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Supreme Court (SC) Senior Associate Justice Antonio Carpio has courted controversy recently for comments he made about Senator Grace Poe’s citizenship. This drew a lot of attention, as Carpio is the chairman of the Senate Electoral Tribunal (SET).
“Justice Carpio had expressed his opinion that since Senator Poe was a foundling found in the Philippines, she is considered a natural-born citizen of the Philippines. But in the absence of evidence that she was born of Filipino citizens, she must be considered a naturalized Filipino. If, in the future, a DNA test shows she was born of Filipino citizens, she may then be considered a natural-born Filipino,” reports Leonard Postrado in Manila Bulletin.
Below is the list of qualifications for those who, like Poe, are running for President:
He or she mustb be:
1. a natural born citizen of the Philippines
2. a registered voter
3. able to read and write
4. at least 40 years of age on the day of election
5. a resident of the Philippines for at least 10 years immediately preceding the election.
However, former Chief Justice Artemio Panganiban has disputed Carpio’s pronoucements, citing three legal provisions applying to foundlings. Below are Panganiban’s main arguments:
1. Panganiban cited Article 2 of the 1961 Convention on the Reduction of Statelessness, which says: “A foundling found in the territory of a Contracting State shall, in the absence of proof to the contrary, be considered to have been born in the territory of parents possessing the nationality of that State.”
2. Although the Philippines is not a signatory to the 1961 Convention, Panganiban said, it’s still considered bound by its provisions. He pointed out that “generally accepted principles of international law are as binding as statutes passed by Congress.”
3. Panganiban reasoned that the 1935 Constitution, which was the Philippines’ basic law in 1968 when Poe was born, provides that the “Philippines… adopts the generally accepted principles of international law as part of the law of the Nation.”
4. Panganiban noted that “foundlings are protected by the 1930 Hague Convention on the Conflict of Nationality Laws and the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which states that the right to a nationality is one of the most fundamental human rights.” He explained that “nationality is synonymous to citizenship in international law.”
Photo: Gov.ph
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