SC ousts ‘American’ mayor GRIM SCENARIO LOOMS FOR ‘PRESIDENT’ GRACE

By Manny Piñol

In what many legal experts consider as a preview of how the Supreme Court would rule on the disqualification case against Presidential hopeful Grace Poe, a Mindanao mayor was ousted from his post after it was established that he used his American passport even after he had supposedly renounced his US citizenship.

Mayor Rommel Arnado of Kauswagan, Lanao del Norte, now nearing the end of his second term, was declared disqualified from running for public office for being a foreign citizen at the time of the elections.

It was a final ruling by the High Court on a case brought up against Arnado when he first ran for Mayor of his hometown in 2010.

Arnado, a successful real estate broker in California who came home to the Philippines, renounced his American citizenship in 2009.

It was, however, established through documentary evidence that he continued to use his American passport in 2010, an act which the Supreme Court ruled repudiated and invalidated his renunciation of his US citizenship.

“Only natural-born Filipinos who owe total and undivided allegiance to the Republic of the Philippines could run for and hold elective public office,” the Supreme Court in a landmark decision this week.

Voting 8 to 4 vote, the high court upheld last Aug. 18 the Commission on Elections 2013 resolution disqualifying Kauswagan Mayor Rommel Arnado, and established the jurisprudence on cases of this nature by saying that Arnado’s continued use of his United States passport in 2010 in effect invalidated his renunciation of his US citizenship in 2009.

The SC ruling on the case of Arnado could spell disaster for the Presidential bid of Senator Poe, who last week declared that she was offering herself as President of the Philippines.

There is a pending disqualification case involving a question of citizenship being heard by the Senate Electoral Tribunal (SET) against Sen. Poe.

Poe, a foundling born in 1968 and adopted in 1974 by the late actor Fernando Poe Jr. and his wife, actress Susan Roces, became a US citizen in 2001 when she married Neil Llamanzares, an American citizen.

She said she reacquired Philippine citizenship in 2006 and she was appointed by President Aquino to head the Movie and Television Review and Classification Board in 2010.

The reacquisition of her citizenship in 2006 is considered a very critical fact because of the Constitutional requirement that candidates for President must have resided in the country 10 years prior to the elections.

There are, however, claims that Poe continued to use her American passport in her travels even after she had renounced her American citizenship.

Sources in the legal circles who are following the Grace Poe case said there are documented evidence that the senator used her American passport in her foreign travels until 2012.

If these claims made by defeated senatorial candidate Rizalito David, would be proven true, Poe’s case could suffer the same fate as the case of Mayor Arnado.

Did Grace Poe use her US passport in her travels even after she had renounced her American citizenship?

If she did, the promised Bagong Umaga that she made to the Filipino people when she announced her candidacy last week will have to wait until 2022 for its dawning.

With the Supreme Court ruling on the Arnado case, Poe and her supporters may have to momentarily forget about the Bagong Umaga.

Good Night folks!