Losing at SC could save Poe more serious troubles

As the Supreme Court prepares to rule on Sen. Grace Poe Llamanzares’s constitutional eligibility to run for president, after having been disqualified by the Commission on Elections for misrepresenting herself as a natural-born citizen and a resident of the country for over 10 years prior to the May 9 elections, one cannot help but wonder whether she might not, in fact, have an easier time if she was mercifully shut down, and spared of so much more and bigger troubles.

As far as the Constitution is concerned, her ineligibility to run springs purely from the “circumstances” of her birth and domicile, not from any fatal character flaws or any hidden and unpunished crimes. She came into the world, through no fault of her own, a foundling of no known parentage, abandoned inside the parish church in Jaro, Iloilo on Sept. 3, 1968: she had the right to a nationality, but not to an instant citizenship—because of our jus sanguinis (right of blood) doctrine, she cannot claim to be natural-born, and the 1935 Constitution, which was in force in 1968, does not consider her a citizen.