Somewhere between threatening to drag fellow senators out of the chamber by the collar and apologizing a few days later, Senator Erwin Tulfo stumbled into one of those moments that satire could never improve upon.
Last week, Tulfo declared that senators conducting what he considered unauthorized Blue Ribbon hearings, without his imprimatur as committee chair under the Win Gatchalian bloc, would be arrested.
If the Senate security refused, Tulfo raged that he’d do it himself. A few days later, after the outrage had spread beyond the Senate walls, DAILY TRIBUNE described the senator’s turnaround with the headline: “Tulfo eats crow, says sorry.”
The old British expression refers to the unpleasant act of admitting one was wrong.
Crow, apparently, is not a delicacy. Politicians generally spend entire careers finding ways not to eat it. Yet the more interesting development was not the crow but the collar.
For a brief moment, the man who wanted to do the “kukwelyuhan” became the one being held to account by public opinion. That irony deserves attention because Tulfo’s claim to the Blue Ribbon Committee chairmanship is not merely a dispute over Senate procedure.
The committee is Congress’ premier investigative body. It summons witnesses, compels testimony and demands explanations from public officials whose actions have raised questions. Which makes Tulfo’s situation particularly interesting.
Before he became a senator, his appointment as DSWD secretary ran into trouble before the Commission on Appointments (CA). The issue was not competence; it was citizenship. Article VI, Section 3 of the Constitution leaves little room for ambiguity on the natural-born requirement.
Still, the law is not as straightforward as many imagine.
A natural-born Filipino who later acquires foreign citizenship may reacquire Philippine citizenship under Republic Act 9225, and the Supreme Court has repeatedly ruled that natural-born status may be restored through that process.
The mere fact that Tulfo became an American citizen would not, by itself, disqualify him from the Senate.
The questions raised before the CA involved the details of when American citizenship was acquired, when it was renounced, and the documents supporting those actions and the circumstances surrounding Tulfo’s admitted service in the United States Army from 1988 to 1992.
Members sought clarification and supporting documents. The questions persisted but confirmation never came.
Then came the curious appearance of a name that seemed to belong in another person’s biography: Erich, or Erick, Sylvester Tulfo. Documents and allegations circulated suggesting that American passport and citizenship records existed under that name and that the identity was somehow connected to the man Filipinos know as Erwin Tulfo.
The controversy gained traction because it did not emerge in a vacuum. Tulfo had already acknowledged living in the United States as an undocumented immigrant, acquiring American citizenship and later renouncing it.
Who was Erich Sylvester Tulfo? A misunderstanding magnified by politics? Or something more? The public never received a definitive answer.
To be clear, no Philippine court has found Tulfo guilty of identity fraud. No American court has publicly declared that he obtained citizenship illegally. Allegations are not proof. Yet neither were the questions conclusively put to rest.
A quo warranto petition before the Senate Electoral Tribunal appeared to offer a thorough airing of the matter. Instead, it was dismissed for insufficiency in form.
Perhaps there are perfectly reasonable explanations for every issue raised over the years. If so, nobody should welcome transparency more enthusiastically than the man who seeks to wield the Senate’s most powerful investigative gavel — Erwin Tulfo.
The Blue Ribbon Committee operates on a simple principle: Public officials should answer legitimate questions. That standard applies not only to those summoned before the committee. It applies equally to the man who presides over it.
And that is why the ghost of Erich Sylvester continues to hover. Not because anything has been proven, but because so much remains unexplained.