Fingerprints don’t lie: Court boots Chinese citizen Alice Guo from mayorship

National

IT WASN’T the ballot but her fingerprints that sealed Alice Guo’s fate.

A Manila court has declared the would-be mayor of Bamban a Chinese citizen, stripping her of the position and calling her a usurper of public office.

In a ruling dated June 27, the Manila Regional Trial Court (RTC) Branch 34 found Guo “undoubtedly a Chinese citizen” and concluded she was never qualified to run in the 2022 elections. The court ruled her proclamation as mayor was void from the start, saying she was ineligible not only to hold office—but even to file her candidacy under the 1987 Constitution.

“It follows, therefore, that her proclamation was deemed void,” wrote Presiding Judge Liwliwa Hidalgo-Bucu, who declared Guo guilty of usurping the Office of the Mayor of Bamban, Tarlac and ordered her ouster.

The decision was based on a quo warranto petition filed by the Office of the Solicitor General (OSG), which challenged Guo’s legal right to hold public office. The case was supported by the Presidential Anti-Organized Crime Commission, which helped secure official records and coordinate key witness presentations.

Fingerprints and false claims

The court gave full credence to fingerprint analysis conducted by Alfredo Kahanding, chief of the National Bureau of Investigation’s Dactyloscopy Division. His expert testimony linked Alice Guo to a Chinese national named Guo Hua Ping, who arrived in the Philippines in 1999 at age nine with her parents, Guo Jian Zhong and Lin Wenyi. All three held Chinese passports and entered on Special Investors Resident Visas.

Kahanding’s findings, backed by the court, concluded that the fingerprints of Alice Guo and Guo Hua Ping were from the same individual—a match that the court described as irrefutable. It emphasized that no credible counter-evidence had been presented by Guo to support her claim of Filipino citizenship.

Although Guo testified before the Senate that her mother was a full-blooded Filipina named Amelia Leal, whom she had never met, the court noted serious inconsistencies. Her birth certificate, filed only in 2005 when she was 19, stated she was born in 1986 in Tarlac to Angelito Guo and Amelia Leal, who were supposedly married in 1952. Yet, no birth, marriage, or death records were found for either parent in official registries.

The court said this pattern of undocumented identity supported the conclusion that Guo had assumed a false Filipino identity to gain eligibility for public office.

Legal loopholes and national risk

The ruling stressed that Guo’s deception was not a simple case of document fraud but a breach with serious national implications. The court warned that allowing a foreign national to gain power through identity manipulation posed a clear threat to national security and undermined electoral integrity.

It found that Guo had deliberately presented herself as a Filipino citizen to satisfy the constitutional requirement for candidates seeking local office, calling her actions a calculated circumvention of the law.

Senator Sherwin Gatchalian, who has long questioned Guo’s background, welcomed the verdict. “The court ruling affirming that Alice Guo is a Chinese national and finding her guilty of usurping and exercising the Office of the Bamban Mayor validates what we’ve long been saying – that she was never qualified to hold public office,” he said in a Philstar report.

Gatchalian also urged the government to pursue other legal avenues against Guo, including cases related to land ownership and any alleged illicit activities. He called for accountability not just for Guo but for any individuals who may have supported or protected her entry into government.