Senator Grace Poe on Thursday faced head-on the issue of her allegedly being inexperienced by saying that she has gained a wealth of experience as a woman and a former overseas Filipino worker which will help bring a fresh take on issues to the presidency.
Speaking to Inquirer reporters and editors at the Meet the Inquirer forum, Poe said that the country needs a woman president–short of directly endorsing herself.
“When they say that I am inexperienced, please, do not discount my experience as a mother, as a private citizen, as an employee of a private company. If they doubt my ability as a woman, I don’t think we don’t have to look far… I think that you will have no doubt about the courage, the conviction, the discipline and compassion of women—which is precisely what our country needs,” the presidential hopeful said.
Poe is one of the two women vying for the highest office in the land with Senator Miriam Defensor Santiago as one of her rivals.
Should any one of them win, she will become the Philippines’ third woman president.
Meanwhile, she also addressed the issue of not being loyal to the country after she supposedly renounced her citizenship when she studied and worked in the US.
Poe said that she did not regret living for 10 years in the US as it gave her lessons which she would not learn if she had stayed here in the Philippines.
“If I didn’t live there, I would not experience non-entitlement… We always say ‘think outside the box’ but most them in the government have always been inside the box. Our problems are not new. So I bring in to the table a fresh perspective, a Filipino with a different facet of experience which I think we need at this point,” the senator said.
“Right or wrong, I stand by it,” she added.
One of the grounds of the petitions asking the Supreme Court to bar her from participating in the May elections is her supposed failure to satisfy the 10-year residency requirement for those running for president.
