Let electorate decide on Poe’s fate, says ex-CJ

MANILA, Philippines – Former Supreme Court (SC) chief justice Artemio Panganiban yesterday said the electorate should be the ones to decide on the fate of Sen. Grace Poe, whose plan to run for president next year might be affected by questions on her citizenship.

 Panganiban said while there are questions about Poe’s citizenship, she should still be allowed to join the May 2016 presidential race and let the people decide who would be their next leader.

 He pointed out that election issues, which do not involve crimes or obvious violations of law, “should be settled by the voters, not by judges and lawyers.”

 “I have always believed that doubts on legal issues involving elections and popular sovereignty should be resolved in favor of letting our people decide them freely through the ballot,” said Panganiban.

At the Magdalo convention in Quezon City yesterday, Poe accepted the support of the group, initially comprised of renegade soldiers who condemned graft and corruption during the administration of former President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo.

She was silent though on the vice-presidential bid of fellow senator, Antonio Trillanes IV, a founding member of the Magdalo. Poe is endorsing the vice presidential run of another colleague, Sen. Francis Escudero.

The Magdalo, which boasts of more than 500,000 card-bearing members, said it chose Poe for president because she is a good person with a clear vision and platform of government and that she possesses leadership skills that will enable her to work for people’s aspirations.

It will campaign for Poe-Trillanes for the May polls.

Frivaldo vs Comelec

In arguing, Panganiban cited as example the SC decision in Frivaldo vs Comelec, which he wrote in 1996, a year after he was appointed associate justice of the high court.

In that decision, the SC upheld the election of Juan Frivaldo in 1995 as governor of Sorsogon province after reacquiring the Filipino citizenship he lost after he was naturalized as an American in 1983.

The high tribunal ruled that, “decisions declaring the acquisition or denial of citizenship cannot govern a person’s future status with finality… because a person may subsequently reacquire, or for that matter lose, his citizenship under any of the modes recognized by law.”

Frivaldo was overwhelmingly voted governor of Sorsogon by a margin of 27,000 votes in 1988, and again by 57,000 in 1992. However, in both instances, he was ousted by the SC for having lost his Philippine citizenship in 1983 when he was naturalized as an American. 

Undaunted by these defeats, Frivaldo ran and won again as governor with a margin of 20,000 in 1995, a victory that was again challenged by defeated candidate Raul Lee.

This time, Frivaldo claimed to have reacquired his Philippine citizenship under Republic Act 7160 by taking his oath of allegiance as a Filipino at 2 p.m. on June 30, 1995, the day he assumed office as governor.

His opponent, Lee, argued that Frivaldo was twice ruled to be an alien and that he should have possessed Philippine citizenship on the last day of filing of the certificate of candidacy or, at the latest, on the date of the election and not on the day that he assumed office. 

The SC, however, noted that the law did not specify the date when a candidate must possess Philippine citizenship, thus it was sufficient to hold that Frivaldo became a citizen at the time he assumed his office, not necessarily at the time he filed his certificate of candidacy or during the campaign period.

Panganiban said the high tribunal’s “liberality in resolving Frivaldo’s citizenship is my basic legal philosophy upholding popular sovereignty on issues involving elections.”

“At balance, the question really boils down to a choice of philosophy and perception of how to interpret and apply the laws relating to elections: literal or liberal; the letter or the spirit; the naked provision or its ultimate purpose; legal syllogism or substantial justice; in isolation or in the context of social conditions; harshly against or gently in favor of the voters’ obvious choice,” Panganiban said, quoting the SC ruling in the Frivaldo case.

“In applying election laws, it would be far better to err in favor of popular sovereignty than to be right in complex but little understood legalisms,” the SC also said.

During that time Associate Justice and later Chief Justice Reynato Puno issued a concurring opinion. “I concur in the path-breaking ponencia of Mr. Justice Panganiban which is pro-people and pierces the myopia of legalism… In cases where the sovereign will of the people is at stake, we must not only be legally right, but also politically correct. We cannot fail by making the people succeed.”

Panganiban noted that Frivaldo’s case was even more complicated than that of Senator Poe whose citizenship, according to him, has sparked nationwide debates among lawyers and non-lawyers alike.

“The issue in Frivaldo’s case was his total lack of citizenship, while in Senator Poe’s, it is merely her alleged lack of ‘natural-born’ status, given that most critics concede her ‘naturalized’ citizenship. With far more reasons, therefore, should the Constitution and the laws governing her case be more liberally construed by letting the 50 million Filipino voters decide the issue,” he added.

‘Poe natural-born’

During the Sept. 21 oral arguments on the disqualification case, Senate Electoral Tribunal (SET) chairman SC Associate Justice Antonio Carpio opined that Poe, being a foundling, is a naturalized citizen.

But Panganiban disagreed, saying that foundlings like Poe are considered natural-born citizens under the “generally accepted principles of international law, which form part of the law of the land.”

The former chief magistrate cited Article 2 of the 1961 Convention on the Reduction of Statelessness, which says: “A foundling found in the territory of a Contracting State shall, in the absence of proof to the contrary, be considered to have been born in the territory of parents possessing the nationality of that State.”

“Why is Grace Poe a natural-born citizen? Because under Article 2 of the 1961 Convention quoted above, she – a foundling who was found in Iloilo, Philippines – is deemed to have Filipino parents. Perforce, she is natural-born since her presumed parents, specifically her father, are accorded Philippine citizenship,” he added.

Although the Philippines is not a signatory to the 1961 Convention, Panganiban said the country is still bound by its provisions because it has become “generally accepted principles of international law which... are as binding as statutes passed by Congress.”

He said the 1935 Constitution, which was the country’s basic law in 1968 when Poe was born, provides that the “Philippines... adopts the generally accepted principles of international law as part of the law of the nation.”

Apart from the 1961 Convention, he said foundlings are also protected by the 1930 Hague Convention on the Conflict of Nationality Laws and the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which states that the right to a nationality is one of the most fundamental human rights.

Nationality is synonymous to citizenship in international law, he said.

‘Trillanes can’t fool people’

Meanwhile, a spokesman for  Vice  President  Jejomar Binay said Sen. Antonio Trillanes cannot fool the people into voting for him as vice president in 2016.

Rico Quicho, Binay’s spokesperson for media affairs, said Trillanes has built a career “out of attempting and failing to destroy institutions and reputations.”

Trillanes, a vocal critic of Binay, an- nounced his vice presidential bid for 2016 last Saturday.

“Senator Trillanes is entitled to his delusions. He has built a career out of attempting and failing to destroy institu- tions and reputations. This is his claim to infamy. Now he wants to bully his way to the vice presidency,” he said. – With Christina Mendez, Helen Flores