Philippines | Court rules Sen. Grace Poe can run for president

Sen. Grace Poe, a presidential hopeful, waves as she is mobbed by supporters

The Philippine Supreme Court ruled yesterday that Sen. Grace Poe is eligible to run for president in May 9 elections, overturning an elections commission decision to disqualify her and removing a long-hanging legal question over a tightly fought race to lead the Southeast Asian nation.
The justices voted 9-6 to favor Poe’s petitions against the Commission on Elections decision last December to disqualify her on the grounds that she was not a natural-born citizen and did not have the required 10-year Philippine residency required of presidential candidates, Supreme Court spokesman Theodore Te said at a news conference, adding that the ruling can be appealed.
“This victory isn’t only mine,” a triumphant Poe told hundreds of people who joined an International Women’s Day rally by a left-wing group in a downtown Manila square. “This is a victory for all of us.”
The decision will provide a major boost to the campaign of Poe, who has already been leading in popularity polls, and removes a cloud of uncertainty over what has been shaping as a closely contested four-way race to succeed President Benigno Aquino III, whose six-year term ends June 30.
“She will now be the candidate to beat,” political analyst Ramon Casiple said, adding that fence sitters and supporters who were concerned that Poe may be taken out of the race because of her legal troubles would now have a clear choice.
“She can now run away from the pack,” Casiple said.
Pulse Asia, an independent polling body, placed Poe in the lead with 26 percent in a survey conducted last month of 1,800 respondents nationwide, followed by Vice President Jejomar Binay, who got 25 percent. Former Interior Secretary Mar Roxas, whose candidacy has been endorsed by Aquino, and tough-talking Mayor Rodrigo Duterte of southern Davao city each got 21 percent.
The survey had a margin of error of plus or minus 2 percent. Poe had a wider lead in a Pulse Asia poll in January.
Although a political neophyte, the 47-year-old Poe carries a popular family name and has a heart-rending life story in a country where many are swayed more by personalities than policy positions.
The U.S.-educated Poe is the adopted daughter of one of the Philippines’ most famous movie couples. Her late father, Fernando Poe Jr., was a movie action star who mostly played roles as a defender of the poor and downtrodden in a country still plagued by widespread poverty and corruption.
But the Commission on Elections ruled in December that Poe was not a natural-
born Filipino as required by the constitution because she was abandoned as a baby by her unknown parents at a Roman Catholic church.
Poe, who renounced her Philippine citizenship for about five years to live with her own family in America, also lacked the required 10-year Philippine residency ahead of the May 9 vote, the commission said. That prompted Poe to bring her case to the Supreme Court, which she asked to thrash her disqualification.
Appearing often in campaign sorties in a white shirt and blue denim pants that many Filipinos identify with her father, Poe has run on the same pro-poor platform that her father carried, pledging that under her presidency, “nobody will be left behind.”
Aquino’s successor will need to grapple with poverty, corruption and Marxist and Muslim insurgencies in the south — persistent problems facing a country that three decades ago toppled the dictatorship of Ferdinand Marcos through a “people power” movement. AP