Is Grace Poe your president? Make sure you already know everything you need to know about her before putting in that precious vote on the 9th of May.
Senator Grace Poe has battled a long and arduous fight to stay in the presidential race on account of her not having met the qualifications to run for president—that she may no longer be a natural-born Filipino citizen after renouncing her Filipino citizenship in 2001, and that there was a discrepancy in the documents she filed proving her 10-year residency in the country. Nevertheless, just as she won the hearts of millions of Filipinos, Poe has won her case before the Supreme Court and is officially back in the race.
While Poe topped the senatorial race in 2013, much of the backlash against her stems from her political experience—or lack thereof. Because she is a neophyte in the field of politics, people are wary that Poe has inadequate experience to hold the highest position in the land. This is why Poe admits she is eager to prove herself to the people. In fact, during her first two years in the senate, she aggressively filed and supported a number of bills and legislations. Her first was a bill promoting film tourism, still pending a second reading as of 2014. She also filed the Sustansya sa Batang Pilipino Act, a bill inspired by the Nutribun program of the Marcos era, and more recently, the First 1,000 Days Act, which protects mothers and children from malnutrition by establishing a targeted healthcare program. She is also known to be a staunch supporter of the Freedom of Information Act, and led the legislative investigations into the Mamasapano clash in 2015.
An adopted daughter of Filipino artists Susan Roces and Fernando Poe, Jr., she had some little-known cameos in Filipino classics Durugin si Totoy Bato and Dugo ng Bayan. She hasn’t pursued a career in the entertainment industry, however, and has instead focused her efforts on a more complicated popularity contest.
Read the profiles of the five presidentiables and the full Q&A with them inside Asian Dragon Magazine’s April-May 2016 issue, available in all leading bookstores and convenience stores nationwide. You can also purchase the issue from the Asian Dragon Magazine App, free to download on Google Play Store, iTunes, and Amazon. For orders and other inquiries, contact tel. nos. 361-7491 loc. 811, 845, 846.
