By Benjamin Pulta | Philippine News Agency
Government lawyers on Friday formally asked the court to cancel the birth certificate of suspended Bamban, Tarlac Mayor Alice Guo.
In a message to reporters, Solicitor General Menardo Guevarra said the petition filed before the Tarlac Regional Trial Court (RTC) for the cancellation of the certificate of live birth of Alice Leal Guo is based on her “failure to comply with the legal requirements for late registration”.
“This will lay the groundwork for the subsequent filing of a petition for quo warranto,” Guevarra said.
Quo warranto is a legal action to resolve a dispute over whether a person has the legal right to hold public office.
“If her birth certificate is canceled, she will lose her most important defense evidence about her identity,” Guevarra said.
He added, however, that Guo’s alleged foreign citizenship would be addressed separately in the quo warranto petition.
“The petition for cancellation is not a precondition for the filing of the quo warranto petition, which can stand alone on the basis of existing evidence. but the two petitions complement each other,” he said.
According to Guevarra, Guo did not submit the required supporting documents for late registration, as well as “glaring inconsistencies” between the entries in her certificate of birth and information contained in other public records.
He added that the local civil registrar who registered the suspended mayor’s certificate of birth may be held administratively liable for violation of existing PSA/NSO (National Statistics Office) mandatory rules on late registration.
Meanwhile Guo failed to appear before the Department of Justice preliminary investigation in connection with charges of qualified trafficking.
Guo’s lawyers led by Alex Avisado sought more time to answer the charges, and maintained that evidence in the case was “insufficient.”
The next hearing was set for July 22.