Carpio cites flaws in SET ruling on Poe DQ case

Granting Sen. Grace Poe a naturalborn citizen status, as the Senate Electoral Tribunal did last week, violates the Constitution, according to SET chairman and Supreme Court Senior Associate Justice Antonio Carpio.

All three SC justices in the SET voted against the ruling of the tribunal on the disqualification case against Poe filed by losing senatorial candidate and now presidential aspirant Rizalito David.

The five senators who voted in favor of Poe, the frontrunner in next year’s presidential race, were Vicente Sotto III, Loren Legarda, Pia Cayetano, Cynthia Villar and Bam Aquino.

In his 35-page opinion released over the weekend, Carpio rebutted the majority opinion of the five senators in the nine- member SET that Poe should be considered a natural-born Filipino despite being a foundling.

“The citizenship requirement under the Constitution to qualify as a member of the Senate must be complied with strictly. To rule otherwise amounts to a patent violation of the Constitution. Being sworn to uphold and defend the Constitution, the members of this tribunal have no other choice but to apply the clear letter and intent of the Constitution,” Carpio said.

He described the position taken by the five senators as a “sentimental plea that conveniently forgets the express language of the Constitution reserving those high positions, in this case the position of senator of the Republic exclusively to naturalborn Filipino citizens.”

Citing legal grounds, Carpio said the majority erred in basing their decision on customary international laws providing right of every human being to a nationality and the state’s obligations to avoid statelessness and to facilitate the naturalization of foundlings.

“There is no treaty, customary international law or a general principle of international law granting automatically Philippine citizenship to a foundling at birth. Respondent failed to prove that there is such a customary international law. At best, there exists a presumption that foundling is domiciled and born in the country where the foundling is found,” Carpio said.

“Even assuming that there is a customary international law presuming that a foundling is a citizen of the country where the foundling is found, or is born to parents possessing the nationality of that country, such presumption cannot prevail over our Constitution since customary international law has the status merely of municipal statutory law. This means that customary international law is inferior to the Constitution and must yield to the Constitution in case of conflict,” he added.

Carpio also noted that there is no local law that automatically confers Philippine citizenship to a foundling at birth and that there is no legal presumption in favor of Philippine citizenship. Any citizenship conferred to foundling would be for naturalized status, not naturalborn.

“Citizenship must be established as a matter of fact and any doubt is resolved against the person claiming Philippine citizenship,” he said.