DQd Poe still on ballot

Senator Grace Poe. INQUIRER FILE PHOTO

THE COMMISSION on Elections (Comelec) on Wednesday disqualified Sen. Grace Poe from next year’s presidential election, but said she remained on the list of candidates unless she fails to get an injunction from the Supreme Court.

The seven-member Comelec voted to disqualify Poe because she was not a natural-born Filipino and did not meet the 10-year residency requirement for presidential candidates, Comelec Chair Andres Bautista said.

“Seven members of the commission believed that Senator Poe is not a natural-born citizen,” Bautista said, adding she had five days to get the Supreme Court to stop the Comelec from enforcing Wednesday’s ruling.

Bautista said Poe’s name remained “on the ballot as we speak,” but would not say if it would be retained if the Supreme Court did not issue an injunction.

The full commission voted on Tuesday, but the ruling was promulgated only Wednesday.

Poe will appeal the ruling in the Supreme Court on Monday, her lawyer George Garcia said.

“We will be praying on bended knees to the honorable Supreme Court … to prevent the Comelec from implementing the questioned decision,” Garcia told ABS-CBN network in an interview.

Garcia decried the Comelec’s decision to hand down the ruling while the Supreme Court was on a break for the Christmas holidays.

“We had hoped that the Comelec would exercise judicial courtesy. They promulgated the decision today but we have nowhere to go since the [Supreme Court] is closed until Sunday,” he said.

Garcia said the five days given by the Comelec meant that Monday was the last day Poe’s camp could get an injunction from the Supreme Court. After Monday, without an order from the court, the Comelec decision would become final, he said.

But Supreme Court spokesperson Theodore Te said the court may break its holiday recess to handle Poe’s appeal.

The court’s rules, he said, allow the court to break a recess when an urgent case requires immediate action.

If the case is raffled to the full court, he said, the Chief Justice, on the recommendation of the justice in charge, can issue a temporary restraining order (TRO) to stop the Comelec from enforcing its ruling.

If the case is raffled off to a division, it is the division’s chair who can issue a TRO, he said.

Asked about the possibility of a full-court session before the year ends, Te said the court could not act unless a petition was filed first.

The petition is coming on Monday, Poe said Wednesday.

She also said that while her petition was pending in the Supreme Court, she remained a presidential candidate.

Poe said she had expected the Comelec ruling disqualifying her from the presidential race after the commission’s First and Second Divisions decided against her in the four cases questioning her citizenship and residency.

But the Comelec cannot change the fact that she is “a Filipino,” much less “deprive [the Filipinos] of their right to choose [their] next leader,” she said.

Poe said she was now banking on the Supreme Court to clear the way for her presidential candidacy.

“We will follow the process and the next battleground is the Supreme Court,” she said.

On Dec. 1, the Comelec’s Second Division voted 3-0 to grant the petition brought by former government lawyer Estrella Elamparo to disqualify Poe because she was not a natural-born Filipino and she did not meet the 10-year residency requirement.

Days later, the First Division voted 2-1 to grant the petitions brought by former University of the East College of Law Dean Amado Valdez, De La Salle University professor Antonio Contreras and former Sen. Francisco Tatad, who raised the same issues against Poe.

On Tuesday, the full commission voted to uphold the Second Division’s ruling and then the decision of the First Division on the consolidated petitions brought by Valdez, Contreras and Tatad.

Five election commissioners voted consistently to disqualify Poe.

On both motions brought by Poe’s camp, Election Commissioners Al Parreño, Luie Tito Guia, Arthur Lim, Rowena Guanzon and Sheriff Abas voted to uphold the decisions of the Second and First Divisions to cancel her certificate of candidacy (COC), saying she had not met the 10-year residency requirement and she was not a natural-born Filipino.

“The majority, five commissioners in both cases, voted that there was a deliberate attempt to mislead the electorate. The decision in the First Division states that both—her statement that she is a natural-born citizen and that she had 10-year residency—are false and she intended and attempted to mislead the electorate,” Guanzon told reporters Wednesday.

The full commission voted 5-1, with one inhibition, to uphold the Second Division’s decision. Bautista, the commission’s chair, dissented, while Election Commissioner Christian Lim, chair of the First Division, inhibited because of a previous professional relationship with Elamparo.

The full commission voted 5-2, upholding the ruling of the First Division. Bautista and Lim dissented.

Bautista presented a matrix showing how the full commission voted. It showed majority of the commissioners voted against Poe in both cases, saying she was not a natural-born Filipino.

As for the question of residency, the full commission voted 5-1 against Poe in the Second Division case. Guia dissented.

In the First Division case, the full commission voted 5-2 against Poe. Guia and Lim dissented.

“In the Second Division case, only Commissioner Guia believed that Senator Poe met the residency requirement. But if you look at the First Division, it was 5-2, because both Commissioners Lim and Guia believe that Senator Poe met the residency requirement,” Bautista said.

The full commission held that Poe had a deliberate intent to mislead the electorate on her residency and citizenship, voting 4-2 on both questions.

Bautista dissented on both questions, saying he did not believe there was a deliberate intent on Poe’s part to mislead the electorate.

Parreño also dissented, rejecting the charge of deliberate intent to mislead on the question of Poe’s citizenship.

On the question of residency, Guia joined Bautista in the dissent.

Poe’s camp questioned the timing of the Comelec ruling.

“Why release the decision in haste when the holidays are upon us? Clearly it is meant to disadvantage Senator Poe’s legal response,” said Poe’s spokesperson, Valenzuela City Mayor Rex Gatchalian.

He said, however, that Poe’s camp would waste no time questioning the ruling in the Supreme Court.

“We will not let the plotters of this low-handed tactic to get away with it,” he said. With reports from Jerome Aning and AFP