SC sees grave abuse in Comelec's disqualification of Poe

MANILA, Philippines (Second update 8:06 p.m.) — The Commission on Elections committed grave abuse of discretion when it disqualified Sen. Grace Poe as a presidential candidate, the Supreme Court said in its decision on the case that it released early Friday evening.

In its 47-page decision penned by Associate Justice Jose Perez, the Supreme Court said it found that the Comelec resolutions, both at the division level and en banc, were "diseased with grave abuse of discretion from roots to fruit."

FULL TEXT: Supreme Court decision on Grace Poe vs Comelec

The court announced on Tuesday that it decided in favor of Poe's petition to nullify her disqualification from the May elections. The Comelec canceled her certificate of candidacy in December over questions on her citizenship and her compliance with residency requirements for candidates.

The tribunal said foundlings like Poe are natural-born citizens. This had been one of the grounds for petitions questioning the first-term senator's qualification to run for president, and for public office in general. Poe was adopted by movie star Fernando Poe Jr. and Susan Roces after she was found abandoned in a church in Jaro, Iloilo.

Poe had DNA tests done on people who might have been her relatives in an attempt to find her parents. Her lawyer George Garcia has said in interviews during the week that DNA testing will continue despite the Supreme Court already ruling that she could run.

On adoption and residency

The court said that the 1935 Constitution, which was in force when Poe was born, was "silent as to foundlings, there is no restrictive language which would definitely exclude foundlings [from natural-born citizen status] either."

The court said that Poe could list her adoptive parents as her birth parents since adoption "severed all legal ties between the biological parents and the adoptee, except when the biological parent is the spouse of the adoptee." It also said that Republic Act 8552, or the Domestic Adoption Act of 1998, allows Poe to state that her adoptive parents are her biological parents "as that is what would be stated in her birth certificate."

The court also said that the Comelec erred when it based the reckoning of Poe's residency in the Philippines on a misdeclaration in her certificate of candidacy for the 2013 elections. Her camp has repeatedly said that it was a mistake caused by an ambiguity in the form that the Comelec used in 2012.

"The Court found that [Poe's] claim that she will have been a resident for 10 years and 11 months on the day before the 2016 elections is true," the decision read. The 1987 Constitution requires candidates for president to have been residents of the Philippines for 10 years immediately before the elections.

The Supreme Court pointed out that Poe had proven that she had established residency since May 24, 2005 by returning to the Philippines then and "every time she traveled abroad."

Email correspondence with a freight company concerning her move to the Philippines, her transferring her children to schools in the Philippines, tax declarations and other evidence "show proof that she had intended to change domicile from the US to the Philippines," the court said.

"The Comelec refused to consider that [Poe's] domicile had been timely changed as of May 24, 2005 and that it was grave abuse of discretion on its part to treat [Poe's] COC in 2012 as a binding and conclusive evidence against her," the court said.

Citing Romualdez-Marcos, the Supreme Court said that Poe's declaration in her COC in 2012 was an "honest mistake" and was not binding.

The Supreme Court ruled in favor of Imelda Marcos, then the winning candidate for representative of the first district of Leyte, who had been disqualified for failing to meet the residency requirement of one year.

Marcos amended the "seven months" she originally put as her period of residency in Tacloban to "since childhood."

The court allowed it as an "honest misinterpretation."

It said the Comelec "failed to see that [Poe] was not attempting to hide anything because all her answers were on record and were established facts," including, the court said, the misdeclaration in 2012.