- Supreme Court justice maintains dissent on high tribunal’s decision favoring Grace Poe
- He says Poe cannot be a natural-born citizen due to her foundling status and American citizenship
- He also says the decision mocks the elections, calls Poe a patently ineligible nuisance candidate
MANILA, Philippines – A patently ineligible nuisance candidate.
Maintaining his dissent on the Supreme Court decision upholding Sen. Grace Poe’s candidacy, Senior Associate Justice Antonio Carpio said the ruling makes a mockery of the elections by deceiving the electorate into voting for someone who is not obviously qualified to become a president under the law.
Carpio, who pointed out that the Supreme Court never achieved a majority vote on Poe’s citizenship issue both as a foundling and as an American, said it was clear the decision mocks not only the elections but the very Constitution itself.
“What is clear and undeniable is that there is no majority of this Court that holds that petitioner Mary Grace Natividad Poe Llamanzares is a natural-born Filipino citizen. This ruling of the majority will lead to absurd results, making a mockery of our national elections by allowing a presidential candidate with uncertain citizenship status to be potentially elected to the Office of the President, an office expressly reserved by the Constitution exclusively for natural-born Filipino citizens,” the Philippine Daily Inquirer quoted him as saying.
The election process becomes a complete mockery since the electorate is mercilessly offered choices which include patently ineligible candidates. The electorate is also needlessly misled to cast their votes, and thus waste their votes, for an ineligible candidate,” he added. “Any person, who is not a natural-born Filipino citizen, running for President is obviously a nuisance candidate under Section 69 of the Omnibus Election Code.”
The justices voted 7-5-3 in favor of Poe. The seven who voted to uphold Poe’s status as a natural-born Filipino were Chief Justice Ma. Lourdes Sereno and Associate Justices Presbitero Velasco Jr., Lucas Bersamin, Jose Perez, Jose Mendoza, Marvic Leonen and Francis Jardeleza. The five who voted against were Carpio, Associate Justices Teresita Leonardo-De Castro, Arturo Brion, Estela Perlas-Bernabe and Bienvenido Reys. The three who voted not to rule on the issue were Diosdado Peralta, Benjamin Caguioa, and Mariano Del Castillo.
Not Intended by the Constitution
Aside from Poe’s foundling issue, Carpio also pointed to her acquisition of American citizenship as a stumbling block to her presidential run.
According to the justice, Poe’s act of renouncing her American citizenship under RA 9225 was already an act of naturalization itself. He pointed out allowing a naturalized citizen to become commander-in-chief of the country’s armed forces was anomalous and could not have been intended by the makers of the Constitution.
“Otherwise, a natural-born Filipino citizen who has absolutely renounced and abjured allegiance to the Philippines and pledged sole allegiance to the United States, undertaking to bear arms against any foreign country, including the Philippines, when required by U.S. law, could still become the Commander-in Chief of the Armed Forces of the Philippines by performing a simple act – taking an oath of allegiance before a Philippine public official – to reacquire natural-born Philippine citizenship. The framers of the Constitution, and the Filipino people who ratified the Constitution, could not have intended such an anomalous situation,” he said.
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