NPC probes Alice Guo’s membership

MANILA, Philippines — The Nationalist People’s Coalition is looking into the origins of Bamban, Tarlac Mayor Alice Guo, who ran and won as an independent candidate but later joined the party that recently entered into an alliance with President Marcos’ Partido Federal Pilipinas (PFP), NPC chairman and former Senate president Vicente Sotto III said yesterday.

Sotto clarified that after the controversy surrounding Guo, the NPC has started investigating the Bamban mayor.

“Mayor Guo is an NPC member. She joined the party after she won the 2022 elections,” Sotto said during the Kapihan sa Manila Bay forum.

Sotto asked Tarlac Gov. Susan Yap to look into Guo’s case.

“If there are party rules violations by a member, we will definitely decide on it, like Rep. Arny Teves,” he noted, referring to the expelled Negros lawmaker.

He noted that Sen. Sherwin Gatchalian, one of the senators investigating Guo, is with the NPC.

“It doesn’t mean that even if she is our partymate, if she is really involved in POGO (Philippine offshore gaming operators) activities, human trafficking, then it will escalate in the party, like Teves, we will expel her,” Sotto said.

President Marcos’ PFP will ally with the NPC in preparation for the May 2025 midterm elections.

NPC’s alliance with PFP is a formalization of its longtime close alliance with Marcos, Sotto said.

“Right now, the NPC as a party is in alliance with the President. This merely formalizes the association. It is the realization of a continuing allegiance, of friendship,” he added.

Senate investigation

More questions instead of answers were raised about the origins of Guo, who stood by her Filipino citizenship during yesterday’s Senate investigation on her alleged involvement in Philippine offshore gaming operators.

Guo attended the resumption of Sen. Risa Hontiveros’ investigation, which centered on how she was able to grow her piggery business and go into local politics despite issues raised about her birth.

Hontiveros presented during the hearing the contradicting details in Guo’s birth certificate and those of her two siblings Shiela and Seimen, which showed conflicting marriage dates of their parents, businessman Angelito Guo and Amelia.

The Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA) confirmed to Hontiveros’ office that not only does the patriarch Guo not have a registered birth certificate, the Guo couple also do not have a record of marriage in the PSA.

Asked to explain the discrepancies in their family’s birth records, Guo said she could not answer because she “did not prepare birth certificates.”

“My father has different partners. We do not talk about these sensitive matters in our family,” Guo said when asked why she did not question her father who is a native of Fujian province.

“The gaps in the document cannot be denied,” Hontiveros said.

Guo confirmed to senators what she told newscaster Karen Davila that she was a “lovechild” of her father with Amelia, the family househelp.

“How I wish I had a perfect family,” Guo said of their family situation.

But senators raised the possibility that Guo’s mother may not exist at all, after they learned from the PSA that a person under the name Amelia Leal Guo does not have a birth registration in its records.

“In the eyes of the law, there is no person born Amelia Leal. It is possible that Amelia Leal is non-existing. So there are three irregularities here – Amelia Leal is not a real person, their marriage is null and the father is not Filipino,” Gatchalian said.

This puts to question Guo’s birth certificate which she used to prove her Filipino citizenship when she filed for candidacy as Bamban mayor, he said.

Senators did not buy Guo’s colorful story of growing up on a farm and taking care of their farm animals when she was a minor.

Guo claimed she was raised by her Chinese father to be an entrepreneur and that she had always dreamed of being a politician in their town.

But the mayor became evasive when pressed by Sen. Loren Legarda to recall to the committee her childhood in Bamban.

“Tell us about the first nine years of your life. Tell us about your farm life. It must have been a charming, idyllic life. Who are your Chinese or Filipino playmates?” Legarda said.

“If you’re Chinese and fronting for other people, then go back to your country. But if you’re born here, convince us,” she added.

Guo maintained her story that she was born on a farm but that she could not recall details of her childhood.

Asked to speak her Chinese language, Guo at first resisted, but was compelled to say in Fookien: “My father is from China. I am not Chinese. I am Filipino.”

“My life has not been normal,” a teary-eyed Guo said in Filipino.