Law experts divided if Poe meets 10-year

residency rule
Published June 3, 2015 3:12pm
By MARK MERUENAS, GMA News

Echoing a United Nationalist's Alliance spokesman's position, several legal experts on Wednesday said Senator Grace Poe is not qualified to
run for higher office in the 2016 elections for failing to meet the 10-year residency requirement.
Former UP law dean Pacifico Agabin said Article VII, Section 2 of the Philippine Constitution "explicitly" states that a presidential candidate
needs to be "a resident of the Philippines for at least ten years immediately preceding such election."
Former University of the East law dean Amado Valdez meanwhile said Poe's residency should not be downplayed because "mandatory
requirement iyong" 10-year rule.
Sen. Franklin Drilon had raised the doctrine of animus revertendi or having the "intention to return" to insist Poe, a former Liberal Party guest
candidate in the 2013 midterm polls, is qualified to run in 2016.
The Supreme Court had held in 1995 that First Lady Imelda Marcos can seek election in Leyte for congresswoman despite her long absence
in the province because several manifestations of her intention to return there still makes her a domicile of that province.
Domicile is defined as the "permanent home, the place to which, whenever absent for business or pleasure, one intends to return, and
depends on the facts and circumstances, in the sense that they disclose intent."
But Agabin branded the animus revertendi doctrine a "legal fiction" when applied in Poe's residency issue.
"Grace Poe's case is different (from Imelda Marcos') because she (Poe) wrote it in her 2013 certificate of candidacy," that she had been a
resident of the Philippines for six years and six month before the May 2013 elections.
That would mean she became a Philippine resident starting November 2006, or nine years and six months ago.
Like Agabin, Valdez also said the SC ruling on Marcos was "not applicable in Poe's case because Imelda never lost her domicile in the
Philippines."
For his part, Integrated Bar of the Philippines national president Vicente Joyas stressed the importance of settling the matter.
"Should she decide to run for either president or vice president, the issue of residency must be settled," he said.
Joyas said Poe's "intention to return to the Philippines is negated by her acquisition of US citizenship."
He also doubted if Poe's eventual renunciation of her US citizenship could help bolster her position of intentionally returning to the Philippines
for good.
"The renunciation was made only so she can be appointed to government position. What about if she was not offered any government
position, will she renounce?," asked Joyas.
Though born and raised in the Philippines, Poe - an adopted daughter of movie stars Fernando Poe and Susan Roces - went to the US in
1991 to pursue her studies and eventually worked there. She returned to the Philippines after her father's death in 2004.
Although figuring prominently in several presidential polls, Poe has not formally revealed her intentions, if any, to seek a higher post in the May
2016 elections.
Imelda case
In the 1995 SC ruling on Imelda Marcos, the tribunal said an individual does not lose his or her domicile even if he or she has live and
maintained several residences in different places.

"The absence from legal residence or domicile to pursue a profession, to study or to do other things of a temporary or semi-permanent nature
does not constitute loss of residence," read the SC ruling.
On the other side of the fence, legal experts Fr. Ranhilio Aquino, Antonio La Vina, Romulo Macalintal and Sixto Brillantes all agree that Poe
can still run for presidency in 2016.
In a commentary on GMA News Online, San Beda Graduate School of Law dean Fr. Ranhilio Aquino cited the Imelda ruling to cite the
importance of one's "intention" to establish his or her domicile.
"When one leaves his domicile with the intention to return, no matter how long the absence, domicile will not be lost," he said.
"Intentions are tricky business, but there are verifiable facts consistent with an intention to remain, as well as facts evincing a lack of such an
intention," he said.
La Vina, dean of the Ateneo School of Government, meanwhile said Poe's intent to return to the Philippines outweighs her declaration in her
COC about her period of residency.,
"Intent to return above all is established by your links to a place. As long as those links are real and subsisting - birthplaces, parents who are
alive, ancestral hikes subsists, friendships and relations - all of these taken together are evidence of intent to return," he said in a Facebook
post.
Brillantes, a former Commission on Elections chairman and election lawyer of Poe's late father, said the Constitution asks not for the actual
period of residence but for legal residence or domicile.
Parang ang interpretasyon nila ay 'yung tinatawag na actual residency. As far as residency is concerned, qualified si Grace Poe, based on the
issue on domicile," said Brillantes.
For his part, Macalintal said it was too early to speculate on what Poe would put on her COC if she decides to run in 2016. He said it was
vague from the COC form what it meant about period of residency. "It does not say 'period of residency on May 13, 2013," but rather "before
May 13, 2013."
This, he said, "could be interpreted to mean period of residence upon the filing of the COC in October 2012."
Toby Tiangco
UNA interim president and Navotas City Rep. Toby Tiangco earlier said Article VII, Section 2 of the Constitution clearly states that "no person
may be elected President unless he is a natural-born citizen of the Philippines, a registered voter, able to read and write, at least forty years of
age on the day of the election, and a resident of the Philippines for at least ten years immediately preceding such election."
The same qualifications are also required from those who want to run for Vice President, as stated in Section 3 of the same Article.
Tiangco presented the photocopy of Poe's certificate of candidacy during the 2013 senatorial elections, which showed that the then-senatorial
aspirant had been a resident of the Philippines for six years and six months prior to the midterm polls.
In response, Poe's camp had said the senator returned to the country 11 years ago, in late 2004, following the death of her father, actor and
then opposition standard-bearer Fernando Poe Jr.
But according to the Commission on Elections' Precinct Finder, Senator Poe registered as a voter on August 31, 2006 at the Sta. Lucia
Elementary School in San Juan. She is a voter at Precinct 0349A.
Poe's citizenship was also earlier put in question, especially after it was revealed she has both a US and a Philippine passport.
The lawmaker however explained that she had already renounced her US citizenship even before she became chairperson of the Movie and
Television Review and Classification Board (MTRCB) in 2010. - JJ, GMA News
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