or the "Hilaw" Sen. Grace Poe?

I submit that the presidency of Pres. Cory Aquino wasn't a great one… and worse, she even brought back the old and hated oligarchy, which today controls almost all facets of business and industry. This was because she knew nothing about running the government and worse of all, she turned her back on vice president Doy Laurel who as agreed was supposed to ran the state of affairs. Tita Cory's problem was, she refused to listen to good advice.

But in her opening salvo at the Bahay ng Alumni in UP, Sen. Grace Poe did not sound "Hilaw" at all. In her speech, Sen. Grace Poe sounded like a person who knew the problems of the Philippines and had a general idea of what needs to be fixed. So the question is… would she listen to good advice? That remains to be seen. For her residency issues, I have a hunch that the puppeteers controlling the yellow propaganda machinery would move faster to shut her down because certainly her candidacy would mean the end of the Roxas presidential dream.

Now I would not be the columnist I am known to be if I did not speak my mind and I dare say that we Filipinos who question the citizenship of Grace Poe are so damn plastic about our nationalism, but I would like to believe that a high of 75% of Filipinos would drop their Filipino citizenship if the US Embassy would give out green cards to Filipinos seeking them.

So I would like to emphasize that Sen. Grace Poe's getting a US citizenship was only her fulfillment of the majority of the Filipino dream -- to live in America rather than in the Philippines. If you ask me, the question should be -- how many Filipinos would give us their US citizenship for a position in the MTRCB? She wasn't yet running for senator when she gave it up!

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