Last month, the Commission on Elections ruled that Senator Grace Poe is disqualified from running for president in May 2016 because she is not a natural-born citizen of the Philippines, and that she shall have been a resident of the Philippines for less than the requisite 10 years come election day.
Poe’s lawyers appealed the ruling of the Comelec to the Supreme Court. Her recourse to the High Tribunal notwithstanding, Poe’s supporters are expected to put considerable public pressure on the justices to disobey the Constitution by allowing Poe to run for president in the coming polls.
Comelec Chairman Andres Bautista disagreed with the majority. Bautista told the news media that, in his opinion, the entries Poe made in her Certificate of Candidacy for president may be attributed to an honest mistake on the part of the senator.
It is difficult to share Bautista’s opinion. Poe had enough time to scrutinize the documents needed in her presidential bid. Assuming she did not have the time, there were more than enough lawyers around her who could have done the job for her.
Francis Escudero, Poe’s vice presidential running mate, is a lawyer. Many of Poe’s senatorial candidates are also lawyers. There are lawyers around Poe whenever she addresses the news media. Did these lawyers bother to go the extra mile and take a look at Poe’s documents prior to their submission to the Comelec? How did those “honest mistakes” mentioned by Chairman Bautista get by unnoticed by Poe’s lawyers?
A legal doctrine posits that if one had the opportunity to obtain the counsel of a lawyer, but one did not do so, one is bound by the consequences of his own improvidence. Since Poe had access to adequate legal counsel, it is difficult to see how those entries she made in her CoC for president were brought about by an honest mistake.
Poe obtained her education both in the Philippines and abroad. Accordingly, did Poe really commit an “honest mistake” or was she just negligent to the extent of being reckless? How many more “honest mistakes” will Poe commit if she becomes president?
On the issue of her residency, Poe’s predicament is the result of her own admissions in her CoC for senator in the 2013 elections. Those admissions clearly indicate that as of May 2013, Poe satisfied the two-year residency requirement imposed by the Constitution on senatorial candidates. Unfortunately for Poe, those entries likewise indicate that as of May 2016, Poe would be a resident of the Philippines for less than 10 years—several months short of the 10-year residency requirement imposed by the Constitution on candidates for president.
Under the rules on evidence, those admissions are in the nature of admissions against interest, which may be used against Poe. The same rules likewise provide that a person intends the ordinary consequences of his voluntary act, and that a person is expected to look after his own concerns.
The Civil Code provision on estoppel also prohibits Poe from disavowing what she stated under oath in her 2013 CoC for senator. Even on the assumption that the entries in Poe’s CoC for senator regarding Poe’s residency are erroneous, how come Poe did not bother to correct them? The plausible explanation is that back in 2013, Poe did not expect to run for president in 2016.
Evidently, it is unlikely that Poe committed an honest mistake when she made it appear in her CoC for president that she meets the 10-year residency requirement mandated under the Constitution.
Poe’s assumption that she is a natural-born citizen may have been an honest mistake. That does not, however, warrant the conclusion that Poe satisfies all the requirements of the Constitution for a valid candidacy for president. Poe remains disqualified. If it were otherwise, ineligible candidates for elective public office earlier disqualified by the Comelec from running in an election can circumvent the rules by invoking an “honest mistake” as a justification for them to run for public office. The number of such candidates who will be expected to petition the Comelec will be huge.
If the “honest mistake” theory advanced by Bautista is to find valid application at all, it should not be in Poe’s predicament but in the disqualification cases pending against Davao City Mayor Rodrigo Duterte, who is running for president in May 2016 under the PDP-Laban banner. It will be recalled that Duterte substituted for Martin Diño, erstwhile presidential candidate of PDP-Laban, who withdrew upon learning that the Comelec law department was going to seek his disqualification on the ground that he is a nuisance candidate.
The disqualification cases were filed against Duterte after it was alleged that Diño filed a CoC not for the presidency but for a local government post. For this reason, it is argued that Diño’s CoC is void, and Duterte cannot substitute for a candidate who filed a void CoC. The Duterte camp contests this and maintains that the error in Diño’s CoC is a harmless oversight.
There is good reason to believe the Duterte camp. From the time Diño filed his CoC, he was always comporting himself as a presidential candidate. In fact, the Comelec law department was planning to disqualify Diño not because of his CoC, but because Diño did not seem to be in a position to maintain a nationwide campaign. Moreover, and unlike Poe, Diño did not make any false statement regarding his citizenship or his residency in any past CoC, which may be used to impeach his explanation.
The error in Diño’s CoC obviously involves form, not substance. It can be corrected without violating the Constitution. Therefore, there ought to be no impediment against allowing Duterte, his substitute, to run for president. On the other hand, allowing Poe to run for president violates two categorical requirements of the Constitution. No amount of clerical correction can change that fact.