Actress Sheryl Cruz leaves cousin Grace Poe’s camp

Manila: Actress Sheryl Cruz left the camp of her cousin, Philippine presidential hopeful Senator Grace Poe, amid a revival of speculation about the latter’s real parents.

Cruz said she would not support the senator’s campaign for the presidency in 2016 because she resented how her mother, former actress Rosemarie Sonora, was being rumoured to be Poe’s biological mother, through an unconfirmed liaison with former dictator Ferdinand Marcos.

“People have different versions of what [allegedly] happened between my mum and Marcos. I know that it is not true … I don’t want my mother dragged into this [issue]. She wants to keep the peace in the family. I don’t want it to appear that she had an affair with another man [who is] not my dad,” said Cruz, 41, the eldest daughter of Sonora and the late actor Ricky Belmonte.

“People say we [Cruz and Poe] are sisters. No! We are cousins,” said Cruz, adding, “I’m sorry. I am not willing to undergo a DNA test. Please spare my family from this. They are so affected by it.”

“This is politics. This is a different arena, not show business [that Poe has entered]. I know that it is more complicated and more dirty,” Cruz said, hinting of family feud and fatigue at the scandal facing Poe.

Suggesting that Poe should delay her bid to become president to 2022, Cruz also hinted at the senator’s lack of capacity to lead the country in 2016.

“Popularity cannot be translated into capability,” Cruz said, adding, “I am not trying to be knowledgeable here. I am a taxpayer. I am a mother. I am a boss with employees who depend on me. I think hard and twice who to vote for as president.”

“The presidency is about looking after people’s welfare. I am one of that people. I am a Filipino citizen. I love the Philippines. I want someone who is after my country’s sake, not after one’s ambition,” Cruz explained.

When asked if she is supporting another presidential candidate in 2016, Cruz said, “I’m not here for anybody’s gain. It’s not to further someone’s agenda or political career. No one pushed me to do this. I have my own conscience.”

In the same breath, she added, “I went around the Philippines and represented her [Poe] during the 2013 senatorial campaign. I would not have done that if I did not believe in what she could do at the time.”

For speaking out against the popular rookie senator, Cruz admitted that she lost her manager and was advised not to give a press conference after the launch of a movie on Felix Manalo, the founder of the non-Catholic Church of Christ (INC) which is known to offer politicians block voting.

It is not known if the INC is supporting Poe in 2016.

Poe is facing a disqualification complaint filed against her at the Senate Electoral Tribunal over her alleged lack of citizenship and residency to run for president in 2016.

“The Constitution requires candidates for public office to be natural-born citizens with 10 years of residency,” said Rizalito David who filed the complaint, adding that Poe’s parents and their nationality remained a mystery which disqualified her from being a natural-born Filipino.

Poe was found by Edgar Militar, a poor cockpit worker at the baptismal font of Jaro Cathedral in Iloilo, central Philippines on September 3, 1968; placed under the care of Sayong Military (Militar’s sister-in-law) after three days, on September 6, 1968; adopted by a rich woman Tessie Ledesma-Valencia, two years later, in 1970; and adopted by actress Susan Roces and action star Fernando Poe Jr when Ledesma-Valencia migrated to the US in 1974. Roces and Sonora are sisters.

Poe married Teodoro Llamanzares, an American citizen, on July 27, 1991. They lived in the US where she became a US citizen on October 18, 2001. Her adoptive father Poe died in December 2004, after losing the presidential race in June 2004. She and her family came back in 2004, decided to stay in the Philippines in 2005, and acquired Filipino citizenship in July 2006.