THE Supreme Court on Tuesday sustained the decision of the Senate Electoral Tribunal dismissing the electoral protest filed by losing senatorial candidate Rizalito David who questioned Grace Poe’s qualification to run for the Senate in the 2013 polls.
Voting 9-3, the 15-member bench resolved to uphold the decision of the SET last year dismissing the electoral protest filed by David, dismissing for lack of merit David’s petition seeking a reversal of the SET ruling.
According to the tribunal, the SET was correct in ruling that Poe is “a natural-born Filipino citizen qualified to hold office as senator of the Philippines.”
It cited the legal presumption that all foundlings found in the country are born of at least either a Filipino father or a Filipino mother—unless proven otherwise.
“Concluding that foundlings are not natural-born Filipino citizens is tantamount to telling our foundlings citizens that they can never be of service to the country in the highest possible capacities. It is also tantamount to excluding them from certain means, such as professions and state scholarships, which will enable the actualization of their aspirations,” the decision written by Associate Justice Marvic Leonen stated.
“If that is not discrimination, we do not know what it is,” the SC said.
The high tribunal also cited as basis the equal protection clause in the Constitution, which guarantees that “persons under like circumstances and falling within the same class are treated alike, in terms of privileges conferred and liabilities enforced” and “against undue favor and individual or class privilege, as well as hostile discrimination…”
The SC held there is no substantial distinction between foundlings and children with known Filipino parents other than anonymity of their biological parents, so both should be entitled to full extent of the state’s protection.
The high court stressed the only misfortune of foundlings is their failure to identify the parents who abandoned them, but stressed that it cannot be foundation of a rule that reduced them to statelessness or second-class citizens who are not entitled to same benefits and protection from the state accorded to those with known parents.
The tribunal also junked David’s assertion that Poe has the burden to prove that either of her biological parents is a Filipino to be able to qualify as candidate for senator, saying it would be an “impossible condition.”
“It borders on the absurd to require proof from private respondent when there is no dispute that the crux of the controversy — the identity of her biological parents — is simply not known,” the tribunal said.
Eight justices agreed with this majority opinion of Leonen — Chief Justice Ma. Lourdes Sereno and Associate Justices Presbitero Velasco Jr., Diosdado Peralta, Lucas Bersamin, Jose Perez, Jose Mendoza, Francis Jardeleza and Alfreo Benjamin Caguioa.
The three magistrates who dissented from the ruling were Associate Justices Mariano del Castillo, Bienvenido Reyes and Estela Perlas-Bernabe.
The three SC justices who are members of the SET and took part in the assailed ruling — Senior Associate Justice Antonio Carpio and Associate Justices Teresita Leonardo-De Castro and Arturo Brion — have earlier inhibited from the case and did not participate in the voting.
The assailed SET ruling held that Poe should be considered a natural-born despite being a foundling based 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.
Carpio, De Castro and Brion dissented from the SET ruling and voted that Poe is not a natural-born citizen.
Last March, the SC issued a ruling upholding the qualification for the presidential election last May of Sen. Poe, a foundling adopted by the late actor Fernando Poe Jr. and actress Susan Roces.
In that case, the high tribunal granted Poe’s petition and set aside a Commission on Elections ruling disqualifying her from the presidential race.
The SC affirmed the ruling on the Comelec case, which involved both citizenship and residency eligibilities of the senator, with finality last April.
