David vs.
Agbay
G.R. No. 199113
: March 18, 2015
FACTS:
Petitioner immigrated
to Canada and was naturalized as a Canadian citizen. Petitioner and his wife
returned to the Philippines after retirement and purchased a beachfront lot in
Oriental Mindoro on which they built a home. The area where they constructed
their home, on the other hand, is public property and part of the salvage zone.
The DENR received a Miscellaneous Lease Application (MLA) from the petitioner
for the subject land. Petitioner stated in the application that he is a
Filipino citizen. Editha Agbay, a private respondent, objected to the
application, claiming that petitioner, a Canadian resident, is ineligible to
own property. She has lodged a criminal case against the petitioner under
Article 172 of the RPC for falsification of official records. Meanwhile, under
the terms of Republic Act No. 9225, petitioner regained his Filipino
citizenship. Petitioner's MLA was dismissed by the CENRO, which found that
petitioner's eventual re-acquisition of Philippine citizenship did not remedy
the flaw in his MLA, which was invalid ab initio. A complaint for falsification
of a public document was filed with the MTC, and an arrest warrant was issued. Since
the suspected and admitted offence with which petitioner was convicted occurred
before he reclaimed his Philippine citizenship, the MTC ruled that petitioner
was already a Canadian citizen at the time. The case was elevated to the RTC by
petitioner, who filed a petition for certiorari under Rule 65, claiming gross
misuse of discretion by the MTC. The appeal was turned down.
ISSUE:
If petitioner
may be charged with falsification for falsely identifying himself as a Filipino
in his Public Land Application, considering his eventual re-acquisition of
Filipino citizenship under R.A. 9225
RULING:
Since petitioner is a naturalized Canadian citizen prior to the
enactment of R.A. 9225, he falls into the first group of natural-born Filipinos
who lost Philippine citizenship due to naturalization in a foreign country, as
described in the first paragraph of Section 3. He was able to reclaim his
Philippine citizenship by taking the mandatory oath of allegiance, as the
current legislation requires dual citizenship. It is unnecessary to address the
decisions in Frivaldo and Altarejos on the retroactivity of such reacquisition
in deciding the citizenship of petitioner at the time of filing his MLA because
R.A. 9225 considers others in his group as having already lost Philippine
citizenship: those natural-born Filipinos who were foreign nationals after R.A.
9225 took effect, on the other hand, are not natural-born Filipinos. In other
words, Section 2 can be read in conjunction with Section 3, the second clause
of which clarifies that the policy that recognizes Filipinos who become foreign
nationals as not having lost their Philippine citizenship applies to all
situations after the new law takes effect. Petitioner claimed falsely in the
MLA, a public paper, that he was a Filipino citizen at the time of filing the
case, though he was still a Canadian citizen at the time. Naturalization in a
foreign country was one of the ways a natural-born citizen loses his Philippine
citizenship under CA 63, the governing statute at the time he was naturalized
as a Canadian citizen. While he re-acquired Philippine citizenship under R.A.
9225 six months later, the falsification was already a consummated act, the
said law having no retroactive effect insofar as his dual citizenship status is
concerned. The MTC therefore did not err in finding probable cause for
falsification of public document under Article 172, paragraph 1.
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