Roxas, Binay asked to stop allies on Poe’s disqualification case

Vice President Jejomar Binay (left) and Interior Secretary Manuel “Mar” Roxas II. INQUIRER FILE PHOTOS

IF THEY really think Sen. Grace Poe is a Filipino, presidential candidates Mar Roxas and Jejomar “Jojo” Binay should tell their allies and supporters to stop making an issue out of her citizenship, Sen. Francis Escudero said Tuesday.

Escudero, Poe’s running mate in next year’s presidential election, issued a statement after former Sen. Richard Gordon disclosed in a television interview Tuesday that members of Roxas’ Liberal Party (LP) and Binay’s United Nationalist Alliance (UNA) had asked him to join an effort to take Poe out of the 2016 presidential race.

“It’s getting harder and harder to give the leaders of [the] LP and [the] UNA the benefit of the doubt, given the revelations of Senator Gordon,” Escudero said.

“When your leaders say one thing and do another, it does not speak well of their character or of their capacity to lead the nation,” he added.

If he believes Poe is a Filipino, Roxas should tell LP members and supporters to lay off the matter, Escudero said.

Binay should do the same, the senator added.

“C.S. Lewis said that integrity is doing the right thing even when no one is watching. It is not trying to pull something off in case no one finds out,” Escudero said.

Turned down

Both Roxas and Binay had invited Poe to be their running mate, but she turned them down and opted to run for President herself.

She is now leading in the latest voter preference polls for the presidential election.

In an interview on ANC, Gordon, who is seeking a Senate seat as an independent on Poe’s ticket, said members of the LP and the UNA had approached him and asked him to file a disqualification case against Poe but he refused.

Escudero said Gordon could have been approached to give credence to the disqualification case against Poe, since he is an accomplished public servant.

He said candidates should keep the campaign clean, platform-based and professional.

LP denial

The LP denied its members had asked Gordon to bring a disqualification case against Poe.

“[The] LP has not and will not authorize any person to engage in a smear campaign,” Marikina Rep. Miro Quimbo, spokesperson for the coalition, said in a statement.

“What we have learned from P-Noy’s experience is that a President can make decisions, however difficult and unpopular they may be, as long as you have a clear and unquestionable mandate,” Quimbo said, using President Aquino’s nickname.

Quimbo said the LP-led coalition had nothing to do with the smear campaign against Poe.

“Both the President and former [Interior] Secretary Mar Roxas have given the Liberal Party clear marching instructions on how the campaign should be waged. We have always campaigned on daang matuwid and that we are focused on issues and our platform, not on personalities,” he said, using the code word for the Aquino administration’s reform program.

“That is how we practically swept the 2013 senatorial election, by entirely avoiding a personality-based campaign,” he said.

“Winning through a smear campaign will make governance difficult. We don’t want that,” Quimbo said.

There was no immediate comment from the UNA on Gordon’s disclosure.