Manapat expects charges to be junked

Former National Archives director Ricardo Manapat is hoping that he would be absolved of allegations that he falsified documents pertaining to the citizenship of presidential candidate Fernando Poe Jr.

Speaking to reporters at the Armed Forces headquarters at Camp Aguinaldo in Quezon City, Manapat said he did not falsify a supposed affidavit of one Paulita Gomez accusing Poe’s father, Allan Fernando Poe of bigamy in 1939.

"Documents will stand by itself," he said. "Even the FPJ camp presented their own evidence that bolsters my own defense that indeed FPJ was an illegitimate child."

Manapat said the marriage contract of Poe’s parents, which his lawyers presented before the Commission on Elections, had not contradicted the affidavit of Gomez.

"It’s their own lawyer who gave them in... how can they say I fabricated the document (Gomez’s affidavit), which very much confirms to the circumstances around the marriage between Poe and Bessie Kelley?" he asked.

Manapat said the affidavit of Gomez shows that Poe was an illegitimate child because his parents were married in 1940, a year after he was born in 1939.

The affidavit was a "preparatory document" which Gomez was supposed to be readying against Poe Sr. in 1939, he added.

Manapat spoke during the birthday party of Mary Ong, alias Rosebud, a controversial former police anti-narcotics agent, at the Intelligence Service of the Armed Forces of the Philippines. — Christina Mendez