Citizenship, residency: Poe’s biggest roadblocks in path to victory?

Senator Grace Poe. PRIB FILE PHOTO

After months of speculations as to what Sen. Grace Poe’s role in the 2016 national elections will be, all roads will lead to the University of the Philippines in Diliman, Quezon City, this evening as the senator and poll frontrunner is expected to announce her presidential bid.

But despite enjoying a generally positive perception from the public, Poe’s journey to “Ang Bahay Ng Alumni” on UP campus is not a smooth-sailing one, as she has been hounded by issues concerning her citizenship and residency amid surging popularity in preference surveys.

The issue started when Vice President Jejomar Binay’s United Nationalist Alliance (UNA) claimed that Poe was not qualified to run for higher positions next year due to an alleged lack of residency.

In a press conference in June, Navotas Rep. Toby Tiangco of UNA said Poe’s certificate of candidacy (COC) in 2013 showed that her residency in the country was at six years and six months prior to the May 2013 elections.

By Election Day in 2016, Tiangco said Poe would have stayed in the Philippines for only nine years and six months, still six months short of the 10-month residency requirement for presidential and vice presidential bets.

But Poe maintained that she was qualified to seek a higher post next year, saying the COC stated “residence in the Philippines before May 2013,” and did not say “by May 13, or on May 2013.”

READ: Grace Poe lacks residency, not qualified to run for president or VP—solon | Grace Poe not eligible for presidency, says UNA | Grace Poe to critics: I am qualified to run for higher post

Rizalito David comes into picture

Losing senatorial bet Rizalito David, who ran under Catholic-based Ang Kapatiran party, has also filed a disqualification case against Poe in the Senate Electoral Tribunal (SET) regarding her citizenship, particularly over being a foundling or stateless.

Poe, the adoptive daughter of movie stars Susan Roces and the late Fernando Poe Jr., went to the United States in 1989 to pursue a political science degree at Boston College. She finished the course in 1991 and went back to the Philippines in 2004 when her father died.

In August, David filed another case in the Commission on Elections over Poe’s citizenship and residency, accusing the senator of “material misrepresentation” in the COC she filed in 2013.

“The gravamen of the offense is material misrepresentation. As [Poe] misrepresented her citizenship, her period of residence and her eligibility to run for senator, these transgressions should be penalized accordingly,” David said in his affidavit.

Poe’s camp has described the cases filed against the senator as a form of “harassment” supposedly to sabotage her political plans in 2016.

READ: David files second poll case vs Poe, wants her jailed | Grace Poe camp: Citizenship case filed at Comelec pure ‘harassment’

In response to a motion to subpoena her citizenship records, Poe submitted a 90-page thick document to the SET to counter claims to unseat her, including her birth certificate and travel records from the Bureau of Immigration.

Among the documents presented by Poe was a July 18, 2006, order issued by former Immigration Commissioner Alipio Fernandez Jr., through Associate Commissioner Roy Almoro, declaring that Poe, having been born to Filipino parents, was “presumed to be a natural-born Philippine citizen.”

READ: David asks SET to subpoena documents over Poe’s citizenship | Poe submits documents to electoral tribunal to prove citizenship | Poe presents papers proving citizenship

Poe, through her lawyers, said the case against her before the SET should be dismissed for forum shopping as David had filed the same complaint with the Comelec. She also asked the tribunal to cite David in contempt for “willful and deliberate forum shopping.”

A lawmaker also said that Sen. Vicente Sotto III would ask SET chair and Supreme Court Associate Justice Antonio Carpio to junk the disqualification case against Poe for fear that it would drag on until the start of the election campaign season.

READ: Poe wants disqualification case junked Asap | Sotto, Escudero vouch for Grace Poe’s Filipino citizenship

Citizenship, not residency

Poe’s lawyers said the SET would focus on matters surrounding Poe’s citizenship with the sub-issue of renunciation, and not her residency.

In an advisory issued by the SET, it said one core issue to be tackled was “whether or not respondent reacquired her natural-born Filipino citizenship on July 7, 2006, when she took the oath of allegiance to the Philippines.”

Poe had been residing in the US since her marriage to Filipino-American Neil Llamanzares in 1991.

The senator, who was left at a church in Jaro, Iloilo, in 1968 when she was still a baby, acquired American citizenship in October 2001.

Poe, who topped recent preference surveys for both presidential and vice presidential bets, is expected to announce her presidential bid this evening at Ang Bahay ng Alumni in UP Diliman. Yuji Vincent Gonzales/RC