By Roman Mosqueda
This constitutional issue is before the Supreme Court for final decision on petitions for certiorari filed by Senator Grace Poe against the Commission on Election’s en banc decision.
Article VII, Section 2 of the Philippine 1987 Constitution states the 10-year residence requirement as follows: “No person may be elected President or Vice President unless he is … a resident of the Philippines for at least ten years immediately preceding such election.”
Thus, the critical period of residency for Poe is from May 9, 2006 to May 9, 2016—the 10 years immediately preceding the May 9, 2016 national elections.
Although the United States Constitution was not extended to the Philippines through the Treaty of Paris, deliberations on the 1934 Philippine Constitutional Commission show that the eligibility requirements for president were patterned after the US Constitution. Such eligibility requirement on residence was merely carried over to the 1973 and 1987 Philippine Constitutions.
From the 1928 case of Nuval vs. Guray, the 1934 case of Lorena vs. Tenco, the 1954 case of Faypen v. Quirino to the 1995 case of Imelda R. Marcos vs. Comelec et al., the Philippine Supreme Court has equated election “residence” to domicile.
To successfully effect a change of domicile, one must demonstrate: (1) an actual removal or an actual change of domicile; (2) a bona fide intention of abandoning the former place of residence and establishing a new one; and (3) acts which correspond with the said purpose.
On the other hand, domicile is defined as residence—that is, a person’s principal, actual dwelling place, by US immigration laws and regulations. Whether a citizen at birth or by naturalization, a US citizen is not required to be a domiciliary or resident of the United States to retain US citizenship.
Grace Poe was adopted by Ronald Allan Kelly Poe and actress Susan Roces in 1973. She attended elementary school at Saint Paul College before enrolling at Assumption College in San Lorenzo for high school.
She then studied at the University of the Philippines in Diliman, Quezon City, majoring in development studies for two years; and then transferred to Boston College in Massachussets where she finished a degree in political science in 1991.
On July 27, 1991, she married dual citizen Teodoro Misael Llamanzares in the Philippines at age 22. She returned to the United States and lived a quiet life in Fairfax, Virginia, but returned to the Philippines to deliver her first born, Brian, on April 16, 1992, her second born, Hanna in 1998, and her youngest, Nikka, in 2004.
She became a naturalized US citizen on Oct. 18, 2001, but after the death of her father on Dec. 14, 2004, she and her family returned to the Philippines for good on April 8, 2005, to be with her widowed mother.
On July 7, 2006, she applied for dual citizenship under Republic Act 9225, and her Philippine citizenship was restored as well as those of her three children on July 18, 2006.
She renounced her US citizenship before a Philippine notary on Oct. 6, 2010, and before a US Consul in Manila on July 12, 2011. Her loss of US citizenship was approved on Dec. 9, 2011.
She was appointed and served as chairperson of the Movie and Television Review and Classification Board from Oct. 10, 2010 to Oct. 2, 2012, when she resigned to run for senator. Running as an independent candidate, she won first place in the 2013 Senate elections with over 20 million votes.
There is no dispute that her domicile of origin under Philippine election law is the Philippines. And although she became a lawful permanent resident of the United States and then a naturalized US citizen, she could and did retain her domicile of origin in the Philippines for election law purposes, so long as her US residence (not domicile) was the permanent one for US immigration law purposes. She merely gained a new address in Virginia after her marriage.
Granting arguendo that she had abandoned her Philippine domicile of origin when she became a lawful permanent resident and then a naturalized US citizen, she could and did change domicile from the United States to the Philippines on April 8, 2005, when she and her family returned to the Philippines for good.
Her re-establishment of Philippine domicile by choice on April 8, 2005 sufficiently complies with the 10-year residence requirement from May 9, 2006 to May 9, 2016.
(Mosqueda, a lawyer by profession, is a dual citizen of the Philippines and the US. He has published numerous articles on constitutional law, international law, and immigration law, among others.)
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