DQ’d  mayor’s case seen as litmus test for Poe citizenship issue

THE Supreme Court’s landmark ruling that laid down standards on eligibility for election of candidates who used foreign passports is now final and executory.

In a two-page resolution, the high court already declared final and executory the case of Kauswagan, Lanao del Norte Mayor Rommel Arnado and issued an entry of judgment.

The high court, in the said ruling, affirmed the disqualification of Mayor Arnado in the 2013 elections for still using his American passport despite renouncing his US citizenship.

The said case, where the High Court considered use of foreign passport by dual citizens as proof of ineligibility to hold public office, is said to be the litmus test to the current disqualification case against presidential candidate Sen. Grace Poe.

“Only natural-born Filipinos who owe total and undivided allegiance to the Republic of the Philippines could run for and hold elective public office,” the high court said in the decision penned by Associate Justice Mariano del Castillo, who has been tasked to also write the draft decision on Poe’s case.

“By using his US passport, Arnado positively and voluntarily represented himself as an American, in effect, declaring before immigration authorities of both countries that he is an American citizen, with all attendant rights and privileges granted by the United States of America,” the high court pointed out.

The high court held that the use of a foreign passport after renouncing one’s foreign citizenship “is a positive and voluntary act of representation as to one’s nationality and citizenship” and “does not divest one of the reacquired Filipino citizenship but recants the Oath of Renunciation required to qualify one to run for an elective position.”

Renunciation of foreign citizenship, according to the Supreme Court  “is not a hollow oath that can simply be professed at any time, only to be violated the next day” and “requires an absolute and perpetual renunciation of the foreign citizenship and a full divestment of all civil and political rights granted by the foreign country which granted the citizenship.”

In Poe’s case, which has been submitted for resolution by the high court, petitioners questioning her qualification to run for president said she continued to use her US passport until March 2010 after supposedly returning to the country in 2005.

Poe renounced her American citizenship only on October 20, 2010, a day before she took her oath of office as chairperson of the Movie and Television Review and Classification Board (MTRCB).

But Manuelito Luna, lawyer of former Sen. Francisco “Kit” Tatad, one of four disqualification petitioners against Poe in the Commission on Elections, earlier cited records of US State Department’s Bureau of Consular Affairs possibly showing that Poe still used her US passport after renouncing her American citizenship.

Luna said the documents indicated that Poe used her US passport in September 2011, a month before the same passport expired.