Former Comelec chair Sixto Brillantes INQUIRER FILE PHOTO
Sen. Grace Poe cannot be disqualified from next year’s elections based on her residency status, according to former Commission on Elections (Comelec) chair Sixto Brillantes.
“As far as residency is concerned, I believe Grace Poe is qualified, based on the issue on domicile,” Brillantes said in an interview with reporters.
According to Brillantes, the residency requirement provided by the Constitution refers not to the actual period of residence but to legal residence or domicile.
“The Philippines as her domicile is well established since she was born here. The Philippines is her domicile of origin, she is a resident of the country from the day she was born up to now,” said Brillantes, a veteran election lawyer.
“The residency being referred to in the Certificate of Candidacy (COC) is actually on the domicile, and not the actual physical residence. Domicile means you may not be physically there but there remains your intent to return,” he added.
Brillantes said even if a case was filed before the courts, Poe’s COC could not be considered as strong evidence to prove her failure to meet the residency requirement.
In her COC for the 2013 midterm elections, Poe answered six years and six months under “Period of Residence in the Philippines Before May 13, 2013.”
“What you put in the COC does not really have much weight since the court will look into what is the real circumstance. It will look if one is really a resident and has established domicile for a certain number of years,” he added.
“For me it doesn’t matter what she wrote in her COC, it’s possible that she made a mistake there thinking it was referring to the actual period of residence,” Brillantes added.
However, while he believed residency shouldn’t be an issue in Poe’s possible bid for higher office, Brillantes said her citizenship might be a different issue.
He admitted that a disqualification case could progress if the issue of residency was tied with questions on Poe’s citizenship since she once held an American citizenship.
In such a case, Brillantes, who used to be the election lawyer of Poe’s father, the late Fernando Poe Jr., said the issue regarding her real parents would be scrutinized.
Poe is an adopted daughter of Fernando Poe Jr. and actress Susan Roces.
“The question will then be: Who is her real father? Even if she was born here but her father is a foreigner, it means she is also a foreigner. These issues will eventually come up soon,” warned Brillantes.
But he pointed out that it would be too early to raise such concerns because Poe has not even announced that she would run for the 2016 polls.
“You can raise all of these issues once she files her COC. That’s the time a disqualification case can be filed against her,” Brillantes said.
The camp of Vice President Jejomar Binay on Tuesday said Poe could not run for Vice President or President because she has not met the 10-year residency requirement.
According to Navotas Rep. Toby Tiangco, the interim president of Binay’s United Nationalist Alliance (UNA), said that by Election Day 2016, Poe would have resided in the Philippines for only nine years and six months — six months short of the requirement.
The poll body, meanwhile, declined to issue a comment on the issue of Poe’s residency.
“We will decline to comment because that case may eventually find its way here and we will be the one to rule on it,” said Comelec spokesperson James Jimenez in a separate interview. TVJ
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