THE TRUTH, THE TRUTH, THE TRUTH!

By NESTOR MATA
March 22, 2016
WHEN the Supreme Court officially announced, coincidentally on the day marking International Womens
Day last week, that the magistrates voted 9-6 to allow Senator Grace Poe-Llamanzares to run for president
in the May 2016 election, it stirred a whirlwind of protests from constitutionalists, deans of law schools in
Manilas universities, pundits and other commentators in both print and social media.
The decision also prompted the magistrates led by Senior Associate Justice Antonio Carpio to make public
their own dissenting opinions, which challenged the ruling that Poe-Llamanzares was eligible to seek the
presidency despite questions of her citizenship.
As Justice Carpio put it in his dissenting opinion, allowing Poe-Llamanzares to run for president is a making
a mockery of the national elections. He pointed out that the question on whether she is a natural-born
citizen or not was not resolved by the majority since the voting on the citizenship issue was 7-5-3. He
questioned the lack of majority in the voting where only seven magistrates, and not nine as earlier reported,
believed she is eligible to run for president.
Chief Justice Ma. Lourdes Sereno insisted that a clear majority of seven voted in favor of the petition of
Poe-Llamanzares. She led the seven other justices, namely, Associate Justices Presbitero Velasco Jr.,
Lucas Bersamin, Jose Perez, Jose Mendoza, Marvic Leonen and Francis Jardeleza.
However, Associate Justices Diosdado Peralta and Benjamin Caguioa joined the separate dissenting
opinion of Associate Justice Mariano Del Castillo that the high court should not rule on the citizenship issue
on this case. They held that the Comelec committed grave abuse of discretion since Poe did not make
deliberate misrepresentation on her 10-year residency status, and that there was no need for the SC to
determine the eligibility of Poe on the citizenship requirement under the Constitution.
The five justices who dissented from that ruling were Carpio, Associate Justices Teresita Leonardo-De
Castro, Arturo Brion, Estela Perlas-Bernabe and Bienvenido Reyes. They pointed out that under Rule 12,
Section 1 of the SC Internal Rules requires that all decisions and actions in court cases shall be made up
upon the concurrence of the majority of the Members of the Court who actually took part in the deliberation
on the issues or issues involved and voted on them. For a case where all 15 justices voted, at least eight
votes are needed to achieve a majority ruling.
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, Carpio said in his dissenting opinion.
Carpio also explained that the 9-6 voting was on the question of whether to grant Poes petition to overturn
the Comelec disqualification order for material representation on both her citizenship and residency, adding
that the majority ruling provided an anomalous situation beyond the intent of the framers of the
Constitution.
The election process becomes a complete mockery since the electorate is mercilessly offered choices
which include patently ineligible candidates, the senior associate justice went on. The electorate is also
needlessly misled to cast their votes, and thus waste their votes, for an ineligible candidate...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.
Justice De Castro, in her dissent, warned that the decision in question will wreak havoc on our
constitutional system of government. It would have the effect of amending the 1935 Constitution to add
foundlings of no known parentage... It would also amend the 1987 Constitution which defines natural-born
citizens as those who are citizens from birth without having to perform any act to acquire or perfect their
citizenship.

Just like De Castro, Justice Brion said that the questioned decision crossed the forbidden threshold of
judicial legislation, by playing around even with the expressed wordings of the Constitution. It dishonors our
Constitution through its slanted reading that allows one who does not qualify to serve as President, to be a
candidate for the office.
Poe was found abandoned at a church in Jaro, Iloilo. Her biological parents were unknown. The justices
questioning her citizenship said she cannot be considered natural born because there is always that
probability that she was born to foreign parents. They said that Poe should be the one to prove her
citizenship.
As Carpio pointed out, there is no international treaty to which the Philippines is a contracting party, which
provides expressly or impliedly that a foundling is deemed a natural-born citizen of the country in which the
foundling is found. There is also obviously no international treaty, to which the Philippines is not a party,
obligating the Philippines to confer automatically Philippine citizenship to a foundling at birth.
In voting to dismiss the petition of Senator Poe-Llamanzares, Carpio declared that there was no grave
abuse of discretion by the Commission on Elections when it cancelled her Certification of Candidacy (COC).
In short, natural-born Filipino citizens who have renounced Philippine citizenship and pledged allegiance to
a foreign country have become aliens and can reacquire Philippine citizenship, just like other aliens, only if
naturalized in accordance with law, Carpio concluded. Otherwise, a natural-born Filipino who has
absolutely renounced and abjured allegiance to the Philippines and pledged allegiance to the United States,
undertaking arms against 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...
Now, did the magistrates led by Chief Justice Sereno tell the truth in their decision in ruling on the eligibility
of Senator Grace Poe-Llamanzares to run for the presidency? Or, did she (Poe-Llamanzares) fail to follow
the requirements provided for under the Constitution, as pointed out by the magistrates led by Senior
Associate Justice Carpio?
Who are the ones really telling the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth!