The Office of the Solicitor General (OSG) on Monday, July 29, challenged the authority of Alice L. Guo to exercise the powers, functions, and duties as mayor of Bamban town in Tarlac.
The challenge was contained in a petition for quo warranto filed by the OSG before the Manila regional trial court (RTC).
A quo warranto “is a special civil action brought in the name of the Philippines against a person who usurps, intrudes into, or unlawfully holds or exercises a public office….”
In its petition, Solicitor General Menardo I. Guevarra said the OSG raised four major legal issues, namely:
- "Guo Hua Ping a.k.a. Alice Leal Guo is unlawfully holding the position and illegally exercising the duties and responsibilities of the office of the mayor of Bamban, Tarlac.
- "She is not a filipino citizen; she is a Chinese national. thus, she is ineligible to run for any elective public office.
- "She has committed acts which, by provision of law, constitute a ground for the forfeiture of her office.
- "More specifically, she has committed acts of serious dishonesty which, under the local government code, warrant her removal from office."
Prior to the quo warranto petition, the OSG, on behalf of the Philippines Statistics Authority (PSA), filed before the Tarlac RTC last July 5 a petition to cancel the certificate of live birth (COLB) of Guo.
The petition to cancel sa COLB was filed after the National Bureau of Investigation (NBI) conducted a fingerprint examination and discovered that Guo and Chinese national Guo Hua Ping are one and the same person.
Mayor Guo has been suspended by the Office of the Ombudsman on criminal and administrative charges filed by the Department of the Interior and Local Government (DILG).
She and several other persons have also been charged ciminally before the Department of Justice (DO) with non-bailable qualified trafficking in persons.
The DOJ's panel of prosecutors has started the preliminary investigation of the charges.