It seems that Supreme Court Chief Justice Ma. Lourdes Sereno has mixed up her understanding of foundling from that of natural- born citizen that she cannot distinguish the whale of difference between the two. We are saying this because the poor chief justice fears that in the event Senator Grace Poe is disqualified, foundlings would be deprived of their rights as ordinary citizens. If we may ask, since when did this republic have an extraordinary or special citizen?
To begin with, Chief Justice Sereno is absolutely wrong in assuming that Poe’s disqualification would be equivalent to discrimination. But discrimination and not being allowed to participate by law are two different matters. Discrimination has something to do with inequity due to race, religion, age or status which is unacceptable, but is acceptable to situations where people are segregated by virtue of rights between citizens and aliens. We are saying this because the issue is not about Poe’s claim of being a foundling. It is about her renunciation of her Filipino citizenship, even falsifying her status as a Filipino citizen, just to qualify for the position as senator.
Moreover, there is also no issue that foundlings are presumed natural-born citizens in lieu of their inability to identify their biological parents. Thus, if we only use the word “natural-born” without the word “citizen,” we would be referring to persons conceived and born by the normal process after a nine-month pregnancy, and not by artificial insemination or by cloning. Our concern is to classify who our citizens are—they are either natural-born citizens or naturalized citizens. The attachment of the word “citizen” to the term natural-born has nothing to do with how the child came into being. It has reference to the place where the child was found—hence, the term “foundling.”
If the child was found in the Philippines, she is presumed to be a natural- born Filipino citizen. The term foundling is not recognized in international law, but a privilege accorded to children by international law to prevent them from becoming stateless persons, and thus entitled to seek asylum under the United Nations High Commission for Refugees. Legal theoreticians venture out to say that foundlings are an exception to the rule on jus sanguinis because they cannot point to anybody as their biological or blood relative. There would be no problem had our country subscribed to the principle of jus soli which is to determine the citizenship of the person in the place where she was born—that extends to the place where she was found.
Even if we are to take it that Poe is a natural-born Filipino citizen, the issue is not about her place of birth or of being a foundling, but of the ACT she committed subsequent to her birth where she gave up that presumption of being a natural-born Filipino citizen. She opted to become a US citizen and reapplied for Filipino citizenship to accept the position as head of the MTRCB and to run for senator. Now she is gunning for the presidency. For that matter, even foundlings can lose their status as natural-born citizens should they commit the same act of taking their oath of allegiance to become citizens of another country. Poe’s renunciation of her original citizenship was a conscious act committed by her because she was already of age when she renounced her Philippine citizenship. The logic and the presumption of Justice Sereno is flawed—there is no connection nor correlation that to be a foundling is a precondition to becoming a natural-born citizen and vice versa.
Senator Poe’s being a foundling has never been questioned by the petitioners seeking to disqualify her candidacy. Rather, she was the one who raised that as her desperate defense to equate that she remained a natural-born citizen by her claim as foundling which is as incoherent as the argument of Sereno.
The issue to be resolved now is whether she remains a natural-born citizen despite her act of flip-flopping or, to put it straight, by her act of opportunism. Not even the constitution of the US would allow a person who abandoned his citizenship, and later reapply to regain her status as natural-born citizen to allow her to run for the position of President in the US. Section 2, Article VII of the Constitution is crystal clear that to qualify for the position of president, the person to be elected must be a natural-born citizen of the country.
We can even go as far as saying that even in the US where she opted to become a citizen, her status as foundling remains the same, although considered a naturalized citizen of that country. Similarly, should she return to this country, as in fact she did, she remains a foundling but no longer a natural-born Filipino citizen. That distinction now serves to bar her from running for any nationally elective post. In fact, the reason why this overtly ambitious founding is fighting dearly to secure a declaration that she is a natural-born citizen is that once disqualified, she would be harvesting charges for falsification and misappropriation of public funds that she received as a senator. She of course is not entitled to this, but it appears she could no longer back out from the corrupt oligarchy who are betting on her to pursue the policy of keeping the country the trash can of the US and allies like Japan and the European Union.
Most crucial, once a person loses her citizenship by choosing to become a citizen of another country, she loses forever her status as a natural-born citizen, even if she changes her mind and decides she wants to regain her Filipino citizenship. No amount or term like claiming to be a returning citizen, dual citizenship or balikbayan citizen can regain her status as a natural-born Filipino citizen. In fact, the authors of the so-called dual citizenship law only made known to the world their idiocy because no country that values much its sovereignty would allow its people to acquire dual citizenship wearing it like a sports jacket, especially if it centers on the issue of loyalty.
Moreover, the 10-year residency requirement preceding such election provided in the Constitution applies only to overseas Filipinos or to any citizen who worked or has been stationed abroad, but has not committed any act to renounce their citizenship. No amount of residency could cure the error committed by Poe when she applied for US citizenship. Her act of renouncing her Filipino citizenship has forever deprived her that status of a natural-born citizen although she remains a foundling and has acquired the status of a naturalized Filipino citizen. The legal term animo revertendi is misplaced and wholly irrelevant to the issue that being a foundling follows that she remains a natural-born Filipino citizen. Only justices Sereno and Marvic Leonen could possibly stretch that weird legal theory.
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