LOOKS FAMILIAR? Sen. Sherwin Gatchalian produced these documents which he said may support claims that Bamban Mayor Alice Guo was also Guo Hua Ping, a Chinese citizen. At left is a passport presented by Guo’s supposed parents when they applied for a special investor’s resident visa (SIRV). Guo’s ID picture is attached to the SIRV.
MANILA, Philippines — Sen. Sherwin “Win” Gatchalian presented on Tuesday what he considered possible proof of the real identity of Alice Guo, the mayor of Bamban, Tarlac province, who is at the center of a firestorm over the illegal Philippine offshore gaming operator (Pogo) in her town.
Gatchalian said he had obtained a document from the Board of Investments and the Bureau of Immigration that would support suspicions that Guo was not a Filipino national, contrary to her claim.
He said a copy of a special investors resident visa (SIRV) showed that a certain Guo Hua Ping, a Chinese citizen, arrived in the country on Jan. 12, 2003.
READ: Alice Guo’s mother could also be Chinese, says Gatchalian
The document, which the senator shared with Senate reporters, had a picture of a young woman who he said looked exactly like the controversial Bamban mayor.
“Is Guo Hua Ping the real Alice Guo?” Gatchalian asked.
“Alice Guo might be Guo Hua Ping, who entered the Philippines on January 12, 2003, when she was 13 years old. Her real birth date is August 31, 1990,” he said in a Viber message.
According to the senator, the application for the SIRV was filed by Guo’s family.
“Guo Hua Ping’s registered mother under the SIRV is Lin Wenyi,” he added.
Gatchalian had earlier suspected that Lin, a Chinese national whose name appeared as an incorporator of several companies owned by Guo’s family, could be her biological mother.
The senator was also able to secure a photocopy of Guo’s Chinese passport.
It showed that the passport holder was a female student born in Fujian, China, on Aug 31, 1990.
The passport, which was issued on April 3, 1999, in Fujian, had a photo of a much younger Guo.
Sherwin Gatchalian —Senate Social Media Unit
“This [would] bolster the quo warranto case against her,” Gatchalian said, referring to the legal action that the Office of the Solicitor General might pursue against Guo to void her election as mayor.
Denial
Guo had previously rejected all allegations that she could be a Chinese “asset” trained to infiltrate and influence the Philippine government.
But she admitted during a Senate hearing that her father, Jian Zhong Guo, a Chinese national who later used Angelito as his Filipino name, was a native of Fujian.
The mayor’s often contradictory answers to simple questions about her childhood and personal background, which she had embellished with details typical of soap operas on TV, had fueled speculations about her real identity.
Guo had repeatedly claimed to be the love child of her father and his former housekeeper, a certain Amelia Leal, who supposedly abandoned her soon after she was born in 1986.
However, Sen. Risa Hontiveros, who has been leading the Senate inquiry into the criminal activities linked to Pogos, noted that her birth certificate showed that Guo’s parents were actually married and that she had two other siblings.
An official of the Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA) later told the senators that Guo had a third sibling whose birth was also registered late, like her.
The PSA also said that there was a “high” possibility that Leal’s identity was fictitious as there were no records of her existence.
The agency also noted that there was no marriage record for Guo’s supposed parents.