[Opinion] Is the Leader of the Pro-Duterte Senate Coup Really a Filipino Citizen?
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Senator Alan Peter Cayetano (Source: Department of Foreign Affairs/x.com)
Cayetano’s maneuver revived a question I first raised nearly a decade ago, in a March 17, 2017 opinion column for the Philippine Daily Inquirer: Is Alan Peter Cayetano really a Philippine citizen?
I stumbled onto the issue by accident. While browsing a Wikipedia list of notable individuals who had formally relinquished United States citizenship — names memorialized in the U.S. Federal Register — I noticed an entry that surprised me. Alongside Tina Turner and Jet Li was Alan Peter Schramm Cayetano, identified as a Philippine politician born in 1970 to Philippine Senator Renato Cayetano and Sandra Schramm, an American citizen from Michigan.
The entry stated that Cayetano had renounced his U.S. citizenship “in order to run for the Philippine House of Representatives in 1998 and to gain admission to the Philippine Bar.” The U.S. Federal Register recorded his formal relinquishment in 1999.
The same Federal Register list also included Grace Poe, who renounced her U.S. citizenship before her 2010 appointment as chair of the Movie and Television Review and Classification Board (MTRCB). She was later elected to the Senate in 2013.
The Cayetano entry highlighted a basic legal requirement: a Filipino holding U.S. citizenship must renounce that foreign citizenship to run for Philippine public office or join the Philippine Bar.
Telltale ACR Records
In 2007, former Pateros Mayor Jose Capco Jr. sought to disqualify Cayetano from running for the Philippine Senate. Capco presented official records from the Philippine Bureau of Immigration showing:
On March 18, 1976, Cayetano’s parents obtained an Alien Certificate of Registration (ACR) for him.
On January 23, 1985, Cayetano personally applied for and was issued a new ACR.
According to the BI's website, "US citizens wishing to stay in the Philippines for more than 59 days must register with the Bureau of Immigration (BI) by obtaining an Alien Certificate of Registration (ACR) I-Card. This card is essential for foreigners residing in the Philippines and is required for visa applications, renewals, and other official purposes.
Capco argued that these ACR records prove Cayetano was a U.S. citizen during the years he ran for and was elected to local office in Taguig (1992, 1995) and to Congress (1998), in violation of Section 3, Article VI of the Constitution, which states: “No person shall be a senator unless he is a natural-born citizen of the Philippines.”
Capco asserted that Cayetano was “in fact an American citizen” who had “willfully and expressly renounced his Filipino citizenship” through acts demonstrating allegiance to a foreign country.
If Cayetano relinquished his U.S. citizenship only in 1999, then he was still clearly a U.S. citizen when he ran for Taguig city councilor in 1992, vice mayor in 1995, and congressman in 1998.
These facts inevitably recall another politician: Alice Leal Guo, who was elected mayor of Bamban, Tarlac in 2022. After authorities linked her to Philippine offshore gaming operations (POGOs) and determined that she was not a Philippine citizen, she was removed from office in 2024 and later charged and convicted for criminal activities in 2025.
If both Alice Leal Guo and Alan Peter Cayetano were not Philippine citizens at the time of their election to public office, why were their outcomes so different?
COMELEC Ruling and the Missing Certificate
In response to my 2017 column questioning his citizenship, Cayetano cited a Commission on Elections (COMELEC) ruling issued “with finality” on April 19, 2007 declaring that he was a Filipino citizen.
Indeed, on May 8, 2007, GMA News reported:
“The Commission on Elections en banc has ruled with finality that Genuine Opposition senatorial bet Alan Peter Cayetano is a Filipino citizen, affirming last month's junking of a disqualification case against him. Comelec finally decided to put an end to the citizenship issue of Congressman Cayetano affirming the resolution of the second division, meaning he is a natural-born Filipino," Comelec Chairman Benjamin Abalos told reporters on Tuesday.”
The GMA news report added: “Capco had argued that Cayetano is ineligible to run in the May 14 polls since the opposition bet supposedly renounced his Filipino citizenship when he was granted an alien certificate of registration in 1976 and in 1985. Cayetano, however, was issued a certificate in 1999 recognizing him as a Filipino citizen. The opposition senatorial bet has denied having renounced his Filipino citizenship, noting that he holds a Philippine passport and is a registered voter.”
But the Comelec never produced this 1999 “certificate” recognizing Cayetano as a Filipino citizen. In fact, the only 1999 certificate of record is the US Federal Register showing Cayetano’s formal relinquishment of U.S. citizenship raising the question: did Cayetano present this 1999 document proving that he is no longer a US citizen to prove that he is therefore only a Philippine citizen?
The problem is that the Comelec is not a judicial body that can examine and review complex legal issues. Its members are appointed by the Philippine president under the 1987 Philippine Constitution and bestowed upon “extensive powers and responsibilities that encompass all aspects of the electoral process.”
