Foundling 2

Grace Poe's rivals have one last chance to torpedo her presidential ambitions and that is to question her citizenship. I've written about this topic before but as the days pass and the elections draw ever closer, they're gonna ramp this issue up. I'll do my best to simplify the issue.

Grace Poe is a foundling. The law is silent when it comes to foundlings whose parents are completely unknown. Since the citizenship of her parents cannot be determined, we cannot say she is a Filipino citizen since we follow the principle of blood ties, not the principle of place of birth.

The answer would have to come from International Law. The Philippines, through the doctrine of incorporation, considers the generally accepted principles of International Law as part of the law of the land. The UN Convention on the Reduction of Statelessness provides the answer and fills in the gaps of our laws. Said convention states that the foundling is presumed to have been born to parents who are citizens of the state where he or she was found. Grace Poe would thus be considered a Filipino citizen.

So no problem, right? Yes, problem. One of the qualifications for President is that one must be a natural born Filipino citizen. There are two kinds of Filipinos: those who are natural born and those who are naturalized. The constitution tells us who is a Filipino by birth but it says nothing of foundlings. The big question is if the list of people who are considered natural born, as stated in the constitution, is exclusive.

It's a tricky question, no doubt. An argument can be made that the list of those who are natural born Filipinos is exclusive and allowing International Law to modify this would be allowing foreign law to amend our constitution, as it were. On the other hand, our hypothetical foundling, whose parents are unknown, has no say in the matter. A foundling didn't commit any positive act to become a Filipino but was just born that way. So somebody else naturalized Poe for her? I think the former argument is more persuasive legally but law often gives way to the fickle temperament of the people who may become sympathetic to an "injustice" against her. If there's one thing I've learned in all my years living in this country, it's that politics trump law all the time.

Fortunately, the solution is quite simple and I offer this solution for Grace Poe free of charge since I'm such a nice guy and I hate Mar. Find the parents. No really, put up a big cash bounty to find Poe's real parents or anyone closely related to them. A DNA test here and some paperwork there, and voila! Problem solved and no need for courtroom time-wasters. You can also milk it for some political mileage. It has potential to make for a nifty drama. Imagine the apologetic parents and Poe's "tearful reunion". It's a made to order TV drama for the emotional Filipino masses. 

It's perfect!

Foundling

There's a joke here in the Philippines: if you ever want to learn about your family history, just run for office. Your opponents will dig all that up for you free of charge!

Philippine elections are about name recall. Binay, Binay, Binay, Binay... Grace? Grace Poe is the Filipina politician second to Binay in the polls so you know what that means. She must be destroyed and step one of that process is to examine her qualifications for a potential presidential run.

The issue is citizenship. However, I'm not interested about her citizenship in the later years of her life and today. I'm more interested in the theories swirling about, on whether or not she can be considered a natural-born Filipino citizen.

Grace Poe was a foundling left inside a church as a baby. As far as origin stories go, her life seems tailor-made for the Philippine audience but I digress. Her biological parents are unknown so there's this argument that we cannot consider her as a natural-born Filipino. The Philippines follows the principle of jus sanguinis, that is, that nationality is determined by blood. Since we have no idea who her parents are, we can't say with absolute confidence that they were Filipinos. There is a possibility, no matter how ridiculously improbable and outlandish, that both her biological parents were foreigners who just happened to be in the Philippines and were too poor to raise a child and so left the very Filipino-looking Grace Poe in a church. Accepting this possibility, Grace Poe could have no Filipino blood in her, couldn't be a Filipino by birth and is thus unqualified to run for President.

The question I find interesting is: What is the nationality of a foundling when the parents are unknown? The law seems to have a blind spot in that in all the ways to acquire Philippine citizenship, it's mum on foundlings; babies appearing out of nowhere. It would be nice to say that we should just presume the foundling is Filipino but from where will we base this presumption?

I'm sure some foreign jurisprudence has already answered this somewhere. For me, the foundling's nationality should be the place where he/she was found. It makes sense although its jus soli. I'm sure Philippine Law can be stretched to make an exception. Our laws have this obsession with children after all, always looking out for their best interests and what not. Parens patriae? The government should just grant foundlings citizenship then. It is rather cruel not to allow abandoned children in this circumstance to have a country to call home.

The "brilliant" legal minds up north sure love to split hairs.

Part 2