The verdict made by the Senate Electoral Tribunal made up of the members of the Senate and justices of the Supreme Court, as usual, disastrously ended up not in a miscarriage of justice, but something worse than that—an insult to the intelligence of the Filipino people. The decision was most repulsive for it seems we elected senators who are willing to abnegate their duty of upholding and defending the Constitution for the sake of a misplaced collegiality and camaraderie. They paraded their ignorance with all alacrity that they voted on the basis of sentiment and sympathy lumped into one called travesty of the law.
Every time a special court is formed pursuant to the mandate of the Constitution, like the creation of a Senate Impeachment Court and the SET, they come out with a disgraceful verdict. As the ancient Greeks would say, “Even the Gods in heaven cried in shame for their stupidity.” The Filipino people too wriggle in shame on that moronic decision of our senators as if to live up to the saying that “birds of the same feathers truly flock together.”
It was not the first time that verdict jointly participated in by members of the Senate ended up as a judicial disaster. It was reminiscent of the Senate Impeachment Court that was reduced to that of a Kangaroo Court when they impeached President Joseph “Erap” Estrada in 2001 and Supreme Court Chief Justice Renato Corona Jr. in 2012. The decision was all based on fabricated evidence and testimony of hallucinating witnesses, and here comes now a senator neatly stitching her lies as a foundling to cover her falsification of documents.
Justice Antonio Carpio was right that citizenship cannot automatically be conferred to one claiming to be a foundling. We might even add that citizenship is a privilege that the Constitution clearly defines. Interpretations as to who are the citizens of this country, natural-born or naturalized, are to be strictly interpreted, more if the one claiming to be a citizen is exercising power and authority. To quote what Justice Carpio wrote, “There is no treaty, customary international law or a general principle of international law granting automatically Philippine citizenship to a foundling at birth. Respondent failed to prove that there is such customary international law. At best, there exists a presumption that a foundling is domiciled and born in the country where the founding is found.”
Even if the court will accept her fantasy that she was found at the door of the cathedral in Jaro, Ilo-ilo, she nonetheless failed to pass two vital tests, and both are crucial to her claim as a natural-born citizen: First, it is not for Grace Poe-Llamanzares or for her acknowledged parent Jesusa Sonora, a.k.a. Susan Roces, to say she is a foundling. It is for the person, a certain Edgardo Militar, who found her to prove that she is a founding. Yet, the very person who could have testified on her status failed to testify and submit sufficient evidence to support Poe’s claim. Second, even if the one who found her has proven that indeed she is a foundling, the person (Militar) must have proven that he is a citizen of this country.
This country does not subscribe to the principle of jus soli in determining who its citizens are, which is based on the place where one is born. Even her claim of being a foundling is a mere presumption, for aside from not being of age to consciously know that fact, nobody knows whether she was in fact given by somebody to be adopted or sold, which could effectively pull her out from that status as foundling. Besides, there is no such thing as foundling under international law which could be the proper subject in determining the nationality or citizenship of a person. The nearest thing a foundling could be classified is that of a stateless person.
Without the person testifying, at most the claim of Grace Poe of being a founding stands on a precarious—or worse, self-serving—presumption. The person who found her must prove that fact much that nobody really knows whether she is a foundling or a fruit of a crime like snatching or kidnapping. Proving that she was found in the Philippines by a Filipino citizen is mandatory. This is important because what we observe in this country is based on the principle of jus sanguinis, that in order for her to qualify as a Filipino citizen, she must prove that the one who found her is also a citizen of this country. This we say because the one who found her stands as her father. This is the reason his citizenship needs to be verified.
Hence, when Grace Poe claimed to be a foundling, in effect there is no person she could point to as her biological parents to bolster her claim of being a Filipino citizen by blood. Poe and those who have been hooting for her to run for president, are obviously ignorant or stupid, or both, and are out to put to trash what is clearly provided for in the Constitution. Their legal strategy to position herself as a foundling, in effect, placed her in the category of a stateless person. International law does not mention anything about foundlings. The United Nations High Commissioner on Refugees, which is the agency tasked to determine the status of persons, particularly refugees, says that the person’s nationality or citizenship are classified into two: 1) persons with nationality/citizenship; and 2) persons without nationality or stateless persons.
The determination by the UNHCR of nationality or citizenship is necessary to give those persons the status of refugees, thereby allowing them to apply for citizenship in the country where they intend to settle. To quote the UNHCR definition of “statelessness”: “The international legal definition of a stateless person is set out in Article 1 of the 1954 Convention relating to the Status of Stateless Persons, which defines a stateless person as “a person who is not considered as a national by any State under the operation of its law”. This means that a stateless person is someone who does not have a nationality of any country. Some people are born stateless, while others become stateless over the course of their lives.”
It added: “To understand how a person can lack a nationality, it helps to know how nationality works in practice. In simple terms, you acquire a nationality automatically at birth or you obtain one later on in life. Those who acquire nationality at birth do so because they were born in a country that gives nationality through birth on their territory (jus soli) or because their parents were able to transmit their nationality to their children (jus sanguinis), which usually applies regardless of where the child was born. Sometimes, however, people need to apply to become a national of a country and base their application on years of residence or a family link with the given country.”
The question now is this: Where does Grace Poe-Llamanzares go from here?
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