Tatad to file second motion for reconsideration on Poe DQ

MANILA, Philippines - Former senator Francisco Tatad will file a second motion for reconsideration (MR) and appeal the supposedly final ruling of the Supreme Court allowing Sen. Grace Poe to pursue her presidential candidacy.

“That is if the Supreme Court has really denied our joint MR with the other complainants,” Tatad’s lawyer Manuel Luna told the Usaping Balita forum at the Serye Café in Quezon City yesterday.

SC spokesman Theodore Te announced on Tuesday that there was already a decision but the court would release the ruling and concurring and dissenting opinions on Saturday.

Luna said if the citizenship and residency issues hounding Poe have not been clearly resolved, they would ask the court to settle these questions in Tatad’s second MR.

He said there is no basis to say that the Commission on Elections (Comelec) abused its discretion in disqualifying Poe for not being a natural-born Filipino and for lacking residency “unless the SC declares that she complies with the citizenship and residency requirements under the Constitution.”

Luna stressed that based on the dissenting opinion of Justice Teresita de Castro, only seven justices voted to qualify Poe in its March 8 ruling, while five declared that the senator is not a natural-born Filipino, being a foundling of unknown parentage, and six held the view that she lacks the required 10-year residency.

“We have 15 justices, and seven is not a majority. Eight votes are needed to qualify Senator Poe. Otherwise, these citizenship and residency issues will continue to hound her,” he added.

He pointed out that various lawyers’ groups, including the Integrated Bar of the Philippines and the Philippine Bar Association, have expressed the opinion that the March 8 decision did not settle Poe’s citizenship and residency.

Poe asserts that she is compliant with both citizenship and residency requirements.

“We insist that she is not a natural-born Filipino since her parents are unknown up to this day, and natural-born citizenship cannot be based on statistical probability as theorized by the solicitor general,” Luna said.

He said the seven justices who held the view that Poe complies with the residency requirement “made a wrong computation of her 10-year residency.”

“They counted it from the time she returned here as an American citizen in May 2005. They cannot include her stay here as a foreigner because we are electing a president who must be a natural-born Filipino and must have resided in the country as such for at least 10 years before the election,” he said.