MANILA, Philippines — A Manila court has finally ruled on Alice Guo's citizenship, saying she is not Filipino and thus her Tarlac town mayorship must be annulled.

In addition, Guo has been suspected as a foreign spy as the court's decision is that she is “undoubtedly a Chinese citizen.”

In a 67-page ruling dated June 27, the Manila Regional Trial Court (RTC) Branch 34 found the erstwhile local executive is “nothing more but a usurper” of the Office of the Mayor of Bamban, Tarlac, since she was not only disqualified to hold the position but also from running for the post in the first place as only natural-born Filipinos can run for office under the Constitution.
The RTC cited that it did not matter if Guo was elected as mayor in 2022 since this does not cure her of being disqualified due to lack of Philippine citizenship, which it noted “was already existing at the time of the filing of her certificate of candidacy.

“It follows, therefore, that her proclamation was deemed void. Alice Guo is found disqualified from and is hereby adjudged guilty of usurping and exercising the Office of the Mayor of Bamban, Tarlac," Judge Liwliwa Hidalgo-Bucu penned in her ruling. Accordingly, she is hereby ousted and altogether excluded therefrom,” Manila RTC Branch 34 Judge Liwliwa Hidalgo-Bucu said in the ruling, which stemmed from the quo warranto petition filed by the Office of the Solicitor General.

Based on legalities, it is an exclusive power of the solicitor general to remove a public official who it deems holding a position unlawfully because he or she is seen as unqualified or ineligible.

The Manila RTC asserted that Guo is “undisputedly” a Chinese national named Guo Hua Ping, who was born of Chinese parents Guo Jian Zhong and Lin Wenyi, who are bith holders of Chinese passports.
The court also noted that there exists no birth, death and even marriage records of Guo’s purported alleged Filipino parents Angelito Guo and Amelia Leal.

Judge Hidalgo-Bucu likewise gave weight and credence to the expert testimony of Alfredo Kahanding, chief of the Dactyloscopy Division of the National Bureau of Investigation (NBI), that Guo matched fingerprints of Chinese citizen Guo Hua Ping, who arrived in the Philippines from Fujian, China in July 1999, with her parents Guo Jian Zhong and Lin Wenyi.

According to the NBI, Guo Hua Ping was only nine years old then and was given an investor’s visa as the minor dependent of her parents who were granted Special Investors Resident VISA (SIRV).
Earlier during a Senate investigation, Guo testified that her mother is a full-blooded Filipino named Amelia Leal but she had never met her. Amelia Leal was allegedly the maid of her father Angelito Guo and Alice was their lovechild.

Based on her birth certificate, Guo was born on July 12, 1986 in Tarlac to Angelito and Amelia who were allegedly married in 1952. The birth certificate was registered only in 2005 or when Guo was already 19 years old.

Kahanding had concluded that the fingerprints were from the same person and that Alice Guo is actually no other than Guo Hua Ping.

Judge Hidalgo-Bucu favored Kahanding’s testimony, stressing that it “deserves full weight and credence” since fingerprint evidence is infallible and faultless because no two people, even identical twins, have the same fingerprint and that fingerprints cannot be forged.
“Alice Leal Guo has utterly failed to prove that she is a Filipino citizen, absent any credible evidence to rebut the petitioner’s evidence . . . 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, Guo Hua Ping is Alice Leal Guo,” the judge noted.