By AVIGAIL OLARTE
FOLLOWING a VERA Files report on Pampanga Rep. Juan Miguel “Mikey” Arroyo’s failure to declare in his latest asset declarations a multi-million-peso property in California, three party-list representatives filed Tuesday a resolution that seeks “to investigate the loopholes in the SALN (Statements of Assets, Liabilities, and Net Worth) disclosure system using the Arroyos as a case in point.”
“It is high time for Congress to scrutinize the system of reporting of the SALN and to determine whether or not drafting a new law is necessary to ensure that all civil servants stick to the basic rule of utmost transparency when submitting their SALNs,” said Bayan Muna’s Teodoro Casino and. Satur Ocampo and Gabriela Women’s Party Rep. Liza Maza in House Resolution No. 1358. (Download HR 1358)
“Should hearings push through, we will invite PGMA (President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo) and/or her lawyer/accountant and Reps. Mikey and Dato Arroyo as resource persons,” Casino said in a text message.
Meanwhile, Transparency and Accountability Network Executive Director Vincent Lazatin said while there have been reforms with regard to the filing of SALNs, he urged more vigorous checking and auditing of such statements.
“In the same way that you cannot check the speed of every car, you cannot check the veracity of every claim in the SALN,” he said. “But you have to have a system of spot checking.”
Lazatin added that the government should allocate more resources to enable the Civil Service Commission and the Office of the Ombudsman, the institutional bodies mandated under the law to administer and enforce Republic Act 6713 or the Code of Conduct and Ethical Standards for Public Officials and Employees, to conduct a random check.
VERA Files on Monday reported that presidential sons Mikey and Camarines Sur Rep. Diosdado Ignacio “Dato” Arroyo acquired houses in the U.S. and local business interests after winning seats in Congress.
Mikey failed to declare in his 2007 and 2008 SALN a P63.7 million beachfront property at 1655 Beach Park Blvd., Foster City in the San Francisco Bay Area, while Dato purchased a P26 .7 million property in San Francisco, barely a year after being elected to office. Dato, however, declared ownership of the property in his 2008 SALN.
HR 1358, entitled, “A resolution directing the House Committee on Good Government and Public Accountability to conduct an inquiry, in aid of legislation, on the effectiveness of using the SALN as a means to ascertain the real net worth of public officials and employees,” also mentioned a recent report of the Philippine Center for Investigative Journalism on “the discrepancies” in President Arroyo’s SALN.
PCIJ reported that the president’s net worth, in her eight years in office since she was senator, increased by 114 percent or from P66.8 million in 2001 to P143.5 million in 2008. “Her gross salary as president was only P45,000 a month. Her SALN failed to show her other lawful sources of income,” the resolution read.
“A more recent article by VERA Files…showed dramatic increases in the net worth of both Arroyos right after being elected to Congress, as well as ballooning of their liabilities, which may indicate how the SALN can be manipulated to conceal unexplainable wealth,” it said.
Mikey has denied owning a single property in the U.S. under his name, but VERA Files found that as of Aug. 31, the Foster City property in San Francisco is still registered in the name of his wife, Angela Arroyo Montenegro.
Mikey, in a television interview Tuesday, said the beachfront property is owned by Beach Way Park LLC, in which he is a shareholder. A search of business entities on the databases of the San Mateo county, state of California and the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission yielded no “Beach Way Park.”
The House resolution said the two recent reports reports show that SALNs are “highly prone to distortions, and, as such cannot serve as reliable means to find evidences of graft and corrupt practices, and illegal enrichment among public officials and employees.”
“The PCIJ and VERA Files reports only emphasize that even with a law on the SALN, public officials, including the President herself and her two congressman sons, are not inclined to make true and detailed declarations of their assets, liabilities, and net worth,” it added.
Under RA 6713, all government officials and employees—from the President to rank and file employees—are mandated to declare assets and liabilities through the SALN submitted every year.
The law, passed in 1989, is based on the Constitutional provision that a public office is a public trust. The primary use of the SALN form, the assets declarations guidelines state, is to “exhibit transparency and accountability in public office.”
Failure to comply with the provisions on the proper filing of SALN will result into penal sanctions. It could range from imprisonment of not more than five years and/or a fine of P5,000 to disqualification from public office.
