Manila court: Alice Guo ‘a Chinese national’
Nearly a year after she was dismissed from office for her involvement in illegal Philippine offshore gaming operators (Pogos), former Bamban, Tarlac Mayor Alice Leal Guo has been disqualified from holding a government post after a Manila court declared her “undoubtedly a Chinese citizen.”
The case of Guo, which prompted a congressional investigation that ran months as it also raised questions about the rise of Pogos during the past administration, exposed systemic irregularities that the court also acknowledged in its ruling.
Here is a foreign national, it said, who was allowed to stay in the Philippines and managed to circumvent the law by posing as a Filipino to meet the citizenship requirement for entering public service.
“Such a situation posed a risk to national security which is far more than real,” the court said.
Giving full weight and credence to the “infallible science of fingerprint examination,” Presiding Judge Liwliwa Hidalgo-Bucu of the Manila Regional Trial Court Branch 34 granted the quo warranto petition filed by the Office of the Solicitor General (OSG) against Guo after she and Chinese national Guo Hua Ping were proven to be the same person.
“Such being the case, respondent Guo Hua Ping a.k.a. Alice Leal Guo is nothing more but a usurper of the Office of the Mayor of Bamban, Tarlac,” the judge said in the 67-page decision dated June 27.
‘Fingerprint evidence’
According to the court, Guo is not only disqualified from occupying the post but also for running for Bamban mayor in the first place, which makes her proclamation as the winner in the 2022 elections void.
A quo warranto petition is a legal action against a person who “usurps, intrudes into, or unlawfully holds or exercises a public office, position or franchise.”
In assessing the evidence presented against Guo, the court noted that “this is probably the first time that fingerprint evidence was admitted to determine the identity of a person and establish a link with the purported identity of another person and found them to be one and the same through their fingerprints.”
It cited the testimony of Dr. Alfredo Kahanding, chief of the National Bureau of Investigation dactyloscopy division, who examined the fingerprints of Guo and Guo Hua Ping.
Kahanding used a specimen from the NBI masterfile of Guo Hua Ping’s alien fingerprint card in 2006 and compared it with the biometrics of Guo in a transaction dated March 2021.
Based on the results released on June 27, 2024, their fingerprints were identical.
Another set of fingerprints was taken from Guo after she was repatriated to the Philippines following her arrest in Indonesia on Sept. 6, 2024.
This time, using the three specimens, Kahanding said that all right middle fingers bore 15 identical ridge characteristics while the right index fingers showed 16 identical ridge characteristics.
No records of parents
“Having been qualified as an expert witness, his opinion on the matter, as stated in his dactylography report dated Oct. 29, 2024, deserves full weight and credence,” the court said.
The Manila court pointed out further that in the 1933 case of People v. Medina, the Supreme Court admitted the fingerprint evidence in which the expert witness found 10 points of agreement between the two impressions in question.
“It can thus be safely concluded that Guo Hua Ping, a Chinese national, assumed the identity of one Alice Leal Guo, representing herself as a Filipino citizen. Simply [put], Guo Hua Ping is Alice Leal Guo,” the court said.
At the same time, it noted that Guo’s birth registration was made only on Nov. 17, 2005, when she was already 19.
“The irony of the situation is the fact that Alice Leal Guo’s purported parents, Angelito Guo and Amelia Leal, have no existing records of birth, marriage, or even death found in the database of the [Philippine Statistics Authority] or PSA,” it said.
It further explained that a certificate of live birth and a passport are not conclusive proof of Filipino citizenship.
Retroactive disqualification
“After having conclusively established that Alice Leal Guo is also Guo Hua Ping, a Chinese national, she is certainly disqualified to run for any government position. Her disqualification retroacts from the time she filed her certificate of candidacy for mayor. As such, she should not have been allowed in the first place to run for the said position,” the court said.
While it acknowledged that Guo’s term as Bamban mayor is set to expire today, June 30, and the quo warranto petition may be considered moot following her dismissal by the Office of the Ombudsman in August 2024, it stressed that her case is “one of a kind” and raises issues about her lack of Filipino citizenship as a ground for disqualification to hold public office, warranting a resolution.
The court added that the legal issues are novel, requiring “the formulation of controlling jurisprudence that will guide the bench, the bar, and the public.”
Inconsistent testimonies
Guo became a topic of national interest in May last year when it was revealed in a Senate investigation that she was an incorporator of Zun Yuan Technology Inc., a Pogo in Bamban town, which was raided over reports of alleged human trafficking and serious illegal detention.
But aside from her alleged involvement in Pogos, questions about her nationality were also raised by Sen. Risa Hontiveros who noted there were no hospital records of Guo’s birth in the Philippines and her birth was registered late. Her testimonies related to her education, her biological mother, and her siblings also showed inconsistencies.
In June 2024, Sen. Sherwin Gatchalian raised the possibility that Guo and a Chinese woman named Guo Hua Ping, who entered the Philippines on Jan. 12, 2003, at age 13, could be the same person, citing documents from the NBI and the Bureau of Immigration (BI).
The following month, Guo failed to attend other Senate hearings, leading to the issuance of an arrest warrant against her. It was later determined that she and her siblings had fled to Malaysia and then to Indonesia.
Chinese spies
In seeking to oust Guo, the OSG presented 11 witnesses, including representatives from PSA, BI, NBI, Commission on Elections, Board of Investment and Philippine Retirement Authority.
Speculation that the Bamban mayor is a Chinese spy was fanned by an Al Jazeera documentary that came out in September 2024 about She Zhijiang, a jailed Chinese businessman who is also a self-confessed spy. He claimed to have a dossier confirming the presence of Chinese spies, which included Guo’s Chinese name, “Guo Hua Ping.”
The same documentary revealed that his dossier listed Guo’s address in Fujian province, which turned out to be the local office of the Chinese Communist Party.
She further alleged that Guo requested money from him to help fund her 2022 campaign for the Bamban mayoralty, but he “really didn’t want to offend the government of the Philippines, so I didn’t give her any money.”
Guo is currently detained at the Pasig City Jail. She faces multiple charges, including 62 counts of money laundering and qualified trafficking.
Reached for comment on Sunday, Gatchalian lauded the court decision and urged the government to pursue the cases against her and also go after those who aided and protected her.
“Our government should not be used again by foreigners for their personal interest,” he said. —WITH REPORTS FROM TINA G. SANTOS AND INQUIRER RESEARCH
