Alice Guo (real name: Guo Hua Ping) at the Senate of the Philippines on October 8, 2024.
MANILA, Philippines — Dismissed Bamban Mayor Alice Guo (real name: Guo Hua Ping) cannot be held liable for the notary issue on her counter-affidavit for the human trafficking case as she was already outside the country when it was notarized, her camp argued Tuesday.
Guo’s legal counsel, Atty. Stephen David, made the pronouncement after submitting a counter-affidavit seeking to dismiss the perjury and falsification charges against Guo in a preliminary investigation hearing held at the Department of Justice in Manila.
“Our defense is that she shouldn’t be sued for falsification or perjury,” David said in Filipino in a chance interview with reporters.
“First of all, she was not here. So what would her participation be in the notarization?” he added.
READ: NBI files perjury raps vs lawyer who notarized Guo reply
When asked about Guo’s assistants admitting that she instructed them to have the document notarized, David said Guo’s order does not mean she personally committed the falsification.
“What is needed there is the act that she falsified the notarization herself,” he explained in Filipino.
David also insisted that the document, which the National Bureau of Investigation (NBI) previously deduced to have been signed by a different person, was “pre-signed” by Guo before she fled to Jakarta, Indonesia.
READ: Alice Guo’s counter-affidavit signed by someone else – NBI
He explained that the counter-affidavit should not have been notarized in the first place if Guo herself was not present to sign the document in front of the lawyer or the notary public.
“So I don’t see any falsification there because she is the one who signed it. Now, who we should question is the one who notarized it,” he added.
Asked for his opinion on whether Guo should be held liable for the notarization error, David responded “no.”
“I cannot comment on that since it’s sub judice,” he added. But on the part of the affiant, the mayor, she wasn’t there. How would you say that she faced the lawyer? So you cannot make her liable.”
The cases stemmed from Guo’s counter-affidavit which was filed days after a qualified trafficking complaint was submitted against her for resolution on August 6.
Guo’s counter-affidavit was signed on August 14 by lawyer Elmer Galicia, almost a month after she had left the Philippines in July.
The NBI then filed complaints of perjury, falsification, and obstruction of justice against Guo and Galicia as well as four other individuals.
