Poe defense cracking

All of a sudden, the camp of Senator Grace Poe no longer seems so sure about her legal standing in relation to the disqualification case filed against her by losing 2013 senatorial candidate Rizalito David. David wants Poe disqualified, claiming that, as a foundling, it cannot be established she is a natural-born citizen, one of the constitutional requirements for one to become a senator.

A ruling in favor of David by the Senate Electoral Tribunal hearing the case will not only remove Poe from the Senate, it will also prevent her from running for president, for which she is expected to file her certificate of candidacy anytime this week. The seeming insecurity felt by the Poe camp regarding its position came to the fore when it claimed the disqualification case is part of a plot to deny Poe the presidency.

You know things are unraveling when people in a legal predicament begin to court sympathy instead of standing pat on their legal footing. To be sure, the Poe camp has always tried to make people view the case with an emotional eye toward her being a foundling who needed to be assured of her rights as a citizen. But this time the plea has become more plaintive by asserting she, a woman, was the target of an insidious plot hatched by dirty politicians.

It is tempting to say the claim is preposterous. But then, so what is there is indeed a plot to deprive her the presidency? Isn't that what politics is all about? If Poe is in fact that naive to think otherwise, then she has no business being president, who is expected to rise above all else to be able to see what is best for the country.

If Poe wants to show to the Filipino people the stuff of which she is really made, then she should face the case, and the questions they bring, head-on and not try to distract the country from the real issues by playing on to their collective emotions and sentiment. She should stop harping on the foundling issue because that is not what this is about.

Poe is being sued not because she is a foundling but because, as a foundling, the true circumstances of her citizenship cannot be established. In the absence of any certainty in that regard, she cannot claim to be a natural born citizen and thus could not satisfy the constitutional requirement demanding such. The reason why this very simple case has become very hard to understand is because Poe and her supporters have tried to make a purely legal issue an emotional one.

And because there is no shielding people from being carried away by their emotions, even some of the country's best legal minds have succumbed to the siren call and fell for the trap. Even former chief justice Artemio Panganiban and noted election lawyer Romulo Macalintal issued statements that even common and unversed non-lawyers like me find hard to believe.

Panganiban was supposed to have said the people ought to be the final arbiters on the fate of Poe, saying that election issues that do not involve crimes or obvious violations of law should be settled by voters and not by judges and lawyers. I was almost floored by that statement. Has Panganiban forgotten that failure to satisfy the natural-born citizen requirement is an obvious violation not just of any law but of the Constitution itself?

Macalintal, on the other hand, supposedly invoked the social justice principle that those who have less in life, including foundlings, should have more in law. Is Macalintal suggesting that Poe is being abused, oppressed, or otherwise denied any and all her rights as a citizen? Poe may have been a foundling but she has never been denied any of her rights. And it is a preposterous comment to say Poe has less in life.

Poe has never been denied citizenship. What is being made clear, but which some people just refuse to understand, is that she cannot be a natural-born citizen because, as a foundling, her true parents, have not been ascertained. But she was naturalized with all rights due therefrom. Not only that, when she renounced her Filipino citizenship to become an American, and then wanted it back when she decided to become Filipino again, she was granted her wishes without a quibble or a tear.