Senate Deputy Minority Leader Risa Hontiveros on Wednesday raised the possibility that Bamban, Tarlac Mayor Alice Leal Guo could have stolen another person’s identity after investigations revealed a woman bearing the same name, birthday, and birthplace with the suspended local chief executive.
Hontiveros received the information from the National Bureau of Investigation (NBI) database. “The spelling of their names are the same, but their faces are so different,” she said at the resumption of the Senate Committee on Women, Children, Family Relations and Gender Equality hearing.
Senator Sherwin Gatchalian earlier said he was convinced that the true identity of the embattled mayor is Guo Huaping, born to Chinese parents, who traveled to the Philippines in the early 2010s under the Special Investor’s Resident Visa (SIRV) program.
“As has already been reported, Alice Guo’s Chinese identity appears to be Guo Huaping, fully Chinese with two Chinese parents,” Hontiveros reiterated. She noted that in the NBI document, the other ‘Alice Leal Guo’ was also born on July 12, 1986 in Tarlac.
“Is it a coincidence that this NBI clearance was applied for just a few days before the date of filing of the delayed registration of birth of the other Alice Leal Guo in Tarlac City? Or is this a case of stolen identity?” the senator wondered.
Hontiveros said it is possible that Guo assumed the identity of a Filipino woman and waited for a decade to run for public office in Bamban. She already requested the NBI to search for the other ‘Alice Leal Guo’ who could help shed light on this development.
The new information left the senator puzzled as regards the intentions and reasons behind this possible case of stolen identity on the part of Guo. The mayor failed to attend Wednesday’s Senate hearing because she was not feeling well, according to her legal counsel.
“She feels stressed and sick,” lawyer Stephen David told reporters on behalf of the mayor.
