A Legal Opinion of a Tech Support Guy

All public officials and employees, whether regular or under temporary status, are required to file a SALN. [i]Art. XI Sec. 17 of the 1987 Philippine Constitution [/i] “A public officer or employee shall, upon assumption of office and as often thereafter as may be required by law, submit a declaration under oath of his assets, liabilities, and net worth. “In the case of the President, the Vice-President, the Members of the Cabinet, the Congress, the Supreme Court, the Constitutional Commissions and other constitutional offices, and officers of the armed forces with general or flag rank, the declaration shall be disclosed to the public in the manner provided by law.” [i]Administrative Code of 1987, Book 1, Chapter 9, Sec. 34[/i] “A public officer or employee shall upon assumption of office and as often thereafter as may be required by law, submit a declaration under oath of his assets, liabilities, and net worth.” [i]RA 6713, Sec. 8[/i] [b]What should be found in the SALN?[/b] RA 6713, Sec. 8 A. “real property, its improvements, acquisition costs, assessed value and current fair market value; “personal property and acquisition cost; “all other assets such as investments, cash on hand or in banks, stocks, bonds, and the like; “liabilities, and; “all business interests and financial connections.” B. “including those of their spouses and of unmarried children under eighteen (18) years of age living in their households.” C. “Identification and disclosure of relatives. — It shall be the duty of every public official or employee to identify and disclose, to the best of his knowledge and information, his relatives in the Government in the form, manner and frequency prescribed by the Civil Service Commission.” ---- RA 6713 is the supporting, operational law of Article 11 Section 17 of the Constitution which is about SALN which is about transparency, not the Foreign Currency Act which is about secrecy and has nothing to do with SALN(unless you want to interpret it such). The Chief Justice in his wisdom chose the latter. He chose secrecy over transparency.

CJ Impeachment: Comingled Account

This will set a bad precedent if CJ Corona is acquitted. Imagine, a public official with P1 billion pesos of ill-gotten cash can CO-MINGLE his family's P10 pesos and then he doesn't have to declare it in his SALN. There should be a law that will address this.