DAGUPAN CITY—Independent presidential candidate Grace Poe said Friday the DNA tests that she took with her supposed family from Guimaras had proved negative.
In an interview following a media briefing at the Star Plaza Hotel here, Poe also said the succeeding tests with the members of the Lorena family likewise did not match.
She was referring to her supposed aunt, Lorena Rodriguez-Dechavez, who had approached her when she was in Iloilo.
Dechavez and her kin offered to take DNA tests with the senator and even allowed the exhumation of her father’s body to determine if they were related to the senator.
Poe said there were other people who had approached her and expressed willingness to take DNA tests. She said at least three people had so far approached her, and that some others had also wanted to be tested.
She said she was not losing hope despite the results of the negative results of three DNA tests to find her biological parents and substantiate her assertion that she is a natural-born Filipino citizen.
Poe is facing disqualification charges before the Supreme Court over the questions on her citizenship, being a foundling found in a Catholic Church in Iloilo province sometime in 1968.
She says her arguments before the Supreme Court on the issue of her citizenship is not based on DNA but on the rights of a foundling not to be stateless.
“Even if we cannot establish the blood relatives of my parents, what is important is for a foundling to be recognized in our country,” Poe said.
“Even if I am not able to determine the relatives of my parents, the most important thing is for the rights of the foundlings in this country to be recognized.”
She lashed back at Vice President Jejomar Binay for questioning her lack of experience in running for president.
Binay, the standard bearer of the opposition United Nationalist Alliance, was quoted as saying Poe’s experience as a teacher was not enough for her to seek the presidency.
“It’s true I am a neophyte in the government, but I don’t need several decades in the government to become a president,” Poe said as she thanked the people of Pangasinan for considering her an adopted daughter.
She also extolled of her accomplishments as a neophyte senator.
“We did our job well. We handled the big challenges that went to the Senate,” she said.
It was the second time that Poe campaigned in the province of her father, the late actor Fernando Poe Jr.
Pangasinan is No. 3 among the vote-rich provinces in the country with a 1.7-million voting population.