Fernando Poe Jr is eligible to run for Philippine president in May's election, the Supreme Court ruled yesterday, handing the film star a critical victory in his bid to unseat President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo.
Poe supporters danced jubilantly at his campaign headquarters after hearing the ruling, which can still be appealed.
"Justice prevails," said Butch Cadsawan, president of one movement supporting Poe.
A transcript of the court's decision released to reporters said its justices had ruled by eight votes to five to support a previous ruling by election body Comelec that Poe was a natural-born Filipino qualified to run for office.
"An hour ago, the Supreme Court decided to dismiss the petition to disqualify Fernando Poe Jr, holding Fernando Poe Jr as a natural-born Filipino qualified to run for president," court spokesman Ismael Khan told reporters.
The long uncertainty over Poe's status has kept the peso near its record low of 56.35 to the US dollar. Despite the ruling, the market is unlikely to find much relief in the short term.
The lawyers who filed the petitions against Poe have 15 days to file a motion for reconsideration. Arroyo has denied being behind the petitions, saying she thinks Poe should run.
Poe boasts massive support from the movie-loving poor for his roles as a champion of the oppressed who lets his fists and guns do most of the talking.
But a Poe presidency is viewed with anxiety by markets worried about his lack of economic or political experience.
The prospect of mass unrest by his supporters if he was disqualified had loomed as an even bigger worry.
Earlier, SWAT teams with assault rifles and riot squads backed by water cannon had surrounded the Supreme Court in central Manila as police restricted traffic.
By late afternoon, there no signs of a major gathering of his supporters, despite earlier reports of a massing of pro-Poe backers.
Opinion polls show him neck-and-neck with President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo as both run far ahead of four others seeking the nation's highest office.
Ironically, many analysts viewed a "yes" verdict as positive for Arroyo, who has struggled to establish her legitimacy in the eyes of millions of poor after she rode a wave of anti-corruption protests to oust their hero Joseph Estrada, another ex-film star, in early 2001.
But the verdict is sure to boost Poe's campaign, which had been showing signs of flagging as doubts rose over his candidacy.
"The money bags who have been hesitant to put their money on Poe will at this point invest in him just in case he wins," political analyst Joel Rocamora said.
The Supreme Court was weighing petitions questioning whether Poe is in fact a Filipino after his birth out of wedlock to an American mother and a father born early in the last century during the US occupation of the Philippines.
‘UNUSUAL EVENT’: The Australian defense minister said that the Chinese navy task group was entitled to be where it was, but Australia would be watching it closely The Australian and New Zealand militaries were monitoring three Chinese warships moving unusually far south along Australia’s east coast on an unknown mission, officials said yesterday. The Australian government a week ago said that the warships had traveled through Southeast Asia and the Coral Sea, and were approaching northeast Australia. Australian Minister for Defence Richard Marles yesterday said that the Chinese ships — the Hengyang naval frigate, the Zunyi cruiser and the Weishanhu replenishment vessel — were “off the east coast of Australia.” Defense officials did not respond to a request for comment on a Financial Times report that the task group from
Asian perspectives of the US have shifted from a country once perceived as a force of “moral legitimacy” to something akin to “a landlord seeking rent,” Singaporean Minister for Defence Ng Eng Hen (黃永宏) said on the sidelines of an international security meeting. Ng said in a round-table discussion at the Munich Security Conference in Germany that assumptions undertaken in the years after the end of World War II have fundamentally changed. One example is that from the time of former US president John F. Kennedy’s inaugural address more than 60 years ago, the image of the US was of a country
DEFENSE UPHEAVAL: Trump was also to remove the first woman to lead a military service, as well as the judge advocates general for the army, navy and air force US President Donald Trump on Friday fired the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Air Force General C.Q. Brown, and pushed out five other admirals and generals in an unprecedented shake-up of US military leadership. Trump wrote in a post on Truth Social that he would nominate former lieutenant general Dan “Razin” Caine to succeed Brown, breaking with tradition by pulling someone out of retirement for the first time to become the top military officer. The president would also replace the head of the US Navy, a position held by Admiral Lisa Franchetti, the first woman to lead a military service,
BLIND COST CUTTING: A DOGE push to lay off 2,000 energy department workers resulted in hundreds of staff at a nuclear security agency being fired — then ‘unfired’ US President Donald Trump’s administration has halted the firings of hundreds of federal employees who were tasked with working on the nation’s nuclear weapons programs, in an about-face that has left workers confused and experts cautioning that the Department of Government Efficiency’s (DOGE’s) blind cost cutting would put communities at risk. Three US officials who spoke to The Associated Press said up to 350 employees at the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) were abruptly laid off late on Thursday, with some losing access to e-mail before they’d learned they were fired, only to try to enter their offices on Friday morning
RSS