ILOILO CITY—The family from Guimaras, who believed that Sen. Grace Poe was their kin, said they did not feel bad that DNA tests showed they were unrelated to the senator.
“There is no disappointment and resentment from us because we had just wanted to help,” Junie Rodriguez told the INQUIRER by phone on Friday.
Junie, 54, is the younger brother of Victoria Rodriguez whom the family suspected to be the biological mother of Poe.
Poe told reporters during a campaign sortie in Pangasinan on Friday that the DNA tests of the Rodriguez family did not match her DNA.
READ: Guimaras folk not Grace Poe’s kin, DNA test reveals
But she said she was not losing hope because her arguments before the Supreme Court on pending cases questioning her citizenship and residency did not depend on the DNA tests.
Junie, who was among the nine family members whose DNA samples were taken, said they earlier learned from news reports that bone samples taken from the skeletal remains of Victoria, and Francisco Montañez and his son Paquito, were too degraded for testing.
One of the two Montañez men was suspected to be Poe’s biological father.
The skeletal remains were exhumed in Buenavista town in Guimaras on Dec. 30 last year.
Samples were also taken from three living members of the Montañez family.
Valenzuela Mayor Rex Gatchalian, Poe’s campaign spokesperson, said in a text message to the INQUIRER that these samples also turned negative.
DNA samples were taken earlier from Lorena Rodriguez-Dechavez, younger sister of Victoria and Victoria’s two daughters Mayi, 40, and Magdalena, 38.
Poe has been disqualified by the Commission on Elections as a presidential candidate in next year’s elections on citizenship and residency issues.
The poll body has ruled that Poe cannot prove that she is a natural-born citizen as she is a foundling.
READ: Grace Poe: Every foundling has right to dream
But the Supreme Court has yet to rule on the cases even as the campaign period for national candidates started last Feb. 9.
Poe was abandoned and later found in the baptismal font of the Jaro Cathedral in Iloilo City in 1968, according to popular accounts.
But the Rodriguez family believed that Poe was the second of four daughters of Victoria who was brought to Iloilo City and later adopted by celebrity couple Fernando Poe Jr. and Susan Roces.
Junie said they had been prepared whether the test results turned positive or negative.
“That is natural. If she is not our kin, that is not a big deal for us,” he said in Hiligaynon.
But he said their family would still support Poe in the May 9 elections.
“We are for still for Sen. Grace,” he said. RC