TACLOBAN CITY—Vice Presidential candidate Francis Escudero on Sunday condemned what he called an attempt to sow confusion by floating the Arnado vs. Comelec case in which the Supreme Court disqualified a town mayor for using his US passport after renouncing his American citizenship.
Some people have been calling attention to that case following the case of presidential candidate Grace Poe before the Supreme Court, where she faces disqualification over the same case.
Escudero said the Arnado case may not be applied to Senator Poe, his running mate.
Escudero said Rommel Arnado, the mayor of Kauswagan, Lanao del Norte, used a US passport after his repatriation.
“He was repatriated from being a Filipino. He renounced his American citizenship but after doing this, he used his US passport,” Escudero told reporters at the Hotel Antonio Penthouse.
Arnado was disqualified from the 2013 elections for using his American passport after renouncing his US citizenship.
Escudero said that, since a disqualification case was filed against Poe, many had been saying that Poe used her passport after she renounced her US citizenship.
He said they had presented to the Comelec and the Supreme Court Poe’s passport, and that it had been proven that she did not use her US passport after renouncing her US citizenship.
Poe said if that was really the case, she would have been removed from the MTRCB.
Her counsel George Garcia said lest the public be misled, the recent Supreme Court decision in “Arnado vs. Comelec” was inapplicable to Poe’s case.
Garcia said Poe used her American passport before she renounced her American citizenship.
“Records would show that there was no use of the US passport after her renunciation of her US citizenship in October of 2010,” Garcia said.
He said the last time Poe used her US passport was in March of 2010 or several months before said renunciation.
He said this was confirmed by the entries on the US passport itself and the travel records from the Bureau of Immigration.
“The attempt to muddle the facts and circumvent the truth at this point has no other intention but to sow confusion among the Filipinos,” Garcia said.
“Let us all wait for the [high court’s] decision. It’s forthcoming anyway. Whatever it may be, we should bow to its wisdom. This, after all, is what we call the rule of law.”
