New ads helping Poe’s campaign – Pulse exec

MANILA, Philippines – The latest political advertisements of Sen. Grace Poe that stress she is still a contender for president had a positive impact on her campaign, a Pulse Asia executive said.

Ronald Holmes, Pulse Asia president, said Poe’s camp appears to be following a good strategy to counter the negative effects of the disqualification cases filed against her.

“The public may have taken (her messaging) as an indication that she intends to win this race,” Holmes said in a phone interview yesterday.

The neophyte senator, who is running as an independent, regained her lost numbers and topped the recent Pulse Asia pre-election survey released on Saturday.

The non-commissioned survey, conducted from Jan. 24 to 28, shows 30 percent of 1,800 respondents want her as their president. It has an error margin of +/- two percent and a confidence level of 95 percent.

Poe’s numbers went up by nine points from 21 percent in the Pulse Asia survey last month.

The latest figures showed her once again overtaking opposition candidate Vice President Jejomar Binay, whose ratings dropped to 23 percent from last month’s 33 percent. It also makes Binay statistically tied in second place with Liberal Party candidate Manuel Roxas II and Davao City Mayor Rodrigo Duterte, who each got 20 percent.

Sen. Miriam Defensor-Santiago is trailing in fifth place with an unchanged four percent.

‘Uphold rights of foundlings’

A group advocating rights of foundlings rallied behind Poe as it called on the Supreme Court (SC) to uphold her status as a natural-born citizen.

The group composed of parents who adopted foundlings sympathized with Poe, saying foundlings like her should not be “arbitrarily deprived of their nationality, of their humanity, of their lives.”

“We appeal to the humanity of the Supreme Court. Our children are natural-born citizens as they embrace the Philippines and serve their fellowmen in the country of their birth and culture,” lawyer Eric Mallonga, convenor of AAFFC and co-founder of Child Justice League, said in a statement yesterday.

The group also believes that an SC ruling favorable to Poe would not only mean recognition of the right of foundlings to hold national elective office, but would also remove the social stigma under which hundreds of thousands of abandoned children suffer.

“They (foundlings) should not be made to feel inferior just because of the impoverishment of their birth. They should not be discarded once again as human trash by the very people who determine, through their wisdom from the ages, the essence of justice,” Mallonga added.

The group added they would actively follow the SC case as any decision is sure to impact on the lives of their adopted children.