Sen. Grace Poe. INQUIRER.net FILE PHOTO
SAYING it was insufficient in form, Senator Grace Poe on Tuesday asked the Senate Electoral Tribunal (SET) to dismiss the disqualification case filed against her that seeks to unseat her in the Senate over questions raised on her residency and citizenship.
Poe said the quo warranto petition filed by defeated senatorial bet Rizalito David against her should have been filed within 10 days after she was proclaimed senator on May 16, 2013.
“Rule 18 of the SET Rules states that a petition for quo warranto against a Senator must be brought within ten (10) days after her proclamation. This period is non- extendible,” the senator said in 107-page “verified answer” she filed at the tribunal.
“Respondent was proclaimed Senator on May 16, 2013. Petitioner should therefore have filed the instant Petition within 10 days after May 16, 2013, or by 26 May 2013. The petition was filed on 17 August 2015, or over two years,” it said.
Aside from seeking the dismissal of the petition, Poe also asked the SET to cite the petitioner in direct contempt “for willful and deliberate forum shopping..” and punish him with a fine of P2,000 and imprisonment of 10 days.
She also asked the tribunal to cite the petitioner in indirect contempt “for failure to inform this Honorable Tribunal of the filing and pendency of his Affidavit-Complaint with the Comelec Law Department…” and to also punish him with a fine of P30,000.00 and imprisonment of six months.
The senator disclosed that just a few hours before David filed the petition last August 17, 2015, the latter had already filed with the Commission on Elections an action involving issues identical to those raised in this petition.
“Thus, the so-called “certification of non-forum shopping” attached to the Petition (which merely states that Petitioner had not filed a “similar petition for quo warranto”) was deceptively crafted so that he could evade the consequences of his willful and deliberate forum shopping,” she pointed out.
Poe said David was also “guilty of willful and deliberate forum-shopping.”
“He filed before the Comelec an action with issues identical to those raised in this Petition and then surreptitiously concealed that fact from this Honorable Tribunal,” she said.
Poe, in her answer to the petition, insisted that she was a natural-born Filipino and was “never stateless” contrary to David’s claims.
She narrated in details the story of her being a foundling from the time she was born, abandoned and found on September 3, 1968 in the Parish of Jaro in Iloilo and subsequently adopted by the late Fernando Poe Jr (FPJ), and wife, veteran actress Susan Roces.
“As a natural-born Filipino citizen, respondent exercised rights and observed responsibilities appurtenant to such citizenship,” she said in her answer.
It pointed out that after she turned 18 years old, Poe applied for registration as a voter and the Commissioner on Elections issued in her favor a voter’s identification card on December 13, 1986.
“Likewise, on 4 April 1988, 5 April 1993, 19 May 1998, 13 October 2009, and on 18 March 2014, the Ministry/Department of Foreign Affairs of the Philippines issued Philippine passports in Respondent’s favor, all uniformly stating that she is a citizen of the Philippines. A Philippine diplomatic passport was likewise issued in Respondent’s favor on 19 December 2013,” it said.
Poe initially enrolled for college at the University of the Philippines (Manila campus) but she transferred to the Boston College in Chestnut Hill, Massachusetts, U.S.A in 1988 where she graduated with a degree of Bachelor of Arts in Political Studies in 1991.
In July 1991, the senator married Teodoro Misael Daniel Llamanzarez, who is a citizen of both the Philippines and USA from birth and was at that time living in the USA.
“Despite living in the USA, respondent and her husband kept their Filipino ties and had always intended to return to the Philippines,” the reply said.
“ In fact, respondent and her family frequently returned to the Philippines to visit relatives and friends,” it further said.
Poe became a naturalized US citizen on October 18, 2001.
But when her father, FPJ, died in December 2004, the senator returned to the Philippines and stayed in the country until February 2005. It was in the same year that the senator started to enroll her children in different schools in the Philippines.
In 2006, the couple decided to sell their house in the US and her husband also left his work in the US.
In July 2006, Poe filed with the Bureau of Immigration a sworn petition to re-acquire her natural-born Philippine citizenship and took her oath of allegiance to the Republic of the Philippines.
She renounced her US citizenship immediately after she was appointed chair of the Movie and Television Review and Classification Board on October 6, 2010.
And after more than two years after she was elected senator in 2013, Poe noted that no one formally questioned her eligibility as senator until her name has been floated as one of possible presidential bets in 2016.
Poe then surmised that the true objective of the petition was not to unseat her in the Senate but to prevent her possible run in 2016.
“Petitioner could not care less for the integrity of the Senate. His true objective is to prevent Respondent, and by extension, all foundlings like her, from aspiring for a higher office, including the Presidency,” she said in the verified answer.
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