GRACE POE’S CASE

1. In quo warranto proceedings, burden of proof does not rest upon the elected and
incumbent to show that he is a natural-born citizenship:
- Petitioner has the burden of proving his allegations or claim that Poe is DQ, even
if these propositions are cast in negative form.
- If the evidence of lack qualification is weak and inconclusive, the case must be
resolved in favor of the elected official. The will of the electorate must be upheld.
- Pet. Did not-and cannot-discharge his burden by merely proving that Poe is a
foundling because the status of foundling does not constitute the fact of her
disqualification. Being a foundling does not exclude the possibility that her parents
are Filipino citizens, and therefore, that she is a natural-born Filipino.
- Since Poe’s biological parents are unknown, there is at least, a possibility
(considering her place of birth) that they are Filipinos.
- The reliance that Philippine citizenship cannot be done by presumption but only by
direct proof of blood ties to a Filipino parent is without a leg to stand on. Said ruled
have been superseded and overturned.
- Petition did not claim that Poe is a citizen of another country not presented any
evidence to support this. No evidence that the parents of Poe registered
themselves as alien. Precisely, because Poe’s parents are unknown.
- Petitioner ignores that foundling are in fact considered by the Philippine
government as Philippine citizens, with the DFA issuing passports to them by mere
showing of their foundling certificates. Furthermore, Poe, a known foundling was
effectively recognized by the sovereign power as a natural born Filipino citizen
when they overwhelming elected her to the Senate in 2013. Thus, these acts taken
together, give rise to the presumption that Poe is certainly a Filipino and in fact a
Natural Born Citizen (NBC).
- Not only the international law principles supports Poe’s presumption as NBC but
likewise by the ROC, section 3, rule 131- the following presumptions are
satisfactorily if uncontradicted, but may be contradicted and overcome by other
evidence: (y) that things have happened according to the ordinary course of nature
and ordinary nature habits of life.
a. Her physical features are consistent with the physical traits ordinarily
associated with Filipinos.
b. Her place of birth is in the Philippines, her parents were likely to have
been residents of the Philippines.
c. She was abandoned in a Roman Catholic church. The Philippines was
only predominantly Roman catholic church in Asia thus, it is an
ordinary course of things that Filipinos would leave Poe in a church in
the Philippines.
d. Abandoned children found in the Philippines are more likely to have
been born of poor Filipino parents, as opposed to foreigners who have
the means (like to travel in the Philippines).
2. Poe’s status is not excluded from the enumeration of Filipino citizens under Section 1,
article IV of the 1935 Constitutions. The letter and spirit of the 1935 constitution teach
us that foundlings are NBC:
The ff. are citizens of the Philippines:
a. Citizens of the Philippine islands at the time of the adoption of this
constitution;
 b. Born in the Philippines of foreign parents who, before the adoption
of this Constitution, had been elected to public office in the
Philippine islands;
c. Whose fathers are citizens of the Philippines;
d. Whose mothers are citizens of the Philippines and upon reaching
the age of majority, elect Philippine citizenship.
e. Naturalized in accordance with law.
- The argument that a foundling cannot be considered a Filipino citizen because of
the absence of a “blood tie” to a known Filipino parent is baseless and illogical and
contrary to our collective desire to have a just and humane society as expressed
in the Constitution’s preamble.
- The enumeration that one is a Filipino of his parents are Filipinos does not require
that the identity of such parents be proven with absolute certainty, or even that
such identity must be proven as a fact.
- The biological parents of a foundling are simply unknown, and therefore, they may
in fact be Filipinos.
- Poe will most probably fall under letter B and C or the Jus sanguinis Philipine
citizenship. The deliberations of the framers of the organic law was consulted to
discern the intent with respect to citizenship of foundlings. It shows that foundlings
are not excluded in the term citizens of the Philippines. According to them, by
International law (1935 Hague Convention), the principle that children or people
born in a country of unknown parents are citizens in this nation is recognizes, and
it was not necessary to include a provision on the subject exhaustively. There was
no intent to consider foundlings as STATELESS persons or foreigners.
- It would be the height of injustice to deprive a foundling of Philippine citizenship or
to punish her with statelessness, for a status and condition that is not of her own
doing.
3. Under the applicable International law principles, a foundling in the territory of the
Philippines is a natural-born Filipino citizen:
- A child born in the Philippines in 1968, of unknown parents, falls squarely within
the constitutional definition of a natural-born Filipino, because:
a. She has a right to a nationality from birth;
b. She has a right to protected against statelessness from birth;
c. She is presumed to be a citizen of the country in which she is found and
presumed to have been born of citizens in the country in which she is
found;
d. She does not have to perform any act to acquire or perfect her Filipino
citizenship; and
e. She is not a naturalized Filipino and is, perforce, a natural-born citizen of
the Philippines.
- Under applicable International human rights instruments signed and/or ratified by
the Philippines, it has an affirmative obligation to consider foundlings as natural-
born citizens of the country.
o An treaty ratified by the Philippines is transformed into munipal law that
can applied to domestic conflicts, a treaty form part of the law of the land,
obligations embodied therein must be performed in good faith (PACTA
SUNT SERVANDA)
o Under the Article 7 of the UN convention on the rights of the child
(UNCRC), the Philippines undertook to protect the right of a new-born to a
 nationality to ensure that every child is protected against statelessness
from birth.
o Under art. 24 of the 1966 International Covenant on Civil and Political
Rights recognizes the right of every child to acquire a nationality.
Thus, the only way the Philippines can perform its treaty obligations
in the case of foundling is to recognize him or her as its own citizen,
that is─a Philippine citizen.
- The fact that the Philippines is not a party or a signatory to the 1930 Hague
Convention and the Convention on Statelessness does not mean that is not bound
thereto. It will ignore the basic constitutional precept that an international law
principle may be binding on the Philippines not only via transformation but also
via incorporation.
4. Poe is a natural born Filipino on the basis of the presumption of descent from a
Filipino parent in favor of foundlings:
- Under the Constitution, there are 2 approaches to determine whether a person is
a natural born Filipino:
a. Apply the definition in section 2 of art. Iv of the 1987 constitution which
says that a NBC are those citizens from birth without having to perform any
act to acquire or perfect their Philippine citizenship; and
b. Show that a foundling is not a naturalized Filipino because if she is not
naturalized, she is perforce (ipso facto) a natural-born citizen.
- Having satisfied the two elements of the constitutional definition of a natural born
Filipino under section 2, Article IV, the absence of proof of a blood tie does not
exclude Poe as a NBC because she did not perform any act to acquire or perfect
her citizenship.
- The argument that any citizenship granted at birth to a child with no known blood
relation to a Filipino parent can only be allowed only by way of naturalization cannot
be entertained as this was not used as a ground in his petition. But even if this
ground is alleged in the pleading, the same cannot prosper. Naturalization is an
act by which an alien becomes a Filipino. Poe was not definitely mot an alien at
birth, and never had to undergo any naturalization process. Naturalization is clearly
not what takes places when a foundling is recognized as a Filipino from birth under
applicable international law.