Citizenship is more explosive than the atomic bomb

In the prosecution of the Second World War, the United States of America and the then Nazi Germany pursued two vastly different scientific weapons programs. The Americans, thru theoretical physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer, developed the atomic bomb which they successfully first tested on July 16, 1945 at the Trinity Site in Jordana del Muerto desert in New Mexico.

The Germans, on the other hand, thru engineers Robert Lusser and Fritz Gosslau, developed the V-1 flying bomb (also known as the buzz bomb). The first test flight of the German V-1 flying bomb took place at the top-secret Peenemunde-West, an experimental station on the Baltic coast in northeastern Germany.

Former Philippine chief justice Maria Lourdes Sereno was removed from office on May 11, 2018, through an unprecedented Supreme Court vote (8-6) that granted a quo warranto petition filed by Solicitor General Jose Calida. The solicitor general then argued that Sereno lacked the "proven integrity" required of a judicial official because she allegedly failed to file regularly and disclose her SALNs during her time as a Law professor at the University of the Philippines.

I had to retrieve those bits of historical military and judicial data when someone forwarded to me an article allegedly written by Filipino-American lawyer Rodil Rodis on the supposed questionable natural-born Filipino citizenship of Senate President Alan Peter Cayetano. While the stories on the American atomic bomb, the German V-1 flying bomb, and the ouster of Sereno as chief justice are seemingly totally unrelated to the Senate presidency of Cayetano, I personally believe that these separate military and judicial dots, when explored and analyzed, can yield to a conclusion that certain unrelated experiments do have common explosive repercussions. Since I could not validate the Rodis article, I tried to gather relevant information.

I somehow learned that Senator Cayetano, like Tina Turner, and Jet Li, who reportedly relinquished their U.S. citizenships when their respective Swiss and Singaporean citizenships were granted, are memorialized in the official “Federal Register” of former U.S. citizens. I also learned that in the 2007 elections, former Pateros Mayor Jose Capco Jr., questioned Cayetano’s citizenship citing the senator’s Alien Certificate of Registration. The Commission on Elections though ruled that Cayetano was a natural-born citizen, as he was born in the Philippines to a natural-born Filipino father and an American mother. The citizenship controversy resurfaced in 2017 when an Inquirer.net Opinion piece questioned his status. Cayetano addressed this news which to him was “malicious and fake” by clarifying that his dual citizenship was acquired at birth by law and that (like Tina Turnet and Jet Li) he formally renounced his U.S. citizenship before running for Congress. He continued to assert that his allegiance and only nationality has always been with the Philippines.

Among qualifications for senator listed in the constitution is natural-born citizenship in the Philippines.

I dare say that then Solgen Calida demonstrated an exhibition of an unprecedented case in filing a quo warranto case versus Sereno. We know that a quo warranto case is a legal action used to challenge an individual's right to hold or exercise a public office or position. It is not entirely impossible for the present solicitor general of the Philippines, Darlene Marie Berberabe, to take a cue from the Calida lead and file this exhibition quo warranto case against Cayetano for failing to meet the constitutional citizenship requirement. If such a copycat case is initiated even under a cloud of prescription, a final Comelec ruling and other imaginable defenses, it will be a political bomb more explosive than the American atomic and the German flying bombs.

BLURB:

“It is not entirely impossible for the present solicitor general of the Philippines to file this exhibition quo warranto case against Cayetano for failing to meet the constitutional citizenship requirement.”