The Commission on Appointments (CA) rejected the appointment of Perfecto Yasay Jr. as Foreign Affairs secretary after he failed to clarify questions about his citizenship, Wednesday.
Senator Panfilo Lacson, chairman of the CA Committee on Foreign Relations, said the decision to reject the appointment of Yasay was unanimous among the CA's 15 members.
“The Commission has gone over the qualification and issues besetting the appointee. After careful deliberations of the foregoing circumstances, and upon a unanimous vote of 15 of its members present in a caucus held this morning, this representation as chairman of the Committee on Foreign Affairs, hereby moves to reject the ad interim appointment of Atty. Perfecto Rivas Yasay, Jr. as Secretary of Foreign Affairs.,” Lacson said.
Until Wednesday, Yasay continued to battle CA members over his citizenship. He received a scolding from CA members and Occidental Mindoro Rep. Josephine Ramirez Sato after contradicting himself about his American citizenship and for accusing critics of his appointment as part of a de-estabilization effort.
Sato said she had noted Yasay's inconsistencies in "his public admission that he once carried an American passport, which he said he returned with his naturalization certificate.”
“It pains me, Mr. Chairman, that anything and everything that cannot be answered could be attributed to destabilization. The actuations of the secretary, at the very least, are contemptuous of this commission,” Sato said during a hearing earlier in the day.
Liberal Party president Senator Francis "Kiko" Pangilinan, another CA member, said that “the de-estabilization issue being raised by Secretary Yasay is a poor attempt at diverting the issue from the real issue of his unfitness to assume the office."
"He lied without compunction before the Commission on Appointments on the matter of his having acquired American citizenship and thought he could take the CA members for fools. Clearly the CA members found this offensive and completely unacceptable," Pangilinan said.
The DFA chief reiterated earlier that he is "not a US citizen" but also said that he took his oath as a US citizen and received a certificate of naturalization and US passport.
"Under this B1, B2 visas, I entered and re-entered the United States repeatedly as a Filipino," he said.
"When I denied being issued a US passport before this commission, I had particularly in mind the allegations made by Rappler that I was issued one in 2006, which I continue to deny for lack of personal knowledge. This was alluded to by Congresswoman Josephine Sato in her questions to me," Yasay added.
Later on, Yasay apologized to the CA "for having inadvertently misled the commission on this matter."
"It has never been my intention to deceive this commission about my citizenship status," the DFA chief explained.
"Simply put, Mister Chairman, honorable members of the commission, I did not lose my status as a Filipino for the reason that I did not validly acquire US citizenship albeit that I took my oath as a US citizen, was issued a certificate of naturalization and given a US passport."
"Consequently, there was no need for me to reacquire Philippine citizenship under Republic Act 9225," Yasay said, referring to the Citizenship Retention and Reacquisition Act of 2003.
The law declares that natural-born citizens of the Philippines who become citizens of another country shall be deemed not to have lost their Philippine citizenship.
Another proof of his being a Filipino, according to Yasay, was the Commission on Elections' approval of his candidacy as senator in the 2001 and 2004 polls and in 2010 as vice presidential candidate.
Source: InterAksyon
Images: ABS-CBN | Rappler
Share It To Your Friends!
