‘No one can predict what SC will do’ on Poe

SAY CHIZ Sen. Francis “Chiz” Escudero meets Inquirer reporters and editors in Makati City on Wednesday. ELOISA LOPEZ

Amid jitters with time running short, Sen. Francis “Chiz” Escudero is not making any guesses on how the Supreme Court will rule on the disqualification case against his presidential candidate, Sen. Grace Poe, in the May elections.

What is clear, said Escudero, Poe’s vice presidential candidate, is that Poe is a natural-born citizen and a 10-year resident in the Philippines—qualifications under contention in the closely watched case the high court is tasked to decide less than three months before the balloting.

“There are definitely jitters. No one can predict what the Supreme Court will do,” Escudero told Inquirer editors and reporters in a nearly three-hour interview on Wednesday night.

He cited the Supreme Court’s ruling on Malacañang’s Disbursement Acceleration Program (DAP), an economic stimulus program stricken down as unconstitutional in July 2014.

Malacañang lost the case in a unanimous vote even while President Aquino had four appointees in the court at the time. The vote, Escudero said, was “not against his administration, but against the President.”

“In a way, it shows the independence of the court, not necessarily individually but as a court,” he said.

The high court wrapped up proceedings on Poe’s case on Tuesday, following a total of 22.18 hours of weekly oral arguments beginning Jan. 19.

The court, criticized for ignoring pleas that it speed up proceedings with the balloting just around the corner, ordered parties to file their memoranda on Monday, after which the case would be submitted for resolution.

Escudero said the highly anticipated ruling must be giving all parties jitters: Poe, the Commission on Elections (Comelec), “those who are banking on the fact that she will be disqualified, or those who are praying that she will be disqualified.”

Poe sought relief in the Supreme Court in December last year in hopes of voiding Comelec’s en banc rulings disqualifying her from the case, saying the decisions constituted “grave abuse of discretion.”

The Comelec said she had committed “material misrepresentation” in her certificate of candidacy for President.

Acting on four separate petitions to disqualify Poe, Comelec’s First and Second Divisions, and later the en banc, had found that the candidate is not a natural-born Filipino, being a foundling of unknown parentage.

The poll body had also ruled that Poe is six months short of the 10-year residency requirement, having written on her October 2012 certificate of candidacy (COC) for her May 2013 Senate run that she would be a resident of the Philippines “for six years and six months” by election time.

A baby abandoned at a church in Jaro, Iloilo in 1968, Poe was raised by the late actor and 2004 presidential candidate Fernando Poe Jr. and actress Susan Roces. Senator Poe abjured her Filipino citizenship and became an American in 2001 after marrying Filipino-American Neil Llamanzares, but returned to Manila on May 24, 2005.

She reacquired her Filipino citizenship in 2006 but renounced her American citizenship only four years later, in 2010, when she was appointed chair of the Movie and Television Review and Classification Board.

Defending his standard-bearer, Escudero, a lawyer, said the Constitution’s lack of an explicit declaration of foundlings as natural-born citizens must be read in the context of legislative intent: that the framers of the 1935 Constitution had intended to include, instead of discriminate against, abandoned children.

The old Constitution covers Poe, as she was born in 1968.

Escudero sought to demolish the contention of Associate Justices Antonio Carpio and Teresita Leonardo-de Castro, who both had made it clear during the oral arguments that Poe should not be regarded as a natural-born Filipino.

“Justice Carpio and De Castro said she’s stateless because we follow the rule of jus sanguinis (right of blood). I have a basic question for them: Where in the Constitution is the phrase jus sanguinis written? Where is it written that, in the Philippines, citizenship is determined by blood?” Escudero asked.

He said the justices may have simply inferred that the Constitution defined citizens as “those whose fathers or mothers are citizens.”

“But it begs the question: That rule would only apply in a situation wherein you know who your father or mother is. If you don’t, then how can you apply that rule?” Escudero said.

He said that international law also provides that “a person who is found in a country is a citizen of that country.” He countered De Castro’s argument that there is no enabling law to implement this principle.

But, said Escudero, the Constitution also recognizes that “generally accepted principles of international law form part of the law of the land.”

“You don’t need implementing legislation unless there is a need to do so. But since it is an act that is given to you by birth, [there is no need] to perform an additional act or pass implementing legislation,” he said.

He also echoed arguments that Solicitor General Florin Hilbay had presented in court on Tuesday, in which he argued that the constitutional silence on foundlings must be read as an intention to recognize them as natural-born Filipinos.

“The SolGen argued between two interpretations of the law. Which one will you use: One that is discriminatory, or one that is inclusive? At the end of the day, laws were made to protect the minority, the powerless, those who cannot protect themselves. Who could be more powerless than the foundlings?” Escudero said.

The Constitution explicitly mandates, “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.”

It goes on, “Natural-born citizens are those who are citizens of the Philippines from birth without having to perform any act to acquire or perfect their citizenship.”

The citizenship of foundlings is not an issue in the Poe case and that this is best addressed by legislative action, Poe’s critics say, and to rule otherwise  would debase the Constitution officials are sworn to uphold.