SC tells GMA, FPJ to answer motion

The Presidential Electoral Tribunal (PET) directed yesterday President Arroyo and her defeated rival, Fernando Poe Jr., to comment within 10 days on the separate motions filed by several lawyers reviving the issue of Poe’s citizenship.

The President’s election lawyer Romulo Macalintal said they would not oppose the motions to intervene by lawyers who insist the movie actor is not a natural-born Filipino and thus had no right to file an election protest and claim the presidency.

"But of course we expect the other side to object to the revival of that issue," Macalintal said.

Poe, who won the legal battle over his natural citizenship when the Supreme Court allowed him to run in the May 10 elections, claimed he and his vice presidential candidate Loren Legarda were robbed of victory due to massive cheating perpetrated by the Arroyo camp.

Poe and Legarda filed late last month their separate electoral protests with the Supreme Court, sitting as the PET.

Macalintal noted the PET had not yet given due course to any of the petitions filed before it as the process of determining their merits had just started.

"The tribunal is still studying the allegations in the protests and counter-protests. The tribunal is also expected to require Poe (and Legarda) to answer our counter-protests," he said.

The PET also ordered yesterday Mrs. Arroyo and Vice President Noli de Castro to pay P100,000 cash deposit for each of their respective counter-protests or those would be dismissed.

In a one-page resolution, the PET gave them 10 days from date of filing to make the payment required under PET rules.

Poe, who lost to Mrs. Arroyo by over over 1.1 million votes, asked the tribunal for a revision of election returns from 10,554 precincts from 15 provinces, a city and municipalities as well as ballot results in 118,339 precincts from 42 cities and provinces.

Legarda, for her part, said votes for her in 9,007 precincts in 12 provinces, a city and municipalities were credited to De Castro as would be shown by election returns as well as ballots from 124,404 precincts in 44 cities and provinces.

The President and De Castro said the protests should be dismissed outright for being insufficient in form and substance.

In their counter-protests, Mrs. Arroyo argued she was the one cheated by Poe’s camp in the provinces of Nueva Ecija, Rizal, Quezon, South Cotabato, Northern Samar and Ilocos Norte.

De Castro, on the other hand, said his votes were wrongfully counted in favor of Legarda in the same provinces except South Cotabato and Northern Samar. He claimed the same thing happened in La Union, Malabon and Navotas.

Both also said the PET does not have the jurisdiction over the issues Poe and Legarda raised against them. They said the two should have gone to the Comelec as they were crying failure of elections due to alleged massive fraud.

The President likewise revived the citizenship issue against Poe, who at the height of the election campaign was accused by lawyer Victorino Fonacier of misrepresenting himself as a natural-born Filipino when he filed his candidacy.

Fornier is one of three lawyers who filed separate motions to intervene in the electoral protest as they reiterated that Poe was not qualified to run in the first place. The other are Ma. Jeanette Tecson and Felix Desiderio.

Poe has been alleged to be the illegitimate child of Alan Fernando Poe Sr. and Bessie Kelley, an American.

Fornier has contended that Poe should adopt the nationality of his mother since he was an illegitimate child, born before his biological parents got married.

The petition was dismissed by the Comelec’s first division on Jan. 23. Fornier later appealed the case before the poll body en banc, which also threw out his petition on Feb. 6, forcing him to elevate the issue before the Supreme Court.

The Supreme Court’s decision last March said in particular that Fornier failed to prove that Comelec committed grave abuse of discretion in dismissing the disqualification petition.

In reviving the issue, Fornier said: "Considering that the protestant’s objective in his petition is to claim the presidency for himself, upon his failure to conclusively prove that he is a natural-born Filipino citizen, or showing that he is not so, his election protest would be nothing but an empty and mischievous exercise in futility."

For their part, Tecson and Desiderio said the final determination of Poe’s citizenship would "determine FPJ’s standing or the lack of it" to file and prosecute the PET case.

In the Supreme Court decision that paved the way for Poe to seek the presidency, the tribunal gave weight to the arguments of the four amici curiae or "friends of the court" who all said that Poe could be considered a natural-born Filipino citizen under the terms of the 1935 Constitution since his father was a Filipino as borne by the evidence in the court’s possession.

Article 4 Section 1 (3) of the Constitution provides that "those whose fathers are citizens of the Philippines" are considered Filipino citizens.

The three lawyers, however, maintained the Supreme Court did not make any categorical ruling on Poe’s citizenship.

They argued the ruling merely stated that while the "totality of evidence may not establish conclusively that respondent FPJ is a natural-born Filipino citizen of the Philippines, the evidence on hand still would preponderate in his favor enough to hold that he cannot be held guilty of having made a material misrepresentation in his certificate of candidacy."

They stressed the Constitution stipulates that the President should be a natural-born Filipino citizen.

The lawyers contended neither Poe nor his parents undertook the legal process to legitimize him and make him natural-born fit to become the country’s president.