POE-LLAMANZARES vs COMELEC Case Digest (G.R. Nos. 221697 & 221698-700)

POE-LLAMANZARES vs COMELEC

G.R. Nos. 221697

& 221698-700

THE PETITION:

The petition is composed of two consolidated petitions under Rule 64 in relation to Rule 65 of the Rules of Court with extremely urgent application for an ex parte issuance of temporary restraining order/status quo ante order and/or writ of preliminary injunction assailing the following:

1.     DECEMBER  1, 2015 RESOLUTION OF THE COMMISSION ON ELECTIONS SECOND DIVISION (Cancelled petitioner’s certificate of candidacy);

2.     DECEMBER 23, 2015 RESOLUTION OF THE COMELEC EN BANC

(Denied petitioner’s motion for reconsideration); and

3.     DECEMBER 11, 2015 RESOLUTION OF THE COMELEC FIRST DIVISION

(Declared that petitioner is not a natural-born citizen, that she failed to complete the ten (10) year residency requirement, and that she committed material misrepresentation in her COC when she declared therein that she has been a resident of the Philippines for a period of ten 10 years and 11 months as of the day of the elections on 9 May 2016)

FACTS OF THE CASE:

September 3, 1968		Mary Grace Natividad S. Poe-Llamanzares (petitioner) was found abandoned as a newborn infant in the Parish Church of Jaro, Iloilo by a certain Edgardo Militar. Custody over petitioner was passed on by Edgardo to his relatives, Emiliano Militar and his wife.
September 6, 1968		Emiliano Militar reported and registered petitioner as a foundling with the Office of the Civil Registrar of Iloilo City (OCR-Iloilo).
1973		When petitioner was five (5) years old, celebrity spouses Ronald Allan Kelley Poe (a.k.a. Fenando Poe, Jr.) and Jesusa Sonora Poe (Susan Roces) filed a petition for her adoption with the Municipal Trial Court (MTC) of San Juan City.
May 13, 1974		The Poe spouses’ petition for adoption was granted by the trial court and ordered that petitioner's name be changed from "Mary Grace Natividad Contreras Militar" to "Mary Grace Natividad Sonora Poe."
December 13, 1986		Having reached the age of 18, petitioner registered as a voter with the local COMELEC Office in San Juan City.
April 4, 1988		Petitioner applied for and was issued Philippine Passport No. F9272876 by the Department of Foreign Affairs
1988-1991		Initially, the petitioner enrolled and pursued a degree in Development Studies at the University of the Philippines but opted to continue her studies abroad and left for the U.S. in 1988. Petitioner graduated in 1991 from Boston College in Chestnuts Hill
July 27, 1991		Petitioner married Teodoro Misael Daniel V. Llamanzares, a citizen of both the Philippines and the U.S., at Sanctuario de San Jose Parish in San Juan City.
July 29, 1991		Desirous of being with her husband who was then based in the U.S., the couple flew back to the U.S.
April16, 1992		Petitioner gave birth to her eldest child Brian Daniel
April 5, 1993		Renewed her Philippines passport.
May 19, 1998		Renewed her Philippines passport.
July 10, 1998		Petitioner gave birth to daughter Hanna MacKenzie.
October 18, 2001		Petitioner became a naturalized American citizen
April 8, 2004 – July 8, 2004		Petitioner came back to the Philippines together with Hanna to support her father's candidacy for President in the May 2004 elections. It was during this time that she gave birth to her youngest daughter Anika.
December 13, 2004 – February 3, 2005		Petitioner rushed back to the Philippines upon learning of her father's deteriorating medical condition who died shortly.
2005		Petitioner and husband began preparing for their resettlement including notification of their children's schools that they will be transferring to Philippine schools
May 24, 2005		Petitioner came home to the Philippines and without delay, secured a Tax Identification Number from the Bureau of Internal Revenue.
March 2006		The petitioner's husband officially informed the U.S. Postal Service of the family's change and abandonment of their address in the U.S. petitioner and her husband acquired a 509-square meter lot in Corinthian Hills, Quezon City where they built their family home.
July 7, 2006		Petitioner took her Oath of Allegiance to the Republic of the Philippines pursuant to Republic Act (R.A.) No. 9225 or the Citizenship Retention and Re-acquisition Act of 2003.
July 18, 2006		The Bureau of Immigration acted favorably on petitioner's petitions and declared that she is deemed to have reacquired her Philippine citizenship.
August 31, 2006		Again, petitioner registered as a voter of Barangay Santa Lucia, San Juan City. She also secured from the DFA a new Philippine Passport bearing the No. XX4731999.
October 6, 2010		President Benigno S. Aquino III appointed petitioner as Chairperson of the Movie and Television Review and Classification Board (MTRCB).
October 20, 2010		Before assuming her post, petitioner executed an "Affidavit of Renunciation of Allegiance to the United States of America and Renunciation of American Citizenship" before a notary public in Pasig City.
October 21, 2010		Petitioner submitted the said affidavit to the Bureau of Immigration and took her oath of office as Chairperson of the MTRCB. From then on, petitioner stopped using her American passport.
July 12, 2011		The petitioner executed before the Vice Consul of the U.S. Embassy in Manila an "Oath/Affirmation of Renunciation of Nationality of the United States" and stated that she in the Philippines, from 3 September 1968 to 29 July 1991 and from May 2005 to present.
December 9, 2011		The U.S. Vice Consul issued to petitioner a "Certificate of Loss of Nationality of the United States" effective 21 October 2010.
October 2, 2012		The petitioner filed with the COMELEC her Certificate of Candidacy (COC) for Senator for the 2013 Elections wherein she answered "6 years and 6 months" to the question "Period of residence in the Philippines before May 13, 2013."
October 15, 2015		Petitioner filed her COC for the Presidency for the May 2016 Elections. In her COC, the petitioner declared that she is a natural-born citizen and that her residence in the Philippines up to the day before 9 May 2016 would be ten (10) years and eleven (11) months counted from 24 May 2005.

