Can presidential candidate Grace Poe win her disqualification cases at the Philippine Supreme Court? It’s quite possible.
But if she does win and allowed to run, the next battleground will move to another area. Not in another court of justice but in the court of the people.
The battle will shift to her abandonment of our country when she moved to the United States and chose to be a US citizen instead.
Poe moved to America and seemed to have decided to live there permanently. Why do I say this? Because she applied for and was granted US citizenship and probably wished to live there happily ever after. Later she acquired dual citizenship in the US and the Philippines to have the best of both worlds.
But her circumstances changed. She was appointed to head the Philippines’ censors board (MTRCB) and was forced to give up her US citizenship.
In short, she renounced her Philippine citizenship to acquire US citizenship and lived in the US as an American citizen, no longer a Filipino citizen. Then when it was the convenient thing to do, she renounced her US citizenship and reacquired Filipino citizenship which she had once renounced (before anyone is granted US citizenship, he or she is obliged to swear allegiance only to the United States and no other nation).
It’s a clear case of abandoning what you considered your home country for another country and swore allegiance to that other country. And then you changed allegiance again to your former country because it was in your personal interest to do so.
(Disclosure: I lived in the United States for 28 years. But I never traded my Filipino citizenship for a US citizenship. Filipino is my only citizenship since birth.)
Some commentators say many Filipinos go abroad and it’s no big deal. That Poe is just one of those who tried their luck overseas.
That’s true. Acquiring citizenship in another country is not an issue for most people. Because, unlike Grace Poe, they’re not running for the highest office in the land. That’s the key here.
Abandoning your country in the past and later wanting to become its president is a serious matter. You cannot intend to leave your country “for good” (this is assumed when you applied to be a US citizen) and then change your mind and want to be its president.
This abandonment issue has been gaining traction lately. It was first enunciated by former Rep. Edcel Lagman in an op-ed piece in another newspaper.
Then Ceres Doyo, a columnist whose empathy for the underprivileged is obvious, picked it up, the same day I wrote about it.
Since then influential commentators have raised the abandonment issue, including the intrepid Ramon Tulfo (who, for transparency’s sake, is pushing the candidacy of another candidate) and more recently the thoughtful Randy David. Among politicians, the underappreciated Leni Robredo, Mar Roxas’ vice presidential teammate, thinks abandonment of country is a moral issue.
It’s ironic, isn’t it. Poe was an abandoned child. In turn she, too, abandoned her home country, which she now wants to claim back in self-interest.
If Poe is allowed to continue her candidacy, the issue of her once abandoning the Philippines and pledging loyalty to the United States should be on top of voters’ concerns. Do we want a former US citizen as our president, and whose husband and children are American citizens?
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