Comelec decision out today

After hearing the case once, the Commission on Elections (Comelec) is expected to announce today its ruling on the petition to disqualify presidential candidate Fernando Poe Jr. purportedly because he is not a natural-born Filipino.

Comelec spokesman Fernando Rafanan said the decision of the Comelec’s three-member first division, composed of Commissioners Resurreccion Borra, Rufino Javier and Luzviminda Tancangco, will be made known at 2 p.m. today.

Rafanan refused to speculate on what the decision would be but he hinted that the commissioners who heard the case did not take judicial notice of revelations in the Senate’s investigation on the matter.

Borra said the first division decided on the disqualification case yesterday morning after Poe and petitioner Victorino Fornier submitted their respective memoranda on the charge that Poe was not qualified to run for president in the May 10 elections.

"Our decision was based on the law and the facts presented by the parties," said Borra, who also hinted that the decision would be adverse to Poe.

"Anyway, puede naman itaas (it can be elevated)," he said, explaining that the losing party has five days to ask the Comelec en banc to reconsider the first division’s ruling.

"In fairness to us, we discussed the case thoroughly, especially the lawyer-commissioners," Borra said. "Anyway, the Senate proceedings could be taken to the Comelec en banc as part of the evidence."

Borra was referring to the inquiry conducted by the Senate committee on constitutional amendments and revision of codes and laws on the claim of opposition Sen. Vicente Sotto III, Poe’s spokesman, that National Archives director Ricardo Manapat forged public documents to show that Poe was not qualified to run for president.

Meanwhile, Davao City Rep. Prospero Nograles, party whip for Mindanao of the ruling Lakas-Christian Muslim Democrats, said presidential candidate Sen. Panfilo Lacson and not President Arroyo will be the one to benefit if Poe is disqualified.

"A deep analysis of the events show that Senator Lacson will be the greatest beneficiary, not President Arroyo, in case FPJ is disqualified," Nograles said. "The President will even get a fallout because some people will blame her for FPJ’s disqualification."

Nograles said Poe’s voters would vote for Lacson if the actor is disqualified and Lacson will even get the backing of the Koalisyon ng Nagkakaisang Pilipino, which is backing Poe’s candidacy.

During the first division’s hearing on the disqualification case on Monday, Manapat attested to the authenticity of public documents that supported the claim of lawyer Victorino Fornier that Poe was not a natural-born Filipino because his father was a Spaniard and his mother an American.

Fornier had claimed in his petition that even if Poe’s father, Allan Fernando Poe, was a Filipino, Poe was born out of wedlock and should therefore take the citizenship of his mother, Bessie Kelley, who was an American.

Fornier presented as evidence copies of Poe’s birth certificate, the marriage certificate of his parents and that of his father and his purported first wife, Paulita Gomez.

But during the televised Senate hearing on Wednesday, three members of Manapat’s staff admitted that Manapat ordered them to forge documents to support the disqualification petition against Poe.

Archives employees Remmel Talabis, Emman Llamera and Vicelyn Tarin revealed in detail that Manapat began work on the forgeries as early as November when Poe announced he would run for president.

They told senators that they used pre-World War II birth certificates and marriage contracts, scanned them and changed the pertinent data with the use of desktop publishing programs to make it appear that Poe’s father was married to Gomez.

Talabis, storekeeper of the archives supply section, said Manapat ordered him in November and again in December to reproduce a blank pre-World War II birth certificate and marriage certificate.

With Manapat seated only a few chairs away, Talabis related in detail how he scanned pre-war birth certificate records in November with a computer and erased the data to reproduce a blank form.

Citing Manapat’s instructions, Talabis then changed the pertinent details of a 1928 birth record and admitted reproducing a blank pre-World War II marriage contract form in December.

But Talabis went on forced leave before he could finish work on it and handed the job to Llamera, a contractual employee in the archives’ computer division, who completed the forgeries by the time Talabis reported back to work on Jan. 5.

Tarin, a records management analyst detailed at the archives’ computer division, related how she was ordered to choose from a selection of signatures of the names Allan Fernando Poe and Paulita Gomez and affix them on the reproduced blank forms.

Talabis said that in January Manapat told him to scan a birth record of a certain Allan Fernando Poe and ordered him to print out copies of the document. - With Paolo Romero, Mike Frialde