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Philippines
Thursday, March 28, 2024

Decisions on foundlings cited

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CHIEF Justice Maria Lourdes Sereno said Tuesday  the Supreme Court had already declared that foundlings were presumed natural-born Filipinos and cited several cases decided by the tribunal in the past.

During the continuation of the oral arguments on the petitions of Senator Grace Poe assailing the Commission on Elections’ decision disqualifying her from seeking the presidency, Sereno stressed that in the 1976 Duncan case and in the 1963 Ellis case involving foundlings, the high court ruled that the children in the two cases were presumed to be Filipino citizens even in the absence of evidence that their parents were Filipinos.

Chief Justice Maria Lourdes Sereno

In questioning Comelec Commissioner Arthur Lim, who represented the poll body in the arguments, Sereno said the high court had made such presumptions on a number of instances, and beyond simply applying the jus sanguinis or right of blood doctrine.

She made her statement even as a group asked the Supreme Court to rule in favor of Poe because such decision would remove the social stigma under which hundreds of thousands of abandoned children were suffering.

“We appeal to the humanity of the Supreme Court. Our children are natural-born citizens as they embrace the Philippines and serve their fellowmen in the country of their birth and culture,” the Adoptees, Adoptive Families and Foundlings Conference said in a statement.

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“They [foundlings] should not be made to feel inferior just because of the impoverishment of their birth.”

In the case of Ellis v. Republic of the Philippines, Sereno noted that the tribunal presumed that Baby Rose was a Filipino citizen despite her unknown parents.

The child was abandoned in a hospital and a couple wanted to adopt her. A lower court allowed them to do so but the government took the case to the Supreme Court, and the Court declared that the child was “a citizen of the Philippines.”

In the Duncan case, Sereno said, an abandoned three-year-old child was declared a Filipino citizen despite the absence of evidence on the identity of its parents.

She said “the law is not and should not be made an instrument to impede the achievement of a salutary humane policy. As often as is legally and lawfully possible, their texts and intendments should be construed so as to give all the chances for human life to exist—with a modicum promise of a useful and constructive existence.”

But Lim defended the Comelec’s decision that Poe was not a natural-born citizen and so could not run for president.

Nonetheless, Sereno also cited the Tecson case in which the high court ruled that Poe’s adoptive father, the late actor Fernando Poe Jr. was a Filipino citizen. The tribunal considered Poe’s grandfather a Filipino citizen despite the lack of evidence that his grandfather was present during the mass Filipinization of Fernando Poe Jr.’s grandfather Lorenzo Poe. Rey E. Requejo

In the Tecson vs Comelec case, the high court ruled that Fernando Poe Jr. was a natural-born citizen and could run for the presidency in the 2004 national elections.

 

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