The oral arguments on the disqualification cases lodged against Senator Grace Poe, an independent candidate for president in the May 2016 elections, continues in the Supreme Court. From the way the hearing went last week, Poe is fighting an uphill battle.
One justice, however, intimated that Poe’s opponents must prove her ineligibility. That’s odd, considering that the documents Poe submitted to the Commission on Elections in 2013, when she ran for senator, indicates, with Poe’s knowledge and consent, that by May 2016, she will be several months short of the minimum ten-month residency requirement imposed by the Constitution on candidates for president. Since those documents are official documents in government custody, they carry a lot of probative value. Clearly, the burden is on Poe to prove otherwise.
If the information in Poe’s documents is supposedly false or erroneous, Poe should have corrected it. Poe’s unexplained refusal to make the needed correction is an indication that the information she supplied in her documents is true and correct.
Evidently, Poe didn’t bother to correct the alleged error in her 2013 Comelec records because the residency requirement for a valid run for the Senate is two years, and by the time of her election as senator in May 2013, she would have satisfied the two-year residency requirement. Thus, for three years, Poe’s 2013 Comelec records remained unchanged, even when she had the services of lawyers at her beck and call as senator.
Under the legal principle of estoppel, one is not permitted to disavow whatever representations one has earlier made to others who relied on such representations. For example, one who freely makes an admission against himself or herself cannot be permitted to object to the use of that admission against him later on. Therefore, since Poe did not correct her 2013 Comelec records, Poe is estopped from alleging that those records are erroneous.
Nobody questioned Poe’s citizenship in 2013 because back then the electorate saw her as the adopted daughter of film actor Fernando Poe Jr., who was perceived by many as the real winner of the 2004 presidential elections.
Poe’s landing first place in the 2013 senatorial elections apparently convinced Poe to run for president in 2016. It also prompted many political opportunists, most of whom did not consider Poe a viable senatorial candidate in 2013, to cajole Poe to run for president in May 2016. These are the same characters who would not have bothered giving Poe the time of the day before she won in 2013.
Now, these opportunists want the electorate to believe that Poe’s three-year, lackluster stint as the national cinema and television censor, and another three years as a virtually inactive senator, are enough to make her a competent leader. They are, however, conveniently silent about Poe’s American husband who, if Poe is elected president, will be the country’s first alien first gentleman.
When President Benigno Aquino III was still a legislator, he was never identified with any outstanding legislation. As president, Aquino has not shown any competence, either. Compared to Poe, however, Aquino has more experience in public service. Imagine then what a Poe presidency will be like? No wonder Poe’s supporters with vested interests want her to be president. They expect to wield influence in an administration that should not be in office in the first place.
As pointed out in previous essays in this column, many of the politicians supporting Poe’s run for president do not, or refuse to understand the Constitution, and they conveniently raise populist contentions whenever they run out of valid arguments. They do not mind violating the Constitution just to suit one individual like Poe.
Compared to the politicians behind Poe, the petitioners who filed the disqualification cases against Poe did their homework, and they know what they are talking about. One is an ex-senator who writes legal and political anthologies, one is a former prosecutor of the Department of Justice, one is a law school dean, and one is an academician specializing in Political Science.
The Solicitor General argues that it is unfair to demand that foundlings like Poe establish their citizenship at birth with strict certainty, and that since Poe has Filipino features, and since she was found in a Catholic church in Jaro, Iloilo where the majority of the population is Catholic, it is likely that she is born of Filipino parents, and that she is a natural-born Filipino.
Two columnists from another newspaper debunked that argument and pointed out that the Constitution requires a fact, not a mere likelihood. The issue, they said, is not what is beneficial to foundlings, but whether or not a specific foundling—Grace Poe—is a natural-born citizen.
Besides, the reference to fairness is misplaced. If every candidate for president, vice president, senator, and representative is required to prove their natural-born citizenship when they are questioned about it, there is no valid reason for creating a lenient standard for a candidate who is a foundling. Subjecting foundlings to such lenient standards will encourage circumvention of Philippine laws on citizenship. Since adoption does not confer Philippine citizenship on a child, aliens who want their child to obtain Philippine citizenship will go around the law and make it look like the child is a foundling left in a Catholic church.
Many noted opinion leaders agree that Poe is ineligibility to run for the presidency. A senior columnist of this newspaper has repeatedly underscored why Poe is and remains disqualified for a presidential run on the ground of citizenship and residency considerations. His arguments, often expressed in simple language, cannot be ignored or dismissed indiscriminately.
A writer from another newspaper wrote that the Constitution should not be set aside just to accommodate popular individuals like Poe. He added that while the current Constitution may not be perfect, and until it is amended, it is entitled to everyone’s compliance. That includes Poe and the Supreme Court.