"x x x.
With the ruling of the majority today, a presidential candidate who is deemed a natural-born Filipino citizen by less than a majority of this Court, deemed not a natural-born Filipino citizen by five Justices, and with no opinion from three Justices, can now run for President of the Philippines even after having been unanimously found by the Commission on Elections En Banc (COMELEC) to be not a natural-born Filipino citizen. What is clear and undeniable is that there is no majority of this Court that holds that petitioner Mary Grace Natividad S. Poe Llamanzares (petitioner) is a natural-born Filipino citizen. This ruling of the majority will lead to absurd results, making a mockery of our national elections by allowing a presidential candidate with uncertain citizenship status to be potentially elected to the Office of the President, an office expressly reserved by the Constitution exclusively for natural-born Filipino citizens.
It means that the majority of this Court wants to resolve the citizenship status of petitioner after the elections, and only if petitioner wins the elections, despite petitioner having already presented before the COMELEC all the evidence she wanted to present to prove her citizenship status. This will make a mockery of our election process if petitioner wins the elections but is later disqualified by this Court for not possessing a basic qualification for the Office of the President -that of being a natural-born Filipino citizen. Those who voted for petitioner would have utterly wasted their votes. This is not how the natural-born citizenship qualification for elective office mandated by the Constitution should be applied by the highest court of the land.
x x x.
There is no dispute that petitioner is a Filipino citizen, as she publicly claims to be. However, she has failed to prove that she is a natural-born Filipino citizen and a resident of the Philippines for at least ten years immediately preceding the 9 May 2016 elections. Petitioner is not eligible to run for President of the Republic of the Philippines for lack of the essential requirements of citizenship and residency under Section 2, Article VII of the 1987 Constitution.1 Petitioner's certificate of candidacy (COC), wherein she stated that she is qualified for the position of President, contains false material representations, and thus, must be cancelled. Petitioner, not being a natural-born Filipino citizen, is also a nuisance candidate whose COC can motu proprio be cancelled by the COMELEC under Section 69 of the Omnibus Election Code.
x x x."
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