Presidential candidate Sen. Grace Poe-Llamanzares. INQUIRER FILE PHOTO/LYN RILLON
The camp of Senator Grace Poe immediately dismissed as part of ongoing black propaganda attacks against her a newspaper report that she had two US Social Security numbers (SSN)— one supposedly belonging to a dead person but under her name.
“The news article that came out in the Tribune today stating that Sen. Poe had two social security numbers during her stay in the US is another mutation of the ongoing black propaganda attacks being thrown her way. The details of the news article [are] without basis and absurd,” Poe’s spokesman, Valenzuela Mayor Rex Gatchalian, said in a statement on Wednesday.
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Gatchalian was reacting to the Daily Tribune’s report that Poe was supposedly listed as having two SSNs — SSN 538-25-2008 and SSN 005-03-1988. The last SSN was allegedly issued in between 1934 to 1951 or even before the senator was born in 1968.
The report said the paper’s staff also obtained documents which supposedly showed that SSN 005-03-1988 belonged to a deceased person.
But Gatchalian denied this, saying the mentioned SSN was Poe’s Student Identification Number (005-003-1988) issued to her when she was a student at Boston College in Chestnut Hill, Massachusetts.
“The student ID number was issued to her by Boston College during her stint as a student there —in fact, that number corresponds to her enrollment date into the college,” he said.
“It’s sad that our opponents’ desperation has caused them to come up with ridiculous stories that are geared towards confusing the voters and tarnishing the good name of Sen. Poe,” the spokesman added.
READ: Grace Poe’s damaged identity
Poe left for the United States in 1988 to study at the Boston College where she graduated with a degree of Bachelor of Arts in Political Studies in 1991. In the same year, she married Teodoro Misael Daniel Llamanzarez, who is a citizen of both the Philippines and US.
The senator returned to the Philippines after her adoptive father, the late action star Fernando Poe Jr., died in 2004.
“There is no reason for Sen. Poe to secure a fake social security number because she has always been of legal status when she stayed in the US. Under-handed tactics such as this has no place in our democracy,” Gatchalian said.
“The people deserve better, our people deserve to hear advocacies rather than barefaced lies,” he further said. IDL