Senator Grace Poe-Llamanzares is determined to run for re-election, obviously buoyed by a recent survey placing her at number one among the senatorial contenders. If Poe does make it to first place, she will be duplicating what she did in the 2013 senatorial polls.

There is something about placing first in a Senate derby that makes the first placer cast a moist eye for the presidency or the vice presidency.

Four first-placer senators of recent vintage believed they were popular enough to win election as vice president — Noli de Castro, Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo, Loren Legarda and Manuel “Mar” Roxas II.

De Castro managed to become vice president, but only after surviving tough opposition from the Legarda camp.

Arroyo also became vice president. She succeeded to the presidency because of a controversial measure taken by then Supreme Court (SC) Chief Justice Hilario Davide Jr. That measure cast doubt on the validity of her assumption to the presidency.

In 2004, Arroyo was elected president in her own right, but her victory over Philippine box office king Fernando Poe Jr. was tainted by her role in the infamous “Hello, Garci” scandal involving her favored commissioner of the Commission on Elections. That scandal will always cast doubt on the legitimacy of Arroyo’s election to the presidency.

Roxas also thought that he was popular enough to be vice president and even President. Despite his defeat in the 2004 vice-presidential election as a candidate of the now hated Liberal Party of ex-President Benigno Aquino III, Roxas ran again under the LP banner in 2016, but as president. He lost miserably to President Rodrigo Duterte.

Another topnotcher senator who also thought she was popular enough to run for president is Grace Poe-Llamanzares. After winning first place in the 2013 senatorial derby, Poe and her newly-found supporters and political allies had their eyes fixed on the presidency in 2016. Like Roxas, Poe lost to President Duterte.

A political opportunist from the very start, Poe pretended to be a natural-born citizen of the Philippines. Her misrepresentation was finally exposed to the public when a well-meaning citizen questioned her claim to natural-born citizenship before the Senate Electoral Tribunal (SET).

Under the Constitution, a foundling cannot be considered a natural-born citizen because the Charter reckons that from one’s actual paternal or maternal bloodline. A foundling has no traceable bloodline.

The Constitution also mandates that a natural-born Filipino citizen is one who has not done any act to obtain and perfect his Philippine citizenship.

Philippine jurisprudence indicates that adoption by a Filipino parent does not automatically confer Philippine citizenship, much less natural-born Philippine citizenship on an adopted child.

In addition, the Philippines is not a signatory to any international convention which allows vesting the citizenship of the adopting parent on the adopted child.

Poe’s documentation reveals that she was a foundling abandoned by unidentified parents at a Catholic church in Jaro, Iloilo sometime in 1968. The circumstances of her birth are unknown, but she was quickly adopted by Philippine cinema giant Fernando Poe Jr. and his wife, film actress Susan Roces. These circumstances are enough to support the view that Poe is not a natural-born Filipino citizen.

In her early adult life, Poe migrated to the United States and there became a naturalized citizen of the USA after renouncing her alleged Philippine citizenship. She found gainful employment there, and in 1991 she married an American, a certain Teodoro Llamanzares.

Poe returned to the Philippines, renounced her American citizenship, reacquired her Philippine citizenship, and joined the Aquino III government as its censor’s chief.In 2013, Poe ran for the Senate and faced intense questioning from her critics regarding her citizenship.

The foregoing circumstances are also enough indications that Poe is not a natural-born citizen of the Philippines.

After the SET ruled in favor of Poe, the case reached the SC where seven justices took the view that Poe meets the citizenship requirement imposed by the Constitution on senators because of Poe’s physical features, and because according the solicitor general, Poe has a 98 percent statistical chance of being a natural-born Filipino citizen. Eight justices voted otherwise.

The legal reasoning of the seven justices has no support in the Constitution, and seven votes do not make the ruling a binding legal doctrine. This means Poe’s claim to being a natural-born citizen of the Philippines does not stand on firm legal ground. If Poe is re-elected this year, her citizenship may be questioned by the 13th placer in the Senate derby.