President Benigno Aquino. INQUIRER FILE PHOTO
MANILA, Philippines—Supreme Court justices are transparent and release their statements of assets, liabilities and net worth (SALN) to those who meet the requirements, the Supreme Court’s spokesman said Saturday in response to President Benigno Aquino’s call for the magistrates to release these reports.
To prove this point, the high court is set to release on Monday a list of people who have been given copies of the justices’ SALNs, said Supreme Court spokesperson Theodore Te.
“Contrary to what has been reported, the SC Justices have not only been complying with the requirements on the SALN but have made these available upon compliance with the reasonable administrative requirements imposed by the Court,” Te said in a press statement.
He said members of the media and civil society have been able to obtain copies of the magistrates’ SALNs.
Meanwhile, judiciary employees said they were set on continuing their silent red-and-black protest on Monday amid continuing attacks on the judiciary.
“We were hoping that the situation would sober up, but it seems he (President Aquino) won’t,” said Jojo Guerrero, president of the Judiciary Employees Association of the Philippines (Judea).
“There is a rule that you cannot just get copies of the SALNs without a purpose… Why is he targetting the justices?” he added.
In an interview on TV5, Aquino reminded magistrates about transparency and the need to file SALNs. Former Chief Justice Renato Corona lost his post in 2012 through a Malacañang-backed impeachment trial over his failure to publicly disclose an accurate SALN.
Read: Aquino tells SC: File SALNs
The statement was the latest in a string of criticisms Aquino has levelled against the judiciary, including his claim that the magistrates’ overreaching powers had disturbed the system of checks and balances among co-equal branches of government.
Last month, he warned of a “collision” between Malacañang and the judiciary over the latter’s ruling striking down the administration’s Disbursement Acceleration Program as unconstitutional.
The government has a pending motion for reconsideration of the ruling, which said that certain actions of the administration under the DAP were a usurpation of Congress’ exclusive power of the purse such as the realignment of funds Malacañang claimed were savings and the funding of projects that were not specifically provided for in the national budget.
Read: Palace asked to answer anti-DAP petitioners’ motion
Amid these cracks between the two co-equal branches, Revenue Commissioner Kim Henares last month complained that the high court had twice declined her requests for copies of the justices’ SALNs although she claimed to have complied with the court’s requirements.
On June 17, the Supreme Court en banc thumbed down “for lack of sufficient basis” Henares’ request for the SALNs of justices from 2003 to 2012 as part of a tax investigation and a probe into how a certain Ma’am Arlene had allegedly fixing cases in the judiciary for moneyed clients.
She said the Supreme Court magistrates were “creating an exception for themselves” in denying her request.
The high court said then that its rejection of Henares’ request “must be contextualized, based on the reasons she has given in her request.”
“Please note that the Supreme Court has never said they are exempt from the SALN requirement nor that they are creating a new rule for themselves. That members of the media and civil society, including law students, have been able to obtain copies of various SALNs of the justices is proof enough that the SC justices are not hiding anything,” Te said in response to Henares’ complaint.
Henares first filed her request on December 9, 2013 but it was not notarized and lacked the second page of the standard request form, in which the requesting party is required to write the reason for the request. The application also did not include a required photocopy of a government issued identification card.
Henares refiled the application on February 10, 2014, this time notarized and clearly stating the intent of her request: “For tax investigation purposes pursuant to Section 5(B) of the National Internal Revenue Code of 1997 and in relation to the Ma’am Arlene Controversy in the Judiciary.”
Both requests also contained a disclosure that the BIR “may have pending cases with some of the divisions of the Court of Appeals,” which is under the high court.