Poe is a natural-born Filipino citizen – SCOTP

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This should completely erase the doubt. Senator Grace Poe-Llamanzares is a natural-born Filipino and also complied with the residency requirement to run for president in the May 9, 2016 elections.

This was declared by the Supreme Court of the Philippines (SCOTP) in a 47-page decision released on Friday on the case of the qualification of Poe to run for president.

During the deliberations last Tuesday, with a 9-6 vote, the SC reversed the decision of the Commission on Elections (Comelec) which cancelled the certificate of candidacy (COC) for president of Poe in the May 9 elections.

The SCOTP said that the Comelec has committed “grave abuse of discretion” in the decision it rendered, the pieces of evidence are more than sufficient to believe that Poe is a natural-born citizen.

The high court said that the issue should not focus on who were the parents of Poe such that their identities were not established, but rather, were her parents Filipinos.

If the basis will be the statistics presented by the Solicitor General as well as the circumstantial evidence presented by Poe, the SCOTP said, there’s a big possibility to say that the parents of the senator were Filipinos.

Among the circumstantial evidence pointed were that Poe was abandoned when she was just a baby in a church in Iloilo City, where majority of the population are Filipinos, as well as her physical trait which is typical in a Filipino such as the straight black hair, almond-shaped eyes and oval face.

The court said that the private respondents or those who pursued the cancellation of Poe’s COC have the responsibility to prove that the parents of Poe were foreigners.

On the issue of residency, the high court was convinced that Poe was telling the truth when she declared in her COC that she shall have been a resident of the Philippines for 10 years and 11 months come the eve of the May 9, 2016 elections.

The SCOTP believes that the change of domicile by Poe began on May 24, 2005 when she returned to the Philippines and decided to leave the United States as their residency.

It also gave weight on the pieces of evidence presented by Poe proving that they already decided to reside again in the Philippines, including the email correspondence or exchange of messages in the email from March 2005 to September 2006 in a freight company for the shipment of their belongings from the United States to the Philippines; the enrolment of their children in a school in the Philippines and the tax declaration. (PNA / By Perfecto T. Raymundo)

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