THE strange case of Alice Leal Guo, who was elected mayor of Bamban, Tarlac, in 2022, suggests a serious defect in how we pick our leaders in general and how we impose election regulations in particular.

So, what do we know about Guo?

Two years after her election as Bamban's first female mayor, Guo is at the center of a Senate investigation on her possible connection to an online gambling hub in her town.

As if her possible involvement with a Philippine offshore gaming operator (POGO) was not enough, Guo's answers during a Senate hearing on May 7 cast doubt on her identity as a Filipino citizen, a prerequisite for running for office.

Guo says she was born and grew up on a farm with her father, who had a hog-raising business in one of Bamban's 15 barangay (villages), but she could no longer recall its exact location.

She says her father was half-Chinese and half-Filipino; on her birth certificate, he is listed as Filipino. But in business documents, he is Chinese.

There are no hospital records of her birth, which was only registered in 2003, 17 years after she was born in 1986.

Guo has no school records, saying she was home-schooled from elementary to high school — but she could not identify her homeschool provider.

At the Senate hearing, Guo denied her involvement with any POGO operation, even though Sen. Sherwin Gatchalian uncovered official documents linking her to Hongsheng Gaming Technology Inc. after it was raided in February 2023. He said that in 2020 before she became mayor, she asked the Bamban municipal council to allow Hongsheng to operate there. The 8-hectare POGO hub, with 36 buildings inside the Baofu Corp. compound, was raided on March 13 over charges of alleged human trafficking and serious illegal detention.

The POGO hub was also suspected of involvement in surveillance activities and the hacking of government websites.

Despite Guo's denials, she admits to being the incorporator of Baofu and owning 50 percent of its shares, but she sold them before entering politics.

The mayor says she has stopped taking questions about her citizenship and her ties to China on the advice of her lawyers, but nagging questions remain for her, government officials and lawmakers.

The most obvious one is how a person of undetermined nationality was able to run for office. The answer that the Commission on Elections (Comelec) provides is woefully unsatisfactory. The citizenship issue, it says, is out of the Comelec's jurisdiction because she is already an elected public official. It is now a matter for the Department of the Interior and Local Government, the Supreme Court, or the Office of the Ombudsman to settle.

At the moment, candidates are only expected to submit a certificate of candidacy that declares the person's citizenship as Filipino, a valid government ID or a barangay certification. In other words, the Comelec's duty is only ministerial — it accepts certificates of candidacy provided they are complete in form and notarized. It has no right to reject a candidate unless a registered voter files a disqualification case. In Guo's case, nobody objected.

The Comelec can require extra proof of citizenship — say, a birth certificate — but it must be authorized by law before it can do so. Guo's case could be the impetus for a review and amendment of the Omnibus Election Code.

During the Senate hearing, Sen. Risa Hontiveros noted how Bamban residents said the mayor came out of nowhere during the 2022 elections. Asked how she was able to fund her campaign as an independent candidate, Guo said she had help from friends — and the previous administration.

This brings into focus the manner in which we choose our leaders. How much thought did the residents of Bamban put into electing an unknown entity into office? How much largesse did she dole out to overcome more established contenders?

"Who in the world am I? Ah, that's the great puzzle." Alice in Wonderland asks this of herself after she has grown to a giant size and frightened the White Rabbit away.

Alice Guo knows the answer to that question, but we don't — and that's the great puzzle.