MANILA, Philippines – The Office of the Solicitor General (OSG) has filed a petition with a local Tarlac court seeking to cancel Bamban, Tarlac Mayor Alice Guo’s birth certificate.
Solicitor General Menardo Guevarra, the government’s primary legal counsel, said they have filed a petition to cancel Guo’s certificate of live birth with the Tarlac City Regional Trial Court on Friday, July 5.
“If her birth certificate is canceled, she will lose her most important defense evidence about her identity,” Guevarra told reporters.
Guo’s foreign citizenship cannot be proven in the initial petition, but can be ascertained in the upcoming quo warranto petition. A quo warranto challenges an individual’s authority over a particular post. If the quo warranto succeeds, she would be stripped of Filipino citizenship, which is a prerequisite to holding public office.
Guevarra said the mayor failed to be eligible for late registration because of the following:
- She did not submit the required supporting documents
- Although she was already 19 years old at the time, it was her alleged father who belatedly registered her birth certificate
- Glaring inconsistencies between the entries in her certificate of birth and information contained in other public records
- The local civil registrar registered her certificate of birth in violation of existing PSA/NSO (Philippine Statistics Authority/ National Statistics Office) mandatory rules on late registration
In the event that the petition for cancellation of birth certificate is denied, Guevarra said it would not affect the quo warranto petition because the latter petition is supported by “preponderant independent evidence” or stronger evidence.
“It’s [quo warranto] not dependent on the outcome of the cancellation petition,” Guevarra said.
Later, if Guo is proven to be a foreigner who stayed in the Philippines through illegal means, she could be deported. That rule is applicable only to foreigners who have no pending complaints or cases in the country. If charged in court, Guo cannot leave the country, and if convicted, she would have to serve her sentence in the Philippines before she can be deported.
Guo currently faces a non-bailable qualified trafficking complaint at the Department of Justice. If the prosecutors find enough basis to pursue the case and charge her and fellow respondents for qualified trafficking, a judge will decide if warrants of arrest will be issued.
The move to cancel Guo’s birth certificate came from the Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA), which filed the request with the OSG. The PSA explained that they pushed for the cancellation because of the “irregularity of the process” of how Guo obtained her certificate.
Late filing of birth certificate is not anomalous. Guo’s only supporting document in the filing of her birth certificate was a “negative certificate,” which was proof that she has no birth certificate in any of the government’s records. But what was irregular was her birth certificate being issued even before Guo secured her negative certificate.
Who’s the real Alice Guo?
The Bamban mayor is currently in hot water due to her alleged ties with an illegal POGO raided in her town and for the allegations and doubts about her nationality. Her nationality was first questioned during Senate hearings, where opposition Senator Risa Hontiveros asked whether Guo was an “asset” planted by China to infiltrate local politics. The mayor also claimed in one of the public hearings that she couldn’t remember basic details about her life.
The National Bureau of Investigation (NBI) recently confirmed that the fingerprints of Guo and Guo Hua Ping had matched. Guo, the mayor, is suspected of actually being Guo Hua Ping. This is evidence against the local official, which could be used to prove that she may be Chinese and not Filipino.
There’s also another woman named Alice Leal Guo, born in Tarlac too on July 12, 1986, but different from the mayor. During a Senate hearing on June 26, Hontiveros showed the NBI clearance of the woman who shares the same personal information with the mayor.
What’s more shady, according to the opposition senator, is that this other Guo applied for her NBI clearance in 2005 “just a few days before” the Bamban mayor filed for late registration of birth. – Rappler.com