Petitioner's filing of her COC for President in the upcoming elections triggered the filing of several COMELEC cases against her which were the subject of these consolidated cases.

ISSUES:

1.     With regard to: a) being a foundling, and b) her repatriation, is the petitioner a natural-born citizen of the Philippines? YES TO BOTH.

2.     Did the petitioner meet the 10-year residency requirement for running as president? YES.

Did the petitioner commit material misrepresentation in her Certificate of Candidacy? NO.

RATIONALE:

1.    Is petitioner a natural-born citizen of the Philippines?

ON BEING A FOUNDLING:

As a matter of law, foundlings are as a class, natural-born citizens.

The Family Code of the Philippines has a whole chapter on Paternity and Filiation.  That said, there is more than sufficient evidence that petitioner has Filipino parents and is therefore a natural-born Filipino.

The factual issue is not who the parents of petitioner are, as their identities are unknown, but whether such parents are Filipinos. Under Section 4, Rule 128:

Sec. 4. Relevancy, collateral matters - Evidence must have such a relation to the fact in issue as to induce belief in its existence or non-existence. Evidence on collateral matters shall not be allowed, except when it tends in any reasonable degree to establish the probability of improbability of the fact in issue.

Parenthetically, the burden of proof was on private respondents to show that petitioner is not a Filipino citizen. The private respondents should have shown that both of petitioner's parents were aliens. Her admission that she is a foundling did not shift the burden to her because such status did not exclude the possibility that her parents were Filipinos, especially as in this case where there is a high probability, if not certainty, that her parents are Filipinos.

The Solicitor General offered official statistics from the Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA) that from 1965 to 1975, the total number of foreigners born in the Philippines was 15,986 while the total number of Filipinos born in the country was 10,558,278. The statistical probability that any child born in the Philippines in that decade is natural-born Filipino was 99.83%.

Domestic laws on adoption also support the principle that foundlings are Filipinos. These laws do not provide that adoption confers citizenship upon the adoptee. Rather, the adoptee must be a Filipino in the first place to be adopted.

Other circumstantial evidence of the nationality of petitioner's parents are the fact that she was abandoned as an infant in a Roman Catholic Church in Iloilo City. She also has typical Filipino features: height, flat nasal bridge, straight black hair, almond-shaped eyes and an oval face.

Foundlings are likewise citizens under international law.

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights ("UDHR") has been interpreted by this Court as part of the generally accepted principles of international law and binding on the State.

Universal Declaration of Human Rights Article 15:

1. Everyone has the right to a nationality.

2. No one shall be arbitrarily deprived of his nationality nor denied the

right to change his nationality.

In 1986, the country also ratified the 1966 International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR). Article 24 thereof provide for the right of every child "to acquire a nationality:"

To deny full Filipino citizenship to all foundlings and render them stateless just because there may be a theoretical chance that one among the thousands of these foundlings might be the child of not just one, but two, foreigners is downright discriminatory, irrational, and unjust. It just doesn't make any sense. Given the statistical certainty - 99.9% - that any child born in the Philippines would be a natural born citizen, a decision denying foundlings such status is effectively a denial of their birthright. There is no reason to sacrifice the fundamental political rights of an entire class of human beings.

