Senator Bam Aquino. FILE PHOTO
Despite supporting Sen. Grace Poe’s Liberal Party rival for the presidency, Sen. Paolo Benigno “Bam” Aquino IV said he voted to junk the disqualification case against Poe, claiming he made his decision based on principle rather than politics.
Aquino is a member of the Senate Electoral Tribunal (SET) that dismissed, in a 5 to 4 vote, a petition to unseat Poe as a senator on the ground that as a foundling, she could not be considered a natural-born citizen of the Philippines.
Only natural-born Filipinos may run for high public office.
But Poe still has to hurdle four other petitions before the Commission on Elections seeking to disqualify her from running for president on citizenship and residency grounds.
“In this decision, we did not think of Senator Poe,” said Aquino, who is a member of the LP which is fielding Mar Roxas for the presidency.
“What we thought about was what would be the implication for the thousands of abandoned children in the country, and this was the basis of some of us in the SET,” he said.
Majority of the SET members, or five out of four, ruled that a foundling is natural-born citizen based on international law, he said. A foundling enjoys the presumption that he or she is a citizen of the country where he or she was discovered, he added.
“If we considered foundlings naturalized, the rights and privileges that could have been given to foundlings if they were considered natural born would be gone,” he said.
“That would be a problem if they join certain professions, in becoming doctors or nurses and of course if they want to serve in the government,” he added.
Aquino noted that there had been expectations that the SET decision could be political. “But sometimes, we need to think using our principles, our conscience, and the trust given to us by the people,” he said.
He also said the LP’s “daang matuwid” mantra was no mere slogan, but a real principle. “In fairness to my party mates, none of them tried to influence my decision,” he said.
Aside from Aquino, those who voted for Poe were Senators Loren Legarda, Tito Sotto III, Cynthia Villar and Pia Cayetano.
Those who voted to disqualify Poe were Sen. Nancy Binay and Supreme Court justices Teresita Leonardo-de Castro, Arturo Brion, and Antonio Carpio, who also chairs the SET.
Asked about reports that Cayetano served as the swing vote, Sotto said it was “something like that.”
“She was the only one who did not submit a prepared separate opinion,” Sotto said in a text message. “I think she voted based on her advocacy of fighting for ‘the rights of the child.” The other pro-Poe senators did not need to convince her, he said.
Cayetano earlier said she would soon make public her separate opinion explaining her vote.
Sen. Antonio Trillanes IV on Wednesday said people should move on from the Poe citizenship issue and begin instead discussions on the candidates of the 2016 elections.
He said that the petitioner Lito David, “has every right” to appeal his case.
“But at this point, we have to move on and start discussing what’s really important in this elections: the character and policy positions of each of the candidates,” said Trillanes who is running for vice president and is supporting Poe’s candidacy.
Meanwhile, election lawyer Romulo Macalintal said that whether or not the SET decision is appealed to the Supreme Court, the Commission on Elections would have no other recourse but to dismiss all the disqualification cases questioning her citizenship. With Christine Avendaño