THE critics of Senator Grace Poe, who was overtaken by Davao City Mayor Rodrigo Duterte in the latest Social Weather Stations survey, have accused her of deliberately concealing from the public that her husband had served in the United States Air Force and that they acquired a house in Washington, D.C.
The reports that Poe’s husband, Teodoro Misael Daniel Vera Llamanzares, was an enlisted man in the US Air Force from 1988 to 1992, and that they own a multi-million-dollar mansion in Virginia, went viral in the social network starting last week.
In his Facebook post, De La Salle University professor Antonio Contreras criticized Poe for not revealing that her husband worked with the USAF until she was cornered.
Contreras was one of the four petitioners who asked the Commission on Elections to cancel Poe’s Certificate of Candidacy in 2015 due to her alleged failure to meet the citizenship and residency requirements for one running for president.
Various sectors out to derail her presidential bid have criticized Poe for allegedly omitting critical information on her husband’s background and their house ownership in the US when she aired her intention to seek the country’s highest elective post.
A group of businessmen from Malate, Ermita and Binondo, led by Vicky Espiritu, president of the athletic events firm EAMvents Inc., have asked why Poe could not address the real citizenship status of her husband.
Espiritu said it was a serious matter that Poe could not say where she got the money to buy her mansion in the US.
Espiritu’s sister Zonnie, a close associate of Poe’s adoptive father and movie actor Fernando Poe Jr., also asked why Poe could not be forthright on the matter if it was true that she had nothing to hide.
“Again, what was Poe’s reason for keeping it a secret her husband’s membership in the US Air force?” Zonnie said.
She said Poe could have feared that her family’s lifestyle in America would crop up since they depended only on their modest earnings.
Manuel Roxas II, the administration’s standard bearer, has said neither he nor President Benigno Aquino III knew the background of Poe’s husband during the time they were wooing her to be his running mate.
On several occasions, Aquino had met with Poe to convince her to join them in the coming May elections.
Roxas has not been faring well in the presidential surveys despite Aquino’s backing.
After learning that Poe’s husband was a former US military man, Roxas said she should fully disclose her background.
He called on Poe to use the campaign period to disclose everything Filipino voters needed to know about her.
Aquino appointed Poe as chairman of the Movie and Television Review and Classification Board in 2010. She quit her post in 2012 and ran for senator under Team PNoy and eventually emerged the No. 1 senator in that election, receiving 20 million votes, the highest number in the country!s political history.
Duterte had threatened to unmask Poe but the senator said there was nothing more to unmask.
She said she had been very transparent from the beginning: that she was a foundling abandoned inside a Catholic church in Jaro, Iloilo, and later adopted by the actor Fernando Poe Jr. and his wife actress Susan Roces.