While the 1935 Constitution's enumeration is silent as to foundlings, there is no restrictive language which would definitely exclude foundlings either.

ON PETITIONER’S REPATRIATION

The COMELEC ruled that petitioner's repatriation in July 2006 under the provisions of R.A. No. 9225 did not result in the reacquisition of natural-born citizenship. The COMELEC reasoned that since the applicant must perform an act, what is reacquired is not "natural-born" citizenship but only plain "Philippine citizenship."

According to the Supreme Court, the COMELEC's ruling disregarded consistent jurisprudence on the matter of repatriation.

In the seminal case of Bengson Ill v. HRET, repatriation was explained as follows:

…Repatriation results in the recovery of the original nationality. This means that a naturalized Filipino who lost his citizenship will be restored to his prior status as a naturalized Filipino citizen. On the other hand, if he was originally a natural-born citizen before he lost his Philippine citizenship, he will be restored to his former status as a natural-bom Filipino.

Also, COMELEC's position that natural-born status must be continuous was already rejected in Bengson vs. HRET where the phrase "from birth" was clarified to mean at the time of birth: "A person who at the time of his birth, is a citizen of a particular country, is a natural-born citizen thereof."

2.    Did the petitioner meet the 10-year residency requirement for running as president?

ON RESIDENCE

The Constitution requires presidential candidates to have 10 years residence in the Philippines before the day of the elections.

Petitioner presented voluminous evidence showing that she and her family abandoned their U.S. domicile and relocated to the Philippines for good. These evidence include petitioner's former U.S. passport showing her arrival on 24 May 2005 and her return to the Philippines every time she travelled abroad; e-mail correspondences starting in March 2005 to September 2006 with a freight company to arrange for the shipment of their household items weighing about 28,000 pounds to the Philippines; e-mail with the Philippine Bureau of Animal Industry inquiring how to ship their dog to the Philippines; school records of her children showing enrollment in Philippine schools starting June 2005 and for succeeding years; tax identification card for petitioner issued on July 2005; titles for condominium and parking slot issued in February 2006 and their corresponding tax declarations issued in April 2006; receipts dated 23 February 2005 from the Salvation Army in the U.S. acknowledging donation of items from petitioner's family; March 2006 e-mail to the U.S. Postal Service confirming request for change of address; final statement from the First American Title Insurance Company showing sale of their U.S. home on 27 April 2006; 12 July 2011 filled-up questionnaire submitted to the U.S. Embassy where petitioner indicated that she had been a Philippine resident since May 2005; affidavit from Jesusa Sonora Poe (attesting to the return of petitioner on 24 May 2005 and that she and her family stayed with affiant until the condominium was purchased); and Affidavit from petitioner's husband (confirming that the spouses jointly decided to relocate to the Philippines in

2005 and that he stayed behind in the U.S. only to finish some work and to

sell the family home).

The evidence of petitioner is overwhelming and coupled with her eventual application to reacquire Philippine citizenship and her family's actual continuous stay taken together, lead to no other conclusion that when she came here on May 24 2005, her intention was to permanently abandon the United States. Petitioner also actually re-established her residence here on 24 May 2005.

ON MATERIAL MISREPRESENTATION

The COMELEC ruled that petitioner's claim of residence of ten (10) years and eleven (11) months by 9 May 2016 in her 2015 COC was false because she put six ( 6) years and six (6) months as "period of residence before May 13, 2013" in her 2012 COC for Senator. Thus, according to the COMELEC, she started being a Philippine resident only in November 2006. In doing so, the COMELEC automatically assumed as true the statement in the 2012 COC and the 2015 COC as false.

As explained by petitioner in her verified pleadings, she misunderstood the date required in the 2013 COC as the period of residence as of the day she submitted that COC in 2012.

Her explanation that she misunderstood the query in 2012 (period of residence before 13 May 2013) as inquiring about residence as of the time she submitted the COC, is strengthened by the change which the COMELEC itself introduced in the 2015 COC which is now "period of residence in the Philippines up to the day before May 09, 2016." The COMELEC would not have revised the query if it did not acknowledge that the first version was vague.

Thus, it was grave abuse of discretion for the COMELEC to treat the 2012 COC as a binding and conclusive admission against petitioner.

CONCLUSION:

The procedure and the conclusions from which the questioned Resolutions emanated are tainted with grave abuse of discretion amounting to lack of jurisdiction. The petitioner is a QUALIFIED CANDIDATE for President in the 9 May 2016 National Elections.