Sen. Grace Poe.
INQUIRER FILE PHOTO/RAFFY LERMA
Barely four months before the upcoming national elections, presidential aspirant Senator Grace Poe has urged her fellow candidates to elevate the level of discourse instead of resorting to mudslinging and throwing dirt at each other.
Poe on Saturday said the 2016 polls should be a campaign of platforms and not of ambitions.
“We’re all coming into 2016 with a clean slate. We can use this chance to elevate the level of discourse in the campaign. I think everyone will agree that Filipinos deserve no less from us,” Poe said in a statement.
The lady senator recalled how she and her rivals, administration bet Manuel “Mar” Roxas II and opposition leader Vice President Jejomar Binay, agreed to maintain a “friendly and dignified” campaign when they were gathered by Manila Archbishop Luis Antonio Cardinal Tagle for a prayer service in September.
READ: Cardinal Tagle tells Binay, Poe, Roxas: Keep campaign friendly, dignified
“I remember how Cardinal Tagle reminded us that being a leader means being of service, and that we should never forget that in all things, the leader should be the first to feel what the people are going through,” Poe said.
“I presume we all want the same thing for the country, which is ultimately, to uplift the lives of our fellow Filipinos. Let us not make this about personal ambitions because if we do, the tendency is to employ all means, even dirty tactics, to eliminate those who stand in our way,” she added.
Poe previously accused her rivals of being responsible for the string of disqualification cases against her over citizenship and residency issues. Her fate will be decided by the Supreme Court this month after it had issued temporary restraining orders on the rulings of the Commission on Elections to cancel her certificate of candidacy for president.
Poe also vowed to stick to a “positive campaign” despite an earlier pronouncement that some “well-meaning people” supposedly told her that her problem was that “she had no black ops.”
READ: Poe tells 2016 bets: Respect voters; don’t turn campaign into circus
“Hindi naman kami ganoon makipaglaban. Kung nakikipaglaban kami ay ayon sa plataporma, ano ang maitutulong natin sa mga kababayan natin na naghihirap—sa mga magsasaka, sa ating mga manggagawa na hanggang ngayon ay kulang pa rin ang kompensasyon. Iyon ang mga dapat nating tutukan,” she said.
(That is not how we fight. We fight according to our platforms, by focusing on how we can help our poor fellow Filipinos—the farmers, the workers who until now have yet to obtain enough compensation. Those are the things we need to focus on.) IDL