Brion’s view: Poe an illegal alien, must be deported

I NEVER miss reading former chief justice Artemio Panganiban’s column every Sunday. He has a way of translating “legal gobbledygook” into simple English that we lay people easily understand.

In his Nov. 29 opinion piece, Panganiban wrote: “The SET (Senate Electoral Tribunal) majority ruled that (Sen. Grace) Poe, a foundling, is presumed a natural-born citizen and those who claim otherwise have to prove that her biological father was a foreigner… In contrast, the dissenters hold that, as a foundling, she is presumed NOT a natural-born citizen and to overturn that presumption, she has to prove that her biological father was a Filipino…”

From that pithy summary, we can readily glean that the dissenters (the three Supreme Court justices, plus Sen. Nancy Binay) really went out of their way to torpedo Poe’s candidacy for president. By voting to disqualify her as a senator for not being a “natural-born” Filipino, they paved the way for her disqualification from any presidential run, too, which requires the same citizenship status.

While three of the dissenters were mercifully willing to grant Poe the presumption of being a “naturalized citizen,” the fourth, Justice Arturo Brion, was more brutal: “(C)itizenship cannot be established, recognized or presumed under the 1935 Constitution”; ergo, she is an ALIEN? To Brion, who rejects any such “presumption,” all foundlings found in the Philippines should not be “presumed” Filipinos at all but must be treated as foreigners and hurdle the legal process called “naturalization” to continue living in this country—or face immediate deportation (to what country, pray tell, Mr. Justice?)!

Be that as it may, it is quite clear that, except for the holier-than-thou Brion, all eight SET members agree that Poe is not an alien but a Filipino citizen, differing only in their views of the nature of her citizenship. In the absence of any law dealing with that kind of Filipino citizenship, a foundling found in the Philippines has at birth, the majority of five ruled in favor of giving Poe all the benefit of the doubt. Sen. Loren Legarda cited a Supreme Court dictum: “In case of doubt in the interpretation of constitutional and legal provisions involving popular sovereignty, it is best to interpret such provisions in a manner that enables our electorate to freely elect their chosen leaders.”

Panganiban added more emphatically that if he were to vote on that issue, he would go with the majority upon the “overarching constitutionally enshrined social justice principle to give more law to those who have less in life.” Why is that common-sense Magsaysay-esque concept so difficult for the incumbent justices to wrap their “brilliant minds” with?

—CARMELA N. NOBLEJAS, [email protected]