Will welcome opportunity to face President – Poe

Sen. Grace Poe Llamanzares said she is ready to face President Aquino should he decide to call her to Malacañang to discuss the Senate’s findings on the Mamasapano incident.

“I think it would even be better if I have the opportunity, of course,” Poe said in an interview over ANC Headstart.

“I didn’t want to do this, I feel very awkward. But it happened already, I have released the report already,” Poe added.

Poe released the Senate committee report last Tuesday, March 17, after a joint probe conducted by the Senate Committees on Public Order, Finance and Peace, and Unification and Reconciliation into the death of 44 Philippine National Police (PNP-SAF) commandos in the Mamasapano operation.

Twenty senators have signed the report which found that the

President is “ultimately responsible” for the operation.

Poe said coming up with the committee report was the “most difficult thing” she has done since entering government service. “I have high regard for the President and I continue to have a high regard for him. I consider him a friend. It’s very difficult, plus you’re investigating institutions – the PNP, the AFP – and then we also have other groups, the MILF, the foreign entities,” she said.

“It’s so difficult and, up until the last minute, I was questioning myself: Should I tone it down? Should I be more diplomatic?”

Poe said she didn’t want the President’s credibility to suffer, especially since she knows him to be a “very good person.” “I did not want him to suffer or to feel bad about it but again, I think the reason he trusted me to be in his slate (in the 2013 senatorial election) is precisely because… maybe he thought I was sincere, I was honest, and I do my work,” she said.

“So if I didn’t do what I did, I would have gone against the ‘tuwid na daan’ (righteous path) that he would (pursue). That’s the criteria I think that he wants to do,” she said.

Poe, who ran under the Liberal Party senatorial ticket during the May, 2013, elections, said she remembers the President being kind to her. “He was very honest. So I know, he’s a very sincere person. That’s why I can say, you make mistakes and in any operation you can make a mistake,” Poe said.

“But what leaves doubt in our minds is he coordinated with a suspended PNP chief, who happens to have been suspended for corruption,” she pointed out.

Poe defended the draft committee report’s stronger stance than the PNP-Board of Inquiry’s (BOI) findings on the incident. The BOI report is more “operational and tactical” for the PNP organization, she said.

“Of course, ours would be a step harsher than the BOI because we have to make recommendatory functions in aid of legislation. Plus, we can also recommend the filing of charges,” she pointed out.

Poe said she prayed hard before releasing the Senate report. “I prayed to God, No. 1, that He help me say what I need to say, what He wants me to say. That’s how I pray, but I also asked the intercession of my Dad. It’s important,” said the daughter of the late actor Fernando Poe Jr. (FPJ). FPJ ran for the presidency in the 2004 elections against then President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo.