The Commission on Elections has canceled actor Edu Manzano’s certificate of candidacy over the questions on his citizenship.
But the poll body dismissed the plea to disqualify former Foreign Affairs Secretary Peter Cayetano to run for congress in Taguig over a domicile issue.
Manzano, who was allowed by the Comelec to run for vice president under the Lakas-Kampi-CMD in the May 2010 election as the running mate of presidential candidate Gilbert Teodoro, was disqualified to run for a congressional seat after the actor “committed false material representation on his citizenship” by failing to provide direct proof of his oath of allegiance to the Philippines.
Meanwhile, a leader of the House of Representatives on Tuesday appealed to the Supreme Court to decide on a resolution questioning the corrections of voting centers made by the Commission on Elections.
Deputy Speaker and Sulu Rep. Munir Arbison recalled that the Comelec recently corrected the voting centers it found to be disadvantageous to the Sulu registered voters.
“Comelec cited the island barangay of Capual in Sulu with more than 3,000 registered voters, but their voting center remains on the mainland, which is more than three kilometers away from their docking points,” Arbison said.
The Comelec’s Second Division granted the petition filed in November 2018 by Sophia Patricia Gil, a San Juan City resident who claims Manzano misrepresented himself after he declared that he was a Filipino citizen when he filed his COC for the May 13, 2019 elections.
The Comelec ruling said the “respondent was not a Filipino citizen at the time he filed his COC for a member of the House of Representatives for the lone district of San Juan City.
“We therefore find that the COC of the respondent must be denied due course and/or canceled because he committed false material representation on his citizenship,” the Comelec said.
According to the Comelec, Manzano was born to Filipino parents in San Francisco, California, in September 1955, “making him both a citizen of the Philippines and of the United States of America.”
It also noted that Manzano had served in the US military before returning to the Philippines in the 1990s.
Meanwhile, former Foreign Affairs chief Alan Peter Cayetano was thankful to the Comelec for its decision rejecting the disqualification case filed against him over the residence issue.
A disqualification case was filed by a Leonides Buac in November last year, which questioned the claim of Cayetano that he was a resident of Barangay Bagumbayan in the city’s first district, while his wife Lani lived in Barangay Fort Bonifacio in the second district, saying it was not in accordance with Article 69 of the Family Code.
However, the Comelec sided with the Cayetanos saying the former senator “cannot be considered to have lost his domicile at Bagumbayan, Taguig City, by the mere assertion that his wife transferred her domicile to Two Serendra, in Fort Bonifacio, also in Taguig City.
The Comelec’s Second Division ruled that Cayetano “did not commit any false material representation when he declared in his COC that his residence or domicile was still 209 Paso Street, Barangay Bagumbayan, Taguig City, despite the transfer of their family home to 353-A Two Serendra, Fort Bonifacio, Taguig.
“A person may live and maintain residences in different places but it does not result in loss of domicile,” the resolution said.