Sereno fights for foundlings

‘PROFOUND’ IMPLICATIONS Chief Justice Ma. Lourdes Sereno says preventing Sen. Grace Poe from running for President for being a foundling will bar all foundlings from running for public office, getting a license for certain professions or even becoming a government scholar. INQUIRER PHOTO

CHIEF Justice Ma. Lourdes Sereno Tuesday warned of “profound” implications for foundlings like Sen. Grace Poe should the Supreme Court rule that the senator is barred from running for President for not being a natural-born Filipino citizen.

“If you’re saying that foundlings are not natural-born citizens, have you thought about the impact on the rights of all foundlings?” Sereno asked Commission on Elections (Comelec) member Arturo Lim at the resumption of oral arguments on the poll agency’s nixing of Poe’s candidacy in the May presidential election.

READ: Chief Justice: PH adoption laws recognize foundlings as Filipino citizens

“The court now has to categorically answer the question about her (Poe’s) status, because the pronouncements we will make will affect so many others,” said Sereno, the second magistrate in the 15-member high tribunal to indicate support of Poe’s bid to stay in the May derby.

Associate Justice Marvic Leonen who has also batted for Poe, suggested that the issue should be thrown to the electorate, supporting the contention of the senator’s allies that the voice of the people expressed in the balloting is the voice of God.

Most of the other magistrates, in questioning Poe’s counsel, tended to support the Comelec disqualification of Poe’s candidacy.

Aside from being President, Vice President, senator, congressman, justice or judge, a foundling who is not a natural-born citizen would not be able to become a high ranking civil servant, get a license for certain professions or even become a government scholar if Poe were disqualified, according to Sereno.

“If I am going to say that a foundling is not a natural-born Filipino citizen, that they cannot hold thousands of offices that require natural-born citizens, [does it mean that] any of those persons holding any of those positions who is alleged to be a foundling, must be removed?” Sereno asked.

“The moment any of them does not know their parents, they forfeit their right to office,” she said. “If your relative is a foundling, a petition for quo warranto may be brought against them to remove them from office, so the Office of the Solicitor General must set up a special division.”

Sereno added that many countries recognize foundlings are citizens.

Misrepresentation

Lim, however, stressed that the Comelec ruling that canceled Poe’s certificate of candidacy merely focused on material misrepresentations and the poll body was just implementing the Constitution’s provision on qualifications of presidential candidates.

Article VII, Section 2 of the 1987 Constitution provides: “No person may be elected President unless he is a natural-born citizen of the Philippines, a registered voter, able to read and write, at least 40 years of age on the day of the election, and a resident of the Philippines for at least 10 years immediately preceding such election.”

READ: Poe on citizenship of children: ‘I give them the right to choose’

The Constitution likewise defines who are natural-born citizens and these include those born of fathers or mothers who are citizens of the Philippines; if born of Filipino mothers, those who elect Philippine citizenship upon reaching the age of majority.

High officials take an oath to uphold the Constitution and to go against its explicit mandate would debase it with profound consequences, according to Poe’s opponents.

Poe said the Comelec committed a grave abuse of discretion, averring that only the Presidential Electoral Tribunal has the ultimate power to pass upon protests on qualifications and only after the balloting.

Lim said Poe never presented documentary or testimony to at least provide “substantial basis” that she is a natural-born Philippine citizen.

Lim said he was leaving it up to the “wisdom” of the Supreme Court to lay down the doctrine on the matter but added that Congress could also introduce legislation to ensure that the rights of foundlings will not be degraded.

Presumed filiation

Chief Justice Sereno argued that the fixation of bloodlines runs contrary to the Constitution which does not even mention the word bloodlines.

Sereno said the Supreme Court, in the past, had decided cases regarding “filiation based on presumptions,” wherein the Philippine citizenship of foundlings was presumed by the tribunal.

READ: Grace Poe: PH adoption laws boost my citizenship claim

In the 1976 case of Duncan and Christensen v. Court of First Instance of Rizal, the court held that a child who was given for adoption to a couple by a lawyer who knew the mother but was made to promise that she would not disclose her identity was presumed by the Supreme Court to be a Filipino citizen.

In the 1963 case of Ellis v. Republic, the Supreme Court barred a nonresident American couple from adopting a baby left in a hospital by an unidentified mother. The court presumed the child to be a Filipino and subject to a Philippine law that prohibits nonresident aliens from adopting abandoned children in the country.

Sereno also recalled that in 2004, the Supreme Court assumed that Poe’s great-grandfather Lorenzo was a Filipino even based only on the evidence that he died in Pangasinan province and was residing there when all Spanish subjects when the American came and later passed a law deeming all former Spanish subjects as Philippine citizens.

Lorenzo, therefore, was also able to transfer Philippine citizenship to his son Fernando Poe Sr. and the latter’s son Ronald Allan Poe, also known as Fernando Poe Jr., who is Senator Poe’s putative father.

Cruel and unjust

Sereno said that whatever ruling adopted by the court should not be based on “absurd and extreme interpretation that may be perceived as cruel and unjust.”

According to her, foundlings who are referred to in Tagalog as ampon, pulot, singaw, sabit should not be made to suffer “extreme hardship” by having to prove Filipino parentage.

At one point in the discussion, Lim remarked, “Pardon, your honor, if your advocacy is for foundlings,” to which Sereno replied, “My advocacy is for the rule of the law.”

The Chief Justice discussed another presumption by law in which an adulterous woman gives birth to a child and the child is presumed to be her and her legal husband’s child.

Lim agreed, saying that in cases of foundlings, only “God and the mother knows” who the father is. Sereno countered that a foundling should not be penalized if he could not name who his parents even if he “knows in her heart” that he is born Filipino.

Lim replied that the “sad plight of foundlings” was not an issue in the pending case. The commissioner said the court could just “canalize” the issues against Poe and come out with a ruling that “only binds the parties and their privies.”

Enact foundling law

He said the case against Poe only came about from the questions on her citizenship and residency that was raised by the individual petitioners and the Comelec had to make a ruling.

“If they had not complained, you would not have called her a liar,” Sereno said.

In his interpellation, Associate Justice Antonio Carpio said limiting senior positions in government, certain professions and government benefits to natural-born Filipinos were set forth by law enacted by Congress so that they would not be opened to naturalized citizens.

Carpio pointed out that in such case, Congress, by law, could have construed to have discriminated against naturalized citizens although there is no prohibition against passing any law in the future opening those positions to naturalized citizens.