Instantly debunking Toby Tiangco

Checking premises of legal issues

I proposed last Monday that media editors should more closely scrutinize the premises of third party legal experts and guest legal columnists before giving prominence to their opinions, as basic legal statements can be objectively verified as being true or false.

READ: Stop lawyers’ intellectual fraud, fear-mongering

As a counterpoint, fellow columnist John Nery asked me to “see the distinction between reporting and opinion.” He added: “But the Inquirer is not a law journal, which requires of its contributors proficiency in or at least awareness of the latest in jurisprudence. It is only a general-circulation newspaper (to be sure, with a thriving affiliate website), and it has a direct stake in the formation of public opinion. That is reflected in the Opinion page, which tries to weed out the obvious cranks, but otherwise keeps itself open to all comers.”

READ: PH politics is a 600-year-old ‘balete’ tree

One of the Inquirer’s senior columnists reminded me that media chooses to publish a person’s message for reasons that have nothing to do with its truth or accuracy. A senior editor asked me whether my proposal would require the paper to not report on a senator making a legal pronouncement, say regarding the Bangsamoro Basic Law, that turns out to be baseless.

Toby Tiangco on Grace Poe

Navotas City Representative Toby Tiangco, interim president of the United Nationalist Alliance, presented an excellent example for this debate, albeit in news not in opinion.

Tiangco presented Sen. Grace Poe’s 2013 certificate of candidacy for senator. Based on the months of residency in the Philippines stated in that certificate, he said, Poe would be resident in the Philippines for only nine years and six months come May 2016. He argued that this disqualifies her from running for President or Vice-President in the next elections because she will fall short of the Constitution’s ten-year residency requirement.

READ: Grace Poe not eligible for presidency, says UNA

Article VII, Section II of the Constitution states: “No person may be elected President unless he is a natural-born citizen of the Philippines, a registered voter, able to read and write, at least forty years of age on the day of the election, and a resident of the Philippines for at least ten years immediately preceding such election.”

When Tiangco said this, social media burned with annoyed reactions from law professors and students. The most indignant reactions on my news feed were from young Philippine Law Journal alumni well drilled in double checking a legal debate’s underlying premises.

How residence is legally determined

Tiangco failed to consider how the above residency requirement is subject to well-established Supreme Court doctrine not apparent from the constitutional provision’s text. Residence in law does not literally mean actual, physical presence. Students instantly cited Imelda Marcos’ famous case from 1995, which ruled on whether Marcos was legally a resident of Tacloban, Leyte despite physically living in various places over the years.

That decision says, preliminarily: “It is the fact of residence, not a statement in a certificate of candidacy which ought to be decisive in determining whether or not and individual has satisfied the constitution’s residency qualification requirement.”

Regarding “residence of origin,” it explained: “[Marcos] held various residences for different purposes during the last four decades. None of these purposes unequivocally point to an intention to abandon her domicile of origin in Tacloban, Leyte. Moreover, while petitioner was born in Manila, as a minor she naturally followed the domicile of her parents. She grew up in Tacloban, reached her adulthood there and eventually established residence in different parts of the country for various reasons. Even during her husband’s presidency, at the height of the Marcos Regime’s powers, petitioner kept her close ties to her domicile of origin by establishing residences in Tacloban, celebrating her birthdays and other important personal milestones in her home province, instituting well-publicized projects for the benefit of her province and hometown, and establishing a political power base where her siblings and close relatives held positions of power either through the ballot or by appointment, always with either her influence or consent. These well-publicized ties to her domicile of origin are part of the history and lore of the quarter century of Marcos power in our country. Either they were entirely ignored in the Comelec’s Resolutions, or the majority of the Comelec did not know what the rest of the country always knew: the fact of petitioner’s domicile in Tacloban, Leyte.”

There must be a clear intent to no longer return to the country, in short. If a presidential candidate, for example, decides to take a master’s degree in public policy abroad to prepare herself to serve, she would not be disqualified based on residency merely because she was temporarily living abroad to study. Tiangco’s discussion is less meaningful without the context of a person’s living abroad.

READ: Drilon says ‘animus revertendi’ provides leeway in Poe’s residency issue

Note that Poe was born in the Philippines and later gave up her US dual citizenship.

An ideal approach by media

Some media organizations took a visibly different approach to Tiangco’s pronouncement. Angela Casauay of Rappler.com added a second part to her story. She interviewed Ateneo School of Government Dean Tony LaViña, who quipped that “somebody forgot his constitutional law” and explained, “The intention to return to your place of origin is the basis of residence, and not actual, physical residence.”

Xianne Arcangel of GMANews went even further and cited the 2012 Jalosjos Supreme Court decision. This involved Rommel Jalosjos, who migrated to Australia as a child and obtained citizenship there but returned to the Philippines and reacquired his citizenship in 2008. He then ran for provincial governor of Zamboanga Sibugay in 2010, a position that requires one-year residency in the province. Jalosjos established this residency by demonstrating how he had cut ties with Australia and presented neighbors’ testimony that he was in fact living in the province, how he had bought land there and how he registered as a voter there. Based on this, she said she would further investigate when exactly Poe began living in the Philippines after her father’s 2004 funeral.

GMANews also paired her reporting with an essay by Fr. Ranhilio Callangan Aquino, Dean of the San Beda Graduate School of Law and constitutional law commentator, explaining how residency is determined in law. Likewise stressing intent to return to a particular place, Fr. Rannie wrote: “When Butz Aquino ran as Representative of the newly created City of Makati, he was rebuffed by the Supreme Court that remained unconvinced that the condo unit he had purchased in Makati satisfied the residence requirement. On the other hand, ruling on the very same day, the Supreme Court found that Mrs. Imelda Marcos, no matter her long absence from Leyte, remained domiciled there because there were several manifestations of her intention to return there!”

This approach, I believe, exemplifies an ideal approach by media towards issues involving law. Reporters may dutifully report Tiangco’s statements, which are of great public interest independent of their legal accuracy. However, aware of substantial criticism, reporters may also proactively give context to Tiangco’s legal premises by citing constitutional law professors or actual Supreme Court decisions in the report, or solicit an accompanying piece by a vetted expert. Everyone wins: the public receives its news in a better informed context, a speaker is not rewarded for making incorrect or incomplete legal pronouncements, editorial discretion is preserved, and media’s content is deepened.

Anyone may propose that the law should be changed to match the way Tiangco explains it, but this can be debated knowing the initial discussion did not quite reflect the current state of the law.

My next questions: How should this ideal approach be applied to how media features third party legal experts and guest legal columnists? And can law students be tapped to help fact check public legal debate and keep participants within the rules?

Oscar Franklin Tan’s column Sisyphus’ Lament runs every Monday. React on Twitter (@oscarfbtan) and facebook.com/OscarFranklinTan.