Poe made an honest mistake, says poll chief

Comelec Chairman Andres Bautista
INQUIRER PHOTO/ MARIANNE BERMUDEZ

AN HONEST mistake.

That’s how Commission on Elections (Comelec) Chair Andres Bautista saw the entries involving the citizenship and residency of Sen. Grace Poe in her certificate of candidacy (COC) for President in the 2016 elections.

Bautista is the one of two dissenters in Tuesday’s decision of the full commission upholding the rulings of the First and Second divisions canceling Poe’s COC.

The Comelec gave Poe five days to appeal the ruling to the Supreme Court. The ruling was promulgated on Wednesday, leaving Poe only one and a half days to get an injunction from the Supreme Court.

The judiciary works on Dec. 28 and the morning of Dec. 29, then takes a break for the holidays. Work resumes on Jan. 4.

But Supreme Court spokesperson Theodore Te said on Wednesday that the court might break its recess to tackle Poe’s case.

In his 53-page separate concurring and dissenting opinion on the petition filed by former government lawyer Estrella Elamparo, Bautista said he believed Poe did not commit material misrepresentation in her COC when she claimed she was a resident of the Philippines for 10 years prior to Election Day and was a natural-born Filipino.

Not deliberate

“While I find the statements of respondent as contained in her 2016 COC regarding citizenship and residency are false, I do not believe that as required in a Section 78 disqualification case, there was a deliberate intent on respondent’s part to mislead, misinform or hide a fact, which would otherwise render a candidate ineligible,” Bautista said.

A deliberate act to mislead is a ground to cancel a candidate’s COC, according to Section 78 of the Omnibus Election Code.

Bautista voted to dismiss Elamparo’s petition but he was outvoted by the other election commissioners, with five—Rowena Guanzon, Arthur Lim, Luie Guia, Sherriff Abas and Al Parreño—voting to cancel Poe’s COC.

Commissioner Christian Robert Lim inhibited himself from the case as he is a former law partner of Elamparo.

Bautista said that while he believed Poe failed to satisfy the 10-year residency requirement, he was “satisfied” with the explanation of the senator that she committed an “honest mistake” on the duration of her stay in the Philippines.

“I believe that respondent’s declaration in her 2016 COC that she would have been a resident of the Philippines for 10 years and 11 months by May 9, 2016 is false,” Bautista said.

‘Satisfied with explanation’

“However, I am satisfied with the respondent’s explanation in her motion for reconsideration that her ‘false’ statement in her 2013 COC was just due to an honest mistake, which was supposedly caused by ambiguity in the said COC,” he added.

Bautista cited Poe’s defense that because of the ambiguity in the phrase “period of residence [in] the Philippines before May 13, 2013,” found in her 2013 COC for senator, she chose to err on the side of prudence and interpreted the phrase to mean the date of the filing of the COC in October 2012.

The Comelec chief, however, questioned Poe’s intention to reside permanently in the Philippines.

“What is bothering is the fact that she applied for reacquisition of her supposed Filipino citizenship only on July 10, 2006, or more than a year after she claims to have commenced to establish her domicile here,” Bautista said.

“[If] she really intended to permanently reside in the Philippines … she should have applied for the reacquisition of her supposed Filipino citizenship at an earlier date or at the very least, would have attempted to secure an immigrant visa or immigrant residence certificate to legitimize her establishment of domicile here. But she did not,” he said.

“Why did the respondent retain her US citizenship despite her supposed intention to remain in the [Philippines] permanently? One answer that comes to mind is that she was still contemplating whether to actually settle here or go back to [the United States],” he said.

“It may show a lack of intention to actually permanently reside here in the Philippines but it does not manifest a deliberate act to mislead,” he added.

On the question of Poe’s citizenship, Bautista said the senator did not commit material misrepresentation with a deliberate attempt to mislead when she said in her 2016 COC that she was a natural-born citizen.

Unresolved issue

He agreed with the earlier ruling of the Second Division that Poe could not have committed material misrepresentation regarding her citizenship because the Supreme Court had “not yet definitively resolved” the question of whether foundlings are natural-born citizens of the Philippines.

“As a foundling who grew up in the Philippines immersed in its culture, language and traditions, it was but natural for respondent to think of herself as a Filipino,” Bautista said.

Poe, who topped the 2013 senatorial election, was a foundling with unknown parents. She was adopted by movie actor Fernando Poe Jr. (FPJ) and his wife, movie actress Susan Roces.

She went to study in the United States in the late 1980s and lived there until April 2005, although she briefly returned to the Philippines to help FPJ in the 2004 presidential election campaign.

For a time, she became a US citizen and she returned to the Philippines when FPJ died seven months after losing the election to Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo.

She maintains she has renounced her US citizenship and also fulfilled the residency requirement.

In his separate opinion on the consolidated petitions filed by former Sen. Francisco Tatad, De La Salle University professor Antonio Contreras and former University of the East College of Law dean Amado Valdez, Bautista said the mere fact that Poe reacquired her citizenship through Republic Act No. 9225 meant she performed an act to perfect her Filipino citizenship, making her a naturalized, not natural-born, Filipino.

Lim’s dissent

Like Bautista, Commissioner Lim also dissented in the full commission resolution of the First Division petitions. He adopted his 81-page dissenting opinion in the division level, which stated that he believed Poe did not commit material misrepresentation on the residency and citizenship issues.

Lim said Poe was able to effectively show proof of her intent to permanently reside in the Philippines as early as May 24, 2005, and that the division does not have the mandate to rule on whether she is a natural-born citizen.

Guia concurred with the majority finding that the representation in the COC relating to Poe’s natural-born citizenship status is false.

But he said that “there is no such falsity insofar as the period of residency is concerned.”

“I find that the respondent was able to prove that she has satisfied the 10-year residency qualification required for a President under the Constitution,” Guia added.

On Dec. 1, the Comelec’s Second Division voted 3-0 to grant the petition brought by 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 Valdez, Contreras and 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 against Poe

Five election commissioners voted consistently to disqualify Poe.

The full commission voted 5-1, with one inhibition, to uphold the Second Division’s decision.

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

Briefing reporters on Wednesday, 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.

On 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.

‘Inquisitor and persecutor’

The ruling angered Poe’s running mate, Sen. Francis Escudero, who accused the Comelec of bullying Poe and acting as her “inquisitor and persecutor.”

“Christmas is always a time for loving, sharing and giving. And it seems that the Comelec has imbibed the Christmas spirit by loving and sharing, and being giving to the opponents of Senator Poe but not to her, not to us, and certainly not to the Philippine electorate,” Escudero said in a statement.

“The Commission on Elections is both wrong and unfair and bully,” he said.

Escudero said Poe “answered every question with candor and honesty both before the Comelec and before the Filipino people.”

“How dare they say she ‘deliberately attempted to mislead the electorate,’” he said.

Escudero said the Comelec had done the electorate a disservice.

It has been “pretending to be an independent body when it has been her inquisitor and persecutor,” and its action has been “plain and simple bullying her,” he said. With reports from Leila B. Salaverria, Tarra Quismundo and Gil C. Cabacungan