Poe opposes intervention in poll protest

Calling the lawyers who revived the citizenship case against him as merely publicity-hungry, defeated presidential candidate Fernando Poe Jr. asked the Presidential Electoral Tribunal (PET) yesterday to deny the lawyers’ motions outright for being premature and baseless.

In a 15-page opposition, Poe, through his counsel Sixto Brillantes, said lawyers Ma. Jeanette Tecson, Felix Desiderio and Victorino Fornier have neither the legal personality nor a legitimate interest to intervene in the election protest he filed against President Arroyo.

"Understandably, after having tasted a ‘celebrity status’ of sorts, at least for quite a while, and then disappearing from the scene for a few weeks, would-be intervenors simply cannot resist another ‘golden opportunity’ to ride on the bandwagon," Brillantes said.

He contended the lawyers’ petitions questioning Poe’s citizenship had already been dismissed by the Supreme Court but the three lawyers could not resist the instant publicity "at least even for a fleeting moment" that the intervention could generate.

Poe’s counsel said the motions made by the three lawyers could only be filed against a winning candidate.

Brillantes added that Tecson, Desiderio and Fornier were not registered presidential candidates who received the second and highest number of votes, and allowed by PET rules to contest the outcome of the elections.

"Would-be intervenors appear to have lost sight of the fact that an election protest is an electoral dispute, the main purpose of which is to determine the duly elected candidate, through the ascertainment of the true will of the electorate," he said.

Brillantes argued if the eligibility or ineligibility of the proclaimed winner cannot be challenged in a protest case but in a quo warranto petition "within 10 days after the proclamation," the rules would be more stringent to protect the rights of a "protesting unproclaimed" candidate.

He said the rules clearly defined the proper parties in an election protest case and leaves no room for another interpretation.

Brillantes also said the lawyers’ supposed interest as taxpayers and voters cannot be accepted as a reason to intervene in the case simply because Poe remains unproclaimed.

"The threshold issue raised being the eligibility of protestant (Poe) to sit and assume the office of the President of the Philippines, would-be intervenors should be patient enough to wait for protestant to prevail in his current protest and be proclaimed," he said.

Brillantes warned that if the PET interprets "public interest" alone as sufficient legal basis for intervention in an election protest case "will be stretching the same beyond the ambit of the law, as it would definitely open the floodgates of unrestricted filing of dilatory motions for intervention" by 43 million registered voters.

He said the tribunal cannot possibly accept interventions from millions of "publicity-conscious" people claiming interest in the case even if their motive is actually to "hug the limelight."

Brillantes stressed that the issue of Poe’s citizenship had long been resolved and should no longer be reopened without new evidence presented by the three lawyers. He said their "bare and malicious insinuation" that Poe was not a natural-born Filipino citizen deserves no merit at all in the case.

He also said the President had also raised the citizenship issue in her answer and counterprotest and thus the lawyers’ motions are just "surplusage."

Last March, the Supreme Court declared Poe a natural-born Filipino citizen qualified to run in the May elections. The SC en banc held that the Commission on Elections did not commit grave abuse of discretion when it ruled that Poe was fit to seek the highest elective office in the land.

In a 53-page decision penned by now retired Justice Jose Vitug, the SC gave weight to the arguments of the four amici curiae or "friends of the court," who all said Poe was a natural-born Filipino under the terms of the 1935 Constitution since his father was a Filipino as shown by the evidence in the SC’s possession.