SOLICITOR General Florin Hilbay told the Supreme Court Tuesday he believed Senator Grace Poe, a foundling, is a natural-born Filipino citizen according to the Constitution and is therefore qualified to run for president in May.
At the continuation of oral arguments on Poe’s petition to reverse her disqualification by the Commission on Elections, Hilbay told the Court that statistics and common sense dictate that a foundling like Poe should be considered a natural-born citizen.
Hilbay appealed to the justices to search through not only their feelings, but also the records of the 1935, 1973 and 1987 Constitutions to find any express intent to deny foundlings their status as Filipino citizens.
“We cannot interpret the Constitution’s silence as indicating a discriminatory animus against an entire class of persons, in the face of the clearly discernible intent in the records to recognize them as Filipinos,” Hilbay said.
“To exclude foundlings from exercising fundamental political rights and make them legally invisible would be baseless, unjust, discriminatory, contrary to common sense, and the wrong way to interpret the Constitution,” said Hilbay, whom the Court had ordered to present his legal views on the Poe case as the “tribune of the people.”
The Solicitor General argued that there was no evidence that the framers of the country’s constitutions intended to deny foundlings their status as natural-born Filipinos.
Hilbay also said the position of the Comelec and Poe’s detractors is contrary to common sense considering that foreigners do not come to the Philippines so they can get pregnant and leave their newborn babies behind.
“We do not face a situation where the probability is such that every founding would have a 50-percent chance of being a Filipino and a 50-percent chance of being a foreigner,” he said.
Hilbay noted that the chance that the parents of anyone born in the Philippines would be foreigners is almost nil, while the chances that the parents of anyone born in the Philippines would be Filipino is 99.9 percent.
Hilbay also cited records from the Philippine Statistics Authority, which show that from 2010 to 2014, on a yearly average, there were 1,766,046 children born in the Philippines to Filipino parents, as opposed to 1,301 children born in the Philippines of foreign parents.
“Thus, for that sample period, the ratio of non-Filipino children to natural-born Filipino children is 1:1357. This means that the statistical probability that any child born in the Philippines would be a natural-born Filipino is 99.93 percent,” he said.
Hilbay said 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 Philippines was 10,558,278.
“For this period, the ratio of non-Filipino children to Filipino children is 1:661. This means that the statistical probability that any child born in the Philippines in that decade would be a natural-born Filipino is 99.83,” he added.
Hilbay even urged the Court to invite statisticians and social anthropologists to look into the records, although he said he was confident that the statistical probability that a child born in the Philippines would be a natural-born Filipino will not be affected by whether or not the parents are known.
“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,” Hilbay told the Court.
“There is no reason why this honorable Court should use an improbable hypothetical to sacrifice the fundamental political rights of an entire class of human beings. Your honors, constitutional interpretation and the use of common sense are not separate disciplines,” Hilbay said.
On the residency issue, Hilbay took the position that Poe has satisfied the 10-year residence requirement of the Constitution.
He noted that in December 2004, Poe’s father, movie actor Fernando Poe Jr., died, which was crucial to her decision to return to the Philippines for good.
Hilbay noted that crucial to the issue was the year 2005 when Poe returned to the Philippines along with her three children who were uprooted from their schools in the United States and transferred to schools in Manila.
“The narrative of her private and public life has since then been centered on the Philippines, save for a few visits to the United States. Based on these facts, the claim that she has been a resident of the Philippines for at least t10 years is a valid claim,” Hilbay said.
Earlier, Hilbay said he could not represent the Comelec in the case.
In Iloilo City, Poe’s adoptive mother, actress Susan Roces, broke her silence to deny longstanding rumors that Poe was the daughter of her younger sister, Rosemarie Sonora.
“What they’re saying that she’s a daughter of my sister—why will I deny it if it’s true?” Roces said.
At the time, she said, she and Sonora were together every day and night.
“I never saw her pregnant, that was 1968, the year I got married and later she herself got married,” Roces said.
This was the first time Roces spoke regarding persistent rumors that Poe was the daughter of her sister and the late President Ferdinand Marcos.
Senator Ferdinand Marcos Jr. said he considered the decades-old rumor an “urban legend.”
During a tour of the La Paz Public Market and Iloilo Central Market, Roces told reporters that during that time, Sonora was very busy doing television shows. “And she was very visible. She never, never got pregnant,” she added.
She said they simply ignored this rumor because no matter what they said, it would not go away.
“Grace is old now, she’s past 40,” said Roces who insisted that Poe was a foundling found abandoned in a Catholic Church in Iloilo. She and her late husband, the late Fernando Poe Jr. legally adopted her.
The actress admitted she has been bothered by accusations that Poe was not a natural-born citizen.
“While they are criticizing Grace, of course, I’m hurting. I know my fellow mothers would feel the same. I know they know what I am going through but I believe we can overcome all of these,” she said.
Roces said she cannot imagine why they’re saying that her daughter is not a Filipino. “How did she land here?” she said.
She said the same thing happened to her husband when he ran for president in 2004.
Disqualification cases against her husband were eventually dismissed by the Supreme Court.
