‘No FPJ records in QC’

Records at the Quezon City civil registry office could hold the key to questions on Fernando Poe Jr.’s citizenship.

A House of Representatives committee began an inquiry yesterday into allegations that the former chief of the Records Management and Archives Office forged documents that put the opposition presidential contender’s citizenship into question.

Former archives chief Ricardo Manapat told the House committee on basic education that the civil registry office might have a duplicate microfilm record of a complaint filed by a Paulita Gomez, the supposed first wife of Poe’s father, accusing her husband of concubinage.

An official of the civil registry office, however, said they do not keep microfilm files.

Manapat said the affidavit would prove that Poe was born out of wedlock. Poe was born to Allan Fernando Poe and Bessie Kelley in 1939.

Lawyers seeking Poe’s disqualification say the movie actor is not a Filipino citizen because he should have taken his mother’s American citizenship.

The Philippine Constitution explicitly requires that the president be a natural-born citizen.

Children born out of wedlock should take the citizenship of the mother, lawyers Andresito and Victorino Fornier said in their petition now pending with the Commission on Elections (Comelec).

Poe is facing a similar petition filed last week by two other lawyers with the Supreme Court.

In a Senate inquiry last week, Manapat denied allegations made by three archives employees that he forged Poe’s birth certificate and the supposed marriage certificate of his father and Gomez to back up the disqualification petition filed by the Forniers.

Manapat told congressmen yesterday Sen. Edgardo Angara, who conducted the Senate inquiry, took custody of a microfilm that contains the copy of an affidavit from Gomez accusing her husband of concubinage as well as that of a certificate of her marriage to the elder Poe.

Gomez complained in her supposed affidavit that her husband was living with another woman, that the two sired a daughter named Elizabeth and that the woman was again pregnant, Manapat said.

The Quezon City civil registry office has a duplicate copy of the microfilm, which may be compared with that in Angara’s custody, Manapat said. "I feel vindicated," he said.

The House committee has asked Angara and the civil registry office to produce the microfilms for examination.

However, the chief of the civil registry office said they do not keep records on microfilm.

"FPJ (as Poe is popularly known) is older than Quezon City so it’s impossible for him (to be) in our file," Ramon Matabang told reporters. "What we have here are birth records after the war (World War II), registry books, we have no file of microfilms."

Quezon City was officially created on Oct. 12, 1939, less than two months after Poe was born (Aug. 20).