SEN. Grace Poe, unless she’s disqualified, will be the first major presidential candidate in Philippine political history without any political party.
She had already set a record in getting more than 20 million votes in topping the 2013 senatorial elections. (Our fellow Times columnist, former Comelec Commissioner Gus Lagman, suspected that her votes were massaged for at one time during the canvassing, her votes were more than the total number of votes counted.) This is better appreciated when compared to the 15.2 million votes credited to BS Aquino in 2010 and the 10.7 million in 1998 to Erap Estrada. She could set a new record if she could successfully hurdle challenges to her qualifications to run for president in the next polls.
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