It is now part of the laws of the land

Under our law, the decisions of the Supreme Court shall form part of the law of the land; such power vested must be exercised wisely and with caution. In the recent Supreme Court decision with regard to the issues surrounding Sen. Grace Poe’s qualification as President, the Supreme Court ruled on the issues regarding the COMELEC’s Jurisdiction, Poe’s Parents, Foundlings as natural born citizens, etc.

The focus of this writing shall focus on Poe’s citizenship whether her parents are Filipinos and foundlings are natural-born citizens.

On the first issue, the Supreme Court ruled according to the high probability of Poe being born by Filipino parents and her typical Filipino features. To support this, the court relied on the statistics offered by the Solicitor General.

I find this a little disturbing, probability contain doubts and should not be included in a conclusion, even with the 99% chance that a child born in our country is a Filipino, there still can be a small possibility that a foreigner can be born in the Philippines.

On the second issue whether foundlings are natural-born citizen, the court ruled that as a class foundlings are natural born citizens because of the our law is silent and does not condemn foundlings and ruled that there is no intention to exclude foundlings as citizens, the court also discussed about the provision of our constitution that natural-born citizens are the ones who does not perform an act, that such act must be performed personally and not by the authorities.

Still don’t agree, while it is true that when there is ambiguity it should be interpreted according to legislative intent. For me, the law is clear and there is no need for a different interpretation. The constitution clearly states that “Section 2. Natural-born citizens are those who are citizens of the Philippines from birth without having to perform any act to acquire or perfect their Philippine citizenship.” The law says about “any act” which is any person can interpret that any act performed shall make a person naturalized. It does not talk whether who shall perform the said act.

Even with questioned ruling, the law is also clear that this will be part of the law of the land and all we can do is to abide whether agreeable or not. We must move on until the Supreme Court Over turns its own decision.