The supporters carried placards and banners declaring their support for Senator Grace Poe and chanted her name as she arrived to attend the hearing at the high tribunal.

The Commission on Elections (COMELEC) had disqualified Poe because she failed to meet a 10-year residency requirement for presidential candidates and was not considered a natural-born Filipino.

In a statement, the 47-year-old first-time senator said she was confident that the law would be on her side.

“I don’t believe in the view of some who think that a foundling is a stateless person or one without nationality when they were born,” she said. “It is the law’s responsibility to protect the right of the weak and the powerless.”

Poe was abandoned as a baby on the steps of a church in the central city of Iloilo and was adopted by a late Filipino action movie star, but the identities of her biological parents are not known. She renounced her citizenship in 2001 to reside in the United States with her husband, but later returned and became a dual Philippine-US citizen.

Other contenders for the presidency are current Vice President Jejomar Binay, former interior secretary Mar Roxas, Rodrigo Duterte, a tough-talking mayor of a southern city, and veteran Senator Miriam Defensor Santiago.

More than 18,000 positions are up for grabs in the Philippines’ general elections on May 9, 2016, including president, vice president, senators, congressional representatives, provincial governors, city and town mayors and vice mayors.