Senator Grace Poe inspects a Tabor assault rifle at the Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency (PDEA) headquarters after gracing the 13th anniversary of the agency on Tuesday where she was the keynote speaker. Poe said she is working on raising the reward money for informants. (MNS photo)
MANILA (Mabuhay) – Traveling to the Philippines reportedly 21 times using her US passport as late as 2009 could hurt Senator Grace Poe’s chances of qualifying to run for higher office next year.
Former University of the East law dean Amado Valdez said Poe’s use of a US passport as late as 2009 was “indicative” that she still does not consider the Philippines her domicile at the time.
“Na-lose niya ang Philippine citizenship niya noong nag-American citizen siya. She lost her residency when she established permanent residence
in the US,” Valdez said.
“This is considering that she renounced her Filipino citizenship [when she moved to the US and acquired citizenship there], unlike Imelda,” said Valdez in a text message, referring to a 1995 Supreme Court ruling that allowed the former First Lady to run for a post in Leyte despite her long absence there.
Domicile is defined as the “permanent home, the place to which, whenever absent for business or pleasure, one intends to return, and depends on the facts and circumstances, in the sense that they disclose intent.”
Former UP law dean Pacifico Agabin meanwhile said Poe’s residency in the Philippines should “presumably” start in 2010, given that she was still using her US passport a year before that. It was in 2010 that Poe said she had renounced her US citizenship so she could be appointed to the Movie and Television Review and Classification Board (MTRCB).
Agabin had said the 10-year residency rule for those aspiring for the highest posts of the land should be followed because it was “explicitly” stated in the Constitution.
Daily Tribune reported on Tuesday that based on immigration logs it has obtained, Poe has traveled to and from the Philippines at least 21 times using her US passport.
The newspaper said arrival logs showed Poe arriving to the Philippines using a US passport on Nov. 9, 2003; Dec. 13, 2004; September 2005; March 11, 2006; July 5, 2006; July 23, 2007; Oct. 5, 2008; May 21,2009; and Aug. 3, 2009.
Poe also used her US passport for her departures on July 2, 2006; July 26, 2006; Sept. 11, 2006; Nov. 1, 2006; Oct. 31,2007; April 20, 2009; July 31,2009 and Dec. 27,2009, aboard Philippine Airlines Flight 112.
The Bureau of Immigration (BI) has refused to confirm or deny the authenticity of the travel records, stressing that members of the media inquiring about the issue are “not concerned parties” and that travel records of Poe are “not being checked.”
Valdez insisted the determination of Poe’s residency in the Philippines should commence on the time of the renunciation of her American citizenship. Acquiring a foreign citizenship would be indicative of her intent to abandon her former domicile, which is the Philippines and transfer it to the US, he added.
Also, he said that whenever Poe would travel, the assumption of her intent to return to her domicile would be in the United States and not in the Philippines.
He was earlier quoted as saying Poe lost her credibility when the travel logs, showing her trips using a US passport, were discovered even before she could clarify the issue on her residency.
“She kept on saying she is qualified to run for president in 2016 and she would meet the residency requirement but these documents would prove she is not qualified as per her residency status,” Valdez was quoted in a newspaper report.
“Using her American passport until Dec. 27, 2009, as shown in the Bureau of Immigration log on her travels to and from the Philippines, Sen. Grace Poe-Llamanzares may have lost her opportunity to shed light on her residency issue herself,” he added.
Valdez is chairman emeritus of the Association of Philippine Law Schools (APLS) and current president of the Philippine chapter of the International Association of Constitutional Law.
To become US citizen, one has to declare under oath – in the words of the US Oath of Allegiance – that he or she “absolutely and entirely renounces and abjure all allegiance and fidelity to the’ Philippines.” In the same oath, one even has to vow to “bear arms” on behalf of the US.
On the other hand, Article VII, Section 2 of the Philippine Constitution satates: “No person may be elected President unless he is a natural-born citizen of the Philippines, a registered voter, able to read and write, at least forty years of age on the day of the election, and a resident of the Philippines for at least ten years immediately preceding such election.”
The same qualifications are also required from those who want to run for Vice President, as stated in Section 3 of the same Article.
UP Law’s Agabin had said the animus revertendi doctrine would be considered a “legal fiction” when applied to Grace Poe, because she had categorically declared her residency in her certificate of candidacy when she ran for Senate as “six years, six months” as of May 2013.
Navotas City Rep. Toby Tiangco, spokesperson and interim president of Vice President Jejomar Binay’s United Nationalist’s Alliance, earlier showed to the media a copy of Poe’s COC, showing that she had answered “six years, six months” on the question on her residency in the Philippines. Her declaration in her COC makes her unqualified to seek a higher post in 2016, Tiangco added.
Tiangco has since apologized for the damage to the Binay-Poe friendship that his allegations against the lady senator might have done.
Poe, a foundling legally adopted by movie stars Fernando Poe Jr and Susan Roces, was born and raised in the Philippines but later moved to the US to finish her undergraduate studies and eventually worked there.
She only decided to return to the Philippines after her father died in 2004. She later renounced her US citizenship so she could be appointed in the Philippines as MTRCB chair in 2010.(MNS)