Was Perfecto Yasay Jr. ever an American citizen?
It’s an issue now saddling Yasay, who has repeatedly and vigorously denied this one big obstacle to his being confirmed as foreign secretary by the Commission on Appointments.
At his confirmation hearing last week, Yasay said he was granted American citizenship in 1986 but that he was disqualified for it because he later abandoned his permanent residency in the United States and returned to the Philippines. “On that basis, I have never acquired legal status as a US citizen,” he said.
And yet he later submitted an affidavit and letter that he said he sent by registered mail to the US Immigration and Naturalization Service in 1993, stating that on Nov. 26, 1986, he was “granted United States citizenship.”
Documents obtained by the Inquirer also showed that he formally renounced his US citizenship at the US Embassy in Manila on June 28, 2016, just two days before President Duterte appointed him to the Cabinet. Now how does one renounce something one has, to quote the man, “never acquired”?
‘Tis a puzzlement, but Malacañang is firm in its support of Yasay, who was President Duterte’s personal choice to head the Department of Foreign Affairs. At a press briefing on Tuesday, Mr. Duterte’s spokesperson Ernesto Abella described Yasay’s response to the question on his citizenship as “very credible and logical.” But one anonymous lawmaker has raised another curious twist: Assuming that Yasay indeed renounced his US citizenship, he has apparently not reacquired Filipino citizenship according to the process mandated by Philippine laws. If true, that makes him neither American nor Filipino, by neglect or oversight.
Without Yasay’s reacquisition of Filipino citizenship, his position as foreign secretary and his previous stint as chair of the Securities and Exchange Commission then become highly questionable. He could not have taken his oath as a Filipino citizen then because that would expose him as not being one when he was at the SEC, the lawmaker said, adding that this, ahem, lapse would make Yasay liable for usurpation of authority for being an alien during his SEC tenure.
The same Filipino citizenship law applies to Cabinet members. According to Sen. Panfilo Lacson, who chairs the CA committee on foreign affairs, Yasay could be liable for perjury.
This unseemly controversy makes Yasay a dubious choice as the face of the Philippines on the global scene and its voice in international affairs. Here is this man—a lawyer, by the way, and therefore necessarily knowledgeable of the law—who would flout rules and stubbornly cling to his version of the truth despite hard evidence to the contrary. With the Philippines not exactly the subject of public approbation at the moment, its standing in the world would not be helped any by someone found to have fudged his way into office. Or whose recent pronouncements on the territorial dispute with China that had President Duterte—not the most diplomatic man in the world—rushing in to explain exactly what he meant.
It would be prudent for the Commission on Appointments to look more closely into Yasay’s qualifications for such a sensitive position. In this post-truth era, can he distinguish truth from alternative facts? Can he defend the country’s interests without resorting to inflated information and with a healthy respect for contrary opinion, dissent and criticism?
And, in the spirit of transparency, can the commission also ask Yasay to explain, “credibly and logically,” the swirl of dark rumors around his previous performance as legal counsel and board member of the shuttered Banco Filipino, as well as his hasty resignation as SEC chair during the Estrada administration?
How a person handles a personal crisis speaks volumes about how he would handle the challenges that abound on the global stage, which are often magnified by the harsh and unforgiving glare of public scrutiny.