Drilon presses SET on Poe

By: Christine O. Avendaño, Jerome Aning - 9 years ago

Senate President Franklin Drilon. INQUIRER FILE PHOTO

Senate President Franklin Drilon on Sunday urged the Senate Electoral Tribunal (SET) to expedite hearings on the disqualification case against Sen. Grace Poe in order to reach a decision before the deadline for the filing of certificates of candidacy next month.

The SET on Monday opens oral arguments on the petition filed by Rizalito David, who lost the 2013 senatorial election, to unseat Poe, the front-runner in voter preference polls for the 2016 presidential election.

Having dropped the question on Poe’s residency last week, the SET—headed by Supreme Court Senior Associate Justice Antonio Carpio—is expected to tackle the question of whether Poe is a natural-born Filipino.

In a statement, Drilon called for the immediate resolution of Poe’s case, saying the case against her raised “serious doubts” about her citizenship and “unavoidably, it also casts doubts” on the validity of her presidential candidacy.

“An immediate resolution of this case will benefit everyone, but it will help the [people] most, especially as they decide whom to vote for next year. If [these questions about Poe’s citizenship remained unanswered, the voters would be confused],” said Drilon, vice chair of the Liberal Party (LP), whose presidential candidate, former Interior Secretary Mar Roxas, is running behind Poe in the polls.

“The sooner the SET can decide, the better it will be for all,” Drilon said. He expressed hope that the tribunal would be able to resolve the case before the filing of certificates of candidacy, set for Oct. 12 and 16.

The facts

The Senate President noted the facts cited by Poe in her submissions to the SET:

She is a foundling.

In 2001, she was naturalized as a citizen of the United States.

In 2006, she filed with the Bureau of Immigration a sworn petition to reacquire her Philippine citizenship.

In 2010, she executed before a notary public in Pasig City an affidavit renouncing her allegiance to the United States and her US citizenship.

At no time after she executed the affidavit did she ever use her US passport.

In 2010, she assumed the position of chair of the Movie and Television Review and Classification Board (MTRCB).

In 2011, she executed before the vice consul at the US Embassy in Manila an oath and reaffirmation of her renunciation of her US citizenship.

On October 2012, she filed her certificate of candidacy as senator.

“These are facts [that] can easily be stipulated by the parties involved. It is up to the tribunal to apply the provisions of the Constitution and the laws concerning the citizenship,” Drilon said.

Poe statement

Poe last night said she would not attend today’s oral arguments at the SET because the tribunal did not require her to be present.

In a statement, Poe said her lawyers would represent her in the oral arguments.

“The issues on citizenship that are to be discussed will be confined to purely legal ones as all the surrounding facts had been admitted by the petitioner,” Poe said.

“I believe [this will] give my colleagues who are SET members the full opportunity to ask all legal questions they wish to ask without any hesitation. This way the truth would be better served for the benefit of the public,” she added.

Sen. Vicente Sotto, who serves on the nine-member tribunal, said in a text message yesterday that the panel members could ask questions after the oral arguments.

Aside from Sotto and Carpio, the other members of the SET are Senators Loren Legarda, Cynthia Villar, Pia Cayetano, and Paulo Benigno Aquino IV, as well as Associate Justices Teresita Leonardo-de Castro and Arturo Brion.

The SET opened hearings on Poe’s case before the senator declared her bid for the presidency last week. She has chosen Sen. Francis Escudero as her running mate.

Poe is an adopted daughter of of the late movie actor Fernando Poe Jr. (FPJ) and his wife, actress Susan Roces. She married Neil Llamanzares, a citizen of both the Philippines and the United States in 1991 and a decade later she renounced her Philippine citizenship as she was naturalized as a US citizen.

Following the death of her father in 2004, Poe decided to return home and reacquired her status as a natural-born Filipino, along with her three children in July 2006.

Residency question

In separate interviews with reporters, three legal experts agreed that the SET’s dropping the residency issue against Poe last week did not clear the question of whether she met the residency requirement for a presidential candidate under the 1987 Constitution.

