Philippine Chief Justice Renato Corona is under close scrutiny today due to his alleged failure to disclose to the public his Statement of Assets and Liabilities (SALN), the document every official and employee of the government and all its branches and agencies is required by law to file each year by way of promoting honesty and transparency and a check against graft and corruption. In fact, the non-disclosure of the SALN is the second of the eight articles of impeachment filed by the House of Representatives against the Chief Justice to which he is now undergoing a public trial by the Senate acting as the Senate Impeachment Tribunal.
At the trial of the Senate Impeachment Tribunal, the Clerk of Court of the Supreme Court adamantly surrendered Mr. Corona’s SALN for many years, proving that he has been faithfully complying with the law after all. The Clerk of Court, however, emphasized to the Tribunal that the disclosure of the SALN of the Chief Justice and Associate Justices is governed by a ruling en banc of the High Court in 1989 under then Chief Justice Marcelo Fernan to protect the justices from becoming unnecessarily victims of speculations and criminal threats that may affect their work in the dispensation of justice.
It turns out that even some, if not all, of Corona’s accusers in the House have failed to make public or may have not filed their SALNs on time or not at all if the report of the Philippine Center for Investigative Journalism is to be the basis.
The SALN issue also exposed Associate Justice Lourdes Sereno and President Benigno S. Aquino III himself. Sereno, in her SALN, reported assets of P17 million but apparently failed to include in it her income of about P25 million when she acted as a government lawyer on the NAIA Terminal 3 arbitration with the German Fraport and its Philippine counterparts. The SALN of the President, on the other hand, showed that his wealth tripled from P15 million in 2009 to P54 million in 2010, which demands an explanation.
To erase doubts on the correctness of SALNs and ensure that they are made available to the public for scrutiny and avoid any misunderstanding such as those facing CJ Corona, Justice Sereno and even the President himself,  clear-cut rules and regulations on the filing of SALNs and their public disclosure should immediately be crafted by Congress. When these rules are available, all officials and employees of government should then be made accountable for their failure to file and disclose their SALNs.