4/29/2020 E-Library - Information At Your Fingertips: Printer Friendly those who acquire dual citizenship by choice are afforded the right of suffrage, those who seek election or appointment to public office are required to renounce their foreign citizenship to be deserving of the public trust. Holding public office demands full and undivided allegiance to the Republic and to no other. We therefore hold that Arnado, by using his US passport after renouncing his American citizenship, has recanted the same Oath of Renunciation he took. Section 40(d) of the Local Government Code applies to his situation. He is disqualified not only from holding the public office but even from becoming a candidate in the May 2010 elections. We now resolve the next issue. Resolving the third issue necessitates revisiting Topacio v. Paredes[45] which is the jurisprudential spring of the principle that a second-placer cannot be proclaimed as the winner in an election contest. This doctrine must be re-examined and its soundness once again put to the test to address the ever-recurring issue that a second-placer who loses to an ineligible candidate cannot be proclaimed as the winner in the elections. The facts of the case are as follows: On June 4, 1912, a general election was held in the town of Imus, Province of Cavite, to fill the office of municipal president. The petitioner, Felipe Topacio, and the respondent, Maximo Abad, were opposing candidates for that office. Topacio received 430 votes, and Abad 281. Abad contested the election upon the sole ground that Topacio was ineligible in that he was reelected the second time to the office of the municipal president on June 4, 1912, without the four years required by Act No. 2045 having intervened. [46] Abad thus questioned the eligibility of Topacio on the basis of a statutory prohibition for seeking a second re-election absent the four year interruption. The often-quoted phrase in Topacio v. Paredes is that “the wreath of victory cannot be transferred from an ineligible candidate to any other candidate when the sole question is the eligibility of the one receiving a plurality of the legally cast ballots.”[47] This phrase is not even the ratio decidendi; it is a mere obiter dictum. The Court was comparing “the effect of a decision that a candidate is not entitled to the office because of fraud or irregularities in the elections x x x [with] that produced by declaring a person ineligible to hold such an office.” The complete sentence where the phrase is found is part of a comparison and contrast between the two situations, thus: Again, the effect of a decision that a candidate is not entitled to the office because of fraud or irregularities in the elections is quite different from that elibrary.judiciary.gov.ph/thebookshelf/showdocsfriendly/1/55820 14/49