PRESIDENTIAL candidate Grace Poe on Monday urged her fellow candidates in the 2016 elections to show what “stuff” they are made of as she insisted that the political campaigns should not be transformed into a circus.
While she herself belongs to a show business family, being the daughter of the late actor Fernando Poe Jr. and actress Susan Roces, Poe said she would “want the Filipino electorate to appreciate me for what my presidential plans are, hear what they need and propose immediate solutions to these while on the campaign trail.”
“All leaders need charisma to lead, to inspire. But if you transform your campaign into a circus, you will just be taking away much of the people’s precious attention from the messages you want to convey,” Poe said on the first day of the filing of certificates of candidacy by the people running in next year’s elections.
Poe said she fully supports the plan of the Commission on Elections to hold televised debates particularly for the candidates to the higher positions in the 2016 elections.
“That way, we can remove all the pomp and pageantry that are usually seen at campaign sorties and allow the voters to see and hear for themselves how we will be able to handle the country’s problems,” Poe said in a statement.
Although she belongs to a show business family, Poe said she would want the Filipino electorate to appreciate the platforms of government she would present to the people.
She said the campaigns should be caravans of intellectual discourse and meetings of the mind.
“Let’s show the stuff we are made of, what we want to do for the country, what the people can expect from us,” she said.
“That way, we can remove all the pomp and pageantry that are usually seen at campaign sorties and allow the voters to see and hear for themselves how we will be able to handle the country’s problems.”
Poe also urged her fellow candidates to “give more respect to the electoral process and the Filipino voter” and “blaze a trail for a new kind of political contest that is centered on platforms of government.”
She said more and more voters now had a wealth of information on what the candidates had to offer.
“And it is through the sorties that we could reinforce all the knowledge and explain how we plan to give life and blood to the advocacies in the positions we will be elected to,” Poe said. With PNA