An example of the political nature of the COMELEC was its recent ruling that Senator Rodante Marcoleta did not commit an election offense regarding his Statement of Contributions and Expenditures (SOCE) for the 2025 elections when he did not disclose that he received P 75 million pesos from 3 contractors because they were given to him while he was still a congressman before he formally announced his candidacy for senator.
If the Comelec was a judicial body, it would have recognized in 2007 that possessing a Philippine birth certificate with a Philippine passport were not legally sufficient to prove Philippine citizenship. Philippine citizenship law before 2003 was explicit. Under Commonwealth Act No. 63 enacted in 1935, acquisition or election of foreign citizenship results in the loss of Philippine citizenship.
Cayetano, born in 1970 to a Filipino father and an American mother, was unquestionably a dual citizen at birth. But individuals in that situation were required, upon reaching the age of majority, to elect one citizenship and reject the other.
The ACR applications prove that Cayetano elected U.S. citizenship. Under the law at the time, that election resulted in his loss of Philippine citizenship.
The Dual Citizenship Law
In 2003, Congress enacted Republic Act 9225, the Citizenship Retention and Reacquisition Act, allowing former Filipinos who lost their citizenship through foreign naturalization to formally reacquire Philippine citizenship through petition and oath.
The law is unequivocal: reacquisition requires a formal legal process.
In Labo v. COMELEC (1992), the Supreme Court ruled: “Philippine citizenship is not a cheap commodity that can be easily recovered after its renunciation. It may be restored only after a formal act of re-dedication.”
As Cayetano lost his Philippine citizenship by electing U.S. citizenship, then RA 9225 required him to apply for reacquisition and take the prescribed oath. There is no public record that he ever did.
The Yasay Precedent
In 2017, former Foreign Affairs Secretary Perfecto Yasay Jr. was denied confirmation by the Senate Commission on Appointments after questions arose over whether he had properly reacquired Philippine citizenship following his renunciation of his U.S. citizenship.
Yasay’s failure to comply with RA 9225’s formal requirements meant he could not legally claim Philippine citizenship.
A Philippine birth certificate alone was not enough.
Aside from Yasay, two Filipino Americans learned this lesson firsthand at the Philippine Consulate in San Francisco.
Rudy Asercion was born in Cavite in 1941 to an American father and a Filipino mother, as was Catalina P who was born in Subic Bay in 1954 also to an American father and a Filipino mother.
In her dual citizenship application, Catalina informed the Consulate that she had lived and studied in the Philippines until she graduated from college. She recalled that when she was 19, her father brought her to the Burau of Immigration (BI) to apply for an ACR card for her, as Cayetano’s parents had done for him.
Both Rudy and Catalina were denied dual citizenship and informed by the Philippine Consulate that they could not reacquire Philippine citizenship because they had never been Philippine citizens in the first place.
Catalina’s case was reviewed by the Department of Foreign Affairs (DFA) in Manila in 2017 after I requested reconsideration. The denial was affirmed.
The irony of ironies
By a strange quirk of fate, the Secretary of Foreign Affairs who affirmed the denial in 2017 was Alan Peter Cayetano, who was appointed by President Rodrigo Duterte to replace Yasay after he was disqualified for not being a Philippine citizen.
If Catalina and Rudy — both Philippine-born to Filipino mothers and American fathers — were never Philippine citizens because of their ACR status as U.S. citizens, how is Alan Peter Cayetano different?
And if he is not different, by what legal process did Cayetano reclaim Philippine citizenship? That question, first raised years ago, remains unanswered today.
If Cayetano lost his Philippine citizenship by electing U.S. citizenship, then RA 9225 required him to apply for reacquisition and take the prescribed oath. There is no public record that he ever did.
If Cayetano never reacquired Philippine citizenship and he has otherwise no other valid claim to Philippine citizenship, then the Philippine Solicitor-General is duty-bound to file a Quo Warranto petition in the Philippine Supreme Court to remove Cayetano from the Philippine Senate.
The Miriam-Webster dictionary defines this proceeding as a “special legal action used to challenge a person’s right to hold a public or corporate office…it requires the challenged party to prove they have the right to hold that position or exercise those powers.”
Final Irony
And there is yet a final irony to this story. When Cayetano was a senator in 2015, the senate voted on whether Sen. Grace Poe could run for president in the 2016 elections, Cayetano, who was supporting rival Rodrigo Duterte, voted no but the senate voted 6-5 in favor of Poe.
After the Senate vote, Sen. Cayetano blasted Sen. Poe for being “willing to bend the laws” in her desire to become president.
“Definitely, she has a desire to become a president. But for me, my friendly advice is balance your desire to be president on what might be its effect on the Constitution and the law,” Cayetano said. Wise words.
Rodel Rodis was born in the Philippines in 1951 and immigrated to the United States in 1971, where he taught Philippine History and Pilipino American History at San Francisco State University before becoming a naturalized American citizen and member of the California State Bar in 1980. He was the first Filipino American elected to public office in San Francisco, serving on the San Francisco Community College Board from 1991 to 2009. He applied for and was sworn in as a dual citizen at the Philippine Consulate in San Francisco in September 2003.)
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