Escudero: Comelec ‘bullying’ Poe
Sen. Grace Poe and running mate Sen. Francis Escudero file their certificate of candidacy respectively at the COMELEC on Thursday, October 15, 2015. INQUIRER PHOTO
Senator Francis Escudero accused the Commission on Elections (Comelec) on Thursday of “bullying” Senator Grace Poe after the poll body decided to disqualify her from the 2016 presidential race.
“The Commission on Elections (Comelec) is both wrong and unfair and a bully,” Escudero, Poe’s running mate, said in a statement, reacting to the Comelec en banc’s decision to cancel Poe’s certificate of candidacy over her citizenship and residency.
“Sen. Grace Poe has been nothing but honest, candid, forthright and open with respect to her citizenship, nationality and residency to the Filipino people. She has answered every question with candor and honesty both before the Comelec and before the Filipino people. How dare they say that she ‘deliberately attempted to mislead the electorate,” he said.
On the contrary, Escudero said, it was the Comelec that was “misleading the electorate and bullying” Poe by “pretending to be an independent Commission when they have actually been acting as Sen. Poe’s inquisitor and persecutor, and plain and simple bullying her.”
He then enumerated how Poe was allegedly being bullied by the poll body.
READ: Comelec majority: Poe deliberately attempted to mislead voters
First, Escudero said, the Comelec acted with dispatch on four disqualification cases against Poe even before the candidate who claimed his name was “Lucifer.”
Second, they refused to consolidate the four cases, which are all the same except for the names of the petitioners, “if only to require Poe to answer/appear in the two divisions of the Comelec and be disqualified, not only once but twice, and a third time by the en banc following what appears to be a well written script or play.”
And third, he said, by working “overtime” in order for the en banc to disqualify Poe a day before Christmas and the holidays thus giving her very little and difficult time to seek redress in the Supreme Court.
Escudero said the Comelec was also bullying Poe by claiming to have the power to decide over her qualification to run “when in fact only the Supreme Court can, either sitting en banc or as the Presidential Electoral Tribunal, decide with finality on such issues.”
“Christmas is always a time for loving, sharing and giving. And it seems that the Comelec has imbibed the Christmas spirit by loving and sharing and being giving to the opponents of Sen. Poe but not to her, not to us, and certainly not to the Philippine electorate,” he said.
“However, in spite of all of these, I am eternally hopeful that the truth will always prevail and Sen. Poe will overcome the difficulties being thrown her way and come out a stronger person and candidate for president.,” Escudero added. CDG
READ: Escudero confident Poe will regain poll standing once SC rules on DQ case
