POE-LLAMANZARES vs COMELEC Case Digest (G.R. Nos.

221697 & 221698-700)

Facts:

Petitioner Mary Grace Natividad S. Poe-Llamanzares was found abandoned as a newborn infant in the
Parish Church of Jaro, Iloilo on Sept. 3, 1968. After passing the parental care and custody over petitioner
by Edgardo Militar to Emiliano Militar and his wife, she has been reported and registered as a foundling
and issued a Foundling Certificate and Certificate of Live Birth, thus was given the name, Mary Grace
Natividad Contreras Militar.

When the petitioner reached the age of five (5), celebrity spouses Ronal Allan Kelley (aka Fernando Poe,
Jr) and Jesusa Sonora Poe (aka Susan Roces) filed a petition foe her adoption. The trial court granted
their petition and ordered that her name be changed to Mary Grace Natividad Sonora Poe.

Petitioner registered as a voter in San Juan City at the age of 18 in 1986; in 1988, she applied and was
issued Philippine Passport by the DFA; in 1993 and 1998, she renewed her passport.

She left for the United States (U.S.) in 1988 to continue her studies after enrolling and pursuing a degree
in Development Studies at the University of the Philippines. She graduated in 1991 from Boston College
where she earned her Bachelor of Arts degree in Political Studies.

She married Teodoro Misael Daniel V. Llamanzares, a citizen of both the Philippines and the U.S., in San
Juan City and decided to flew back to the U.S. after their wedding. She gave birth to her eldest child
while in the U.S.; and her two daughters in the Philippines.

She became a naturalized American citizen in 2001. She came back to the Philippines to support her
father’s candidacy for president in the May 2004 elections and gave birth to her youngest daughter.
They then returned to the U.S. in 2004 but after few months, she rushed back to the Philippines to
attend to her ailing father. After her father’s death, the petitioner and her husband decided to move and
reside permanently in the Philippines in 2005 and immediately secured a TIN, then her children followed
suit; acquired property where she and her children resided.

In 2006, She took her Oath of Allegiance to the Republic of the Philippines pursuant to RA No. 9225 or
the Citizenship retention and Re-acquisition Act of 2003; she filed a sworn petition to reacquire
Philippine citizenship together with petitions for derivative citizenship on behalf of her three children
which was granted. She registered as a voter; secured Philippine passport; appointed and took her oath
as Chairperson of the MTRCB after executing an affidavit of Renunciation of American citizenship before
the Vice Consul of the USA and was issued a Certificate of Loss of Nationality of the USA in 2011.

In 2012, she 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.” Petitioner obtained the highest number of votes and was proclaimed
Senator on 16 May 2013.

On 15 October 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.
The petitioner attached to her COC an “Affidavit Affirming Renunciation of U.S.A. Citizenship” subscribed
and sworn to before a notary public in Quezon City on 14 October 2015.
Petitions were filed before the COMELEC to deny or cancel her candidacy on the ground particularly,
among others, that she cannot be considered a natural-born Filipino citizen since she cannot prove that
her biological parents or either of them were Filipinos.  The COMELEC en banc cancelled her candidacy
on the ground that she was in want of citizenship and residence requirements, and that she committed
material misrepresentations in her COC.

On certiorari, the Supreme Court reversed the ruling and held (9-6 votes) that Poe is qualified as a
candidate for Presidency.  Three justices, however, abstained to vote on the natural-born citizenship
issue.

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.