INDEPENDENT presidential candidate Grace Poe had no intention to deceive the electorate or to hide a fact of disqualification with respect to her period of residency in the Philippines, her lawyer said Monday.
George Garcia asked the Commission on Elections to reverse the resolution of its Second Division that ordered the cancellation of Poe’s certificate of candidacy for president due to an alleged false statement on her period of residency in the Philippines.
He insisted that Poe did not commit a “material misrepresentation” with respect to her compliance with the 10-year re5sidency requirement when she declared in her CoC that she would be a resident of the country for “10 years and 11 months” by the elections of May 9, 2016.
Garcia made his plea to the Comelec even as Malacañang denied that President Benigno Aquino III has done a demolition job on the rivals of Liberal Party standard bearer Manuel Roxas II when Aquino attacked them during his speech in Italy recently.
“It is not accurate to say it’s a demolition job,” presidential spokesman Edwin Lacierda told reporters.
“It’s a manner of describing who the candidates are presented before you in the same way that the candidates… highlight this thing minimizing our accomplishments.”
In Manila, Mayor Joseph Estrada said he was inclined to support the candidacy of Senator Grace Poe instead of his long-time friend and political ally Vice President Jejomar Binay in the May 2016 presidential race.
“It’s very likely because the father of Grace Poe was more than a brother to me,” Estrada said in a radio interview referring to the late actor Fernando Poe Jr. whom he supported in 2004 when the actor ran for president.
Garcia said the Second Division made its decision in “complete and utter disregard of the overwhelming evidence on record” and “contrary to applicable jurisprudence as to amount to a capricious and whimsical judgment.”
He slammed the Second Division for allegedly relying solely on the statements Poe made in the CoC she filed when she ran for the Senate in 2013 while disregarding the documents she submitted proving that she had been a resident of the Philippines since May 24, 2005. Macon Ramos-Araneta, Sandy Araneta and Vito Barcelo
In her 2013 CcC, Poe said she had been a resident of the country only since November 2006, or six months short of the residency requirement to qualify as a candidate for president in the May 2016 polls.
Garcia, however, said Poe had explained as early as June this year that she made an honest mistake in her entry in the 2013 CoC because the truth was that she had been residing in the country since May 2005.
He said the documents they submitted to the Comelec would attest to this, including a sworn “questionnaire” she filed with the US State Department when was processing the renunciation of her American citizenship.