Article VII, Section 2 of the Constitution requires a presidential candidate to be a resident of the Philippines for at least 10 years immediately before the election.

“Later on, after Poe files her [certificate of candidacy] next month, the residency issue against her can once again be revived, no longer for her senatorial bid but for her presidential bid,” said former University of the Philippines law dean Pacifico Agabin.

Former University of the East law dean Amado Valdez also said the residency issue, when applied to Poe’s presidential candidacy, should be treated separately and differently.

“It will be a new disqualification case once she files her certificate of candidacy for President. Even if the SET has dropped the residency issue on the present case, her presidential bid is still left hanging because of another possible disqualification case that could be filed against her next month,” Valdez added.

The SET dropped the residency issue against Poe not on merits but on a technicality—the issue had prescribed.

Under SET rules, a disqualification case involving residency must be filed within 10 days from the date of the candidate’s proclamation.

Valdez said Poe, who migrated to the United States as a college student and earned citizenship there, still needed to prove that she had been a resident of the Philippines for at least 10 years before the May 2016 elections.

“The residency must be in the concept of having domicile in the Philippines. She cannot have two domiciles, one here and another in the US. It is only when she abandoned her US citizenship that she could be considered a resident in the Philippines for purposes of the elections,” he added.

Intention to return

Several allies of Poe and legal experts have earlier said the doctrine of “animus revertendi”—or one’s intention to return to his or her domicile—applied to the senator.

But for litigation lawyer Raymond Fortun, who also agrees that the residency issue could still hound Poe, the senator must be able to prove that she indeed had every intention and desire to return to the Philippines.

“The big question is: What was her unequivocal act in April or May 2006 to convince the Commission on Elections and the Supreme Court that she had the desire to reacquire residency in the Philippines,” Fortun said.

“It can’t be a simple ‘I buried my father’ while on a Philippine tourist visa. It can’t be ‘I visited and enrolled my kids’ while on a Philippine tourist visa,” he added.

Asked what acts could unequivocally prove a desire to return to the Philippines, Fortun said, “Something permanent, such as purchase of a property—a house, condo unit, country club share, or setting up a business or other similar investment.”

Poe claims she bought property here in late 2005 and built a house in Quezon City in early 2006. She also says she enrolled her children in Philippines schools in June 2005.

US passport

She has also been accused of continuing to use her US passport up to 2009 for at least 21 times, based on alleged Philippine immigration logs unearthed by her opponents.

Fortun said the allegation could work against Poe if taken to the courts.

Earlier, the Supreme Court declared that a candidate who had renounced his American citizenship, had reacquired his Filipino citizenship, and had taken his oath of allegiance to the Philippines but who, thereafter, continued to use his American passport for traveling was disqualified to run for public office.

The Supreme Court used the ruling in disqualifying Rommel C. Arnado as mayor of Kauswagan, Lanao del Norte province, twice, in the 2010 and 2013 elections.

The court said “only natural-born Filipinos who owe total and undivided allegiance to the Republic of the Philippines could run for and hold elective public office.”

Siding with Poe, election lawyer Romulo Macalintal said the senator’s case was not the same as Arnado’s.

Citing her answer to David’s petition as released to the media, Macalintal said it appeared that Poe used her US passport after she executed her oath of allegiance to the Philippines on July 7, 2006. On Oct. 20, 2010, she executed an affidavit renouncing her US citizenship when she was appointed MTCRB chair, after which she claimed she never used her US passport again.

“Clearly, as held by the Supreme Court in Arnado’s case, Poe’s use of her US passport before she executed her [affidavit of renunciation] did not affect her reacquisition of her natural-born Filipino citizen [status] under [the Dual Citizenship Law], as the mere use of such a passport ‘does not divest Filipino citizenship regained by repatriation.’ To reiterate, what will disqualify her is if she used the US passport after executing the [affidavit of renunciation],” Macalintal said.