Sen. Grace Poe delivers her speech during a campaign rally in Tarlac City.
PEOPLE are disillusioned with the Aquino administration’s daang matuwid (straight path) claim, because the government has failed to provide decent public services, Sen. Grace Poe said on Tuesday.
Poe made the statement when asked about the contention of Davao City Mayor Rodrigo Duterte that he was popular because voters disliked the administration.
Duterte has led recent voter popularity surveys for the presidency, with Poe placing second.
“What I can say is this: People are fed up. People are disillusioned. Daang matuwid is always emphasized, but meanwhile, we see that services in many government agencies are a failure. And I’ve long called attention to this,” Poe told reporters in an ambush interview after her six-hour motorcade in Cavite.
Poe has been a critic of the Department of Transportation and Communication, which she castigated for failing to improve the Metro Rail Transit.
“Our people think, ‘why are you saying you are so good when you forget about us?’” she added.
Poe said she was not directing her statement to any particular person, but to the manner of running the government.
“It’s as if nobody else can be good but a few,” she added.
Poe agreed with Sen. Miriam Defensor Santiago that candidates should make human rights a priority.
“If we do not respect human rights, we won’t be able to do anything good,” she said.
Respecting human rights does not just mean not torturing or physically harming people, she pointed out.
“That includes providing them with food, with equal opportunities in looking for jobs, with education for children,” she said.
But Poe also said cleaning up the system to protect people should not entail throwing out baseless accusations.
“If you kill someone by mistake, you cannot give back the life you took,” she added, in apparent dig at Duterte who has boasted of killing criminals.