Sen. Grace Poe. GRIG C. MONTEGRANDE/INQUIRER FILE PHOTO
There will be missteps and criticisms that would come her way, but Senator Grace Poe should get used to it if she’s planning to run for a higher office next year, two senators have said.
“Well lahat ng konting galaw niya binabantayan na (Of course, every move she makes is now being monitored) and there will be critics everywhere so she should get used to that, I think, if she’s running for higher office,” Senator Sonny Angara said in a television interview on Tuesday when sought to react to latest criticisms against Poe.
“Ganon talaga ‘yung (That’s really the) standard because si Secretary Mar, si Vice President Binay they were already subjected to that kind of scrutiny from 2013 onwards,” Angara said, referring to Interior Secretary Mauel “Mar” Roxas II and Vice President Jejomar Binay.
Both Roxas and Binay have publicly declared their presidential bid next year while Poe has yet to declare whether or not she would join the presidential race.
“Kaya dapat masanay na siya sa ganong klaseng may batikos, may kritisismo, may papuri; talagang lahat nakabantay sa kanya kumabaga,” Angara added.
(That’s why she should get used to that: there would be opposition, criticisms, praises; everybody is really watching her every move.)
Despite the criticisms, Senator Antonio Trillanes IV said he and his colleagues in the Magdalo Group would keep their support for Poe, saying their support was not survey-based anyway.
“Admittedly si Senator Poe is new to the game, there will be missteps, for as long as these missteps are not fatal then we should allow her that space,” Trillanes said in a separate interview.
He also believed that Poe has already learned her lesson when she was criticized for expressing her support for Iglesia Ni Cristo’s (INC) protest rally against Justice Secretary Leila de Lima.
READ: I was just defending everyone’s rights–Grace Poe | Iglesia brouhaha showed Poe a ‘trapo,’ says erstwhile mentor
Asked if Poe’s statement on the INC issue was a misstep, Trillanes said: “I believe it was overblown. If you look at the statement per se, I did not see anything inherently evil about it. She stated a position which a lot of people may not agree with, but that doesn’t make her evil in any way.”
“It’s not as if she plundered the country. Ilagay lang natin sa (Let’s just put it in the) proper perspective,” he further said. Maila Ager, INQUIRER.net