Category: Access to Information

Senate passes FOI on second reading

Ed Lingao Leave a comment

 

THE LONG-DELAYED Freedom of Information (FOI) bill breezed through the Senate floor on second reading Tuesday night, with main sponsor Senator Gregorio Honasan guaranteeing passage on third and final reading by next week.

But prospects are not as bright in the House of Representatives, as FOI advocates prepare to battle it out with the measure’s opponents in the plenary. Also on Tuesday, the House committee on public information formally approved the consolidated committee report, paving the way for debates on the House version in the plenary. The consolidated committee report had actually been approved as early as last month, but committee chairman Ben Evardone had insisted on calling another committee hearing just to formalize the approval.

In contrast, the Senate version was reported to the floor last week, after which several senators proposed amendments to the bill. Honasan said the amendments were mostly minor; Senator Miriam Defensor Santiago, for example, had wanted to rename the bill to the Freedom of Information Act or FOI, after Honasan gave the measure the somewhat catchier name POGI, or the People’s Ownership of Government Information Act. POGI, of course, is a colloquial word meaning “handsome.”

In the end, Honasan said he preferred to keep the name POGI, even though advocates are more familiar with the acronym FOI.

After a brief period of amendments, Honasan moved to have the bill passed on second reading. Hearing no objections, Presiding Officer Jinggoy Estrada declared the measure passed.

Honasan said the third reading of the bill would be a mere formality in the Senate. As such, he said FOI advocates must now train their guns on the House of Representatives.

Atty. Nepomuceno Malaluan, Right to Know Right Now Coalition convenor, said the ball is now in the court of Speaker Feliciano Belmonte Jr. and President Benigno S. Aquino III.

Malaluan said that with the FOI virtually passed in the upper chamber, it would be up to the President and the House Speaker to wield their clout and make the measure move through the House.

In particular, Malaluan said FOI advocates are still hoping that President Aquino would certify the bill as urgent. Malaluan pointed out that the President had repeatedly expressed his support for the FOI when he was still a presidential candidate. The President’s interest in the bill appear to have waned though after he assumed office.

 

The bill has met some resistance in the lower chamber, with several congressmen demanding the insertion of a provision providing for a right of reply, or ROR. The ROR rider would require media organizations to give equal time, space, and prominence to officials who feel that they were the targets of negative reportage. ROR proponents in the House of Representatives insist that this provision would curb alleged excesses within the media. Media organizations however say that the ROR proviso is unconstitutional, as it virtually legislates editorial content.

 

The rapidly rising net worth of the Supreme Court justices

mcmangahas Leave a comment

EXACTLY A year ago tomorrow, on Dec. 12, 2011, President Benigno Simeon C. Aquino III marshaled votes from his Liberal Party and coalition allies in the House of Representatives to impeach then Chief Justice Renato C. Corona.

The chief magistrate, it was alleged, had failed to declare the true and full details of his wealth in his Statement of Assets, Liabilities, and Net Worth (SALN).

But by most indications, many strands of Corona’s story find parallels in the state of wealth of most of his former colleagues at the Supreme Court, as of 2011.

For instance, like Corona, nearly all the justices retain sizeable caches of cash on hand and in bank. In fact, four justices have zero liabilities, as of their 2011 SALNs.

Only two justices have loans or liabilities of around P5 million, and only one with P16-million liabilities on account of his wife’s business ventures. The rest of the justices have a little less or more than P1 million in loans.

Like Corona as well, land or real assets remain the pivot or bulk of the assets of at least four justices. All the rest, except for one, have land estates accounting for 30 to 50 percent of their assets. The seemingly basement prices at which some justices acquired their houses and lots and agricultural land are incredible to say the least.

Unlike Corona though, several of the justices have fairly robust portfolios of equity interest in family corporations and holding companies, and in sundry stocks in corporate entities they did not identify in 2011 but had revealed in their previous SALNs.

PCIJ’s review of the data enrolled in their SALNs through the years, however, yields a number of disparities that beg further explanation from the justices. Our findings include:

  • A largely sharp uptick in the net worth of invariably all the justices across a decade. For eight justices whose 2000, 2002, 2003, and 2011 SALNs are available, PCIJ found that the rise in their net worth ranged from P6.75 million to P81.65 million, or from 58 percent to 558 percent more, across a decade.
  • Some justices have reported changing or rising acquisition costs, as well as static fair market values, for their properties; the others did not even disclose the acquisition costs of their real assets.
  • A number of corporate interests are not disclosed in the SALNs of some justices but in which, SEC records show, they still retain equity interest as incorporators, shareholders, or officers.
  • Conflict of interest situations – in law, could either be real, potential, or apparent – confront three justices because of loans that they had acquired for companies in which their spouses have interests, or for a family holding firm with office addresses at the old and new offices of one justice’s former law firm.
  • Twelve justices have brought in two to six relatives as executive assistant, judicial staff, legislative staff or consultant in the Supreme Court and the electoral tribunals. They include the spouse, children, siblings, nephews, nieces, and in-laws of the justices. At least four have at least six relatives each in government, majority employed by the high court and the electoral tribunals.
  • Bad math marks the SALN of two justices who apparently failed to derive the correct sums of their assets, thus pruning the value of their true net worth.

Read Part 3 of our report on The Wealth of the ‘Gods of Faura’ here.

PNoy gov’t pushes Cyberlaw, asks SC to lift TRO, junk pleas

Ed Lingao Leave a comment

BAD TIMING for a bad law?

As the world marked International Human Rights Day, Dec. 10, the government of President Benigno Simeon Aquino III asked the Supreme Court to lift the temporary restraining order (TRO) it issued in October against Republic Act No. 10175 or the Cybercrime Prevention Act.

The government insisted that the law does not regulate or punish free speech, contrary to the claims of Netizens and media groups that have filed 15 various petitions against the law.

The Office of the Solicitor General (OSG) has submitted a 148-page comment to the Supreme Court asking the high tribunal to junk the petitions.

Media and civil society organizations had succeeded in getting a TRO against the Cybercrime law last October, citing that the law curtailed free speech and increased the penalties and jail terms for the crime of libel.

In addition, lawyers’ groups have expressed concerns that the law will allow government greater latitude in gathering data on internet use.

In a report published by GMANewsTV, the online news portal of television network GMA, the OSG is asking the Supreme Court to allow the law to be implemented immediately.

The OSG has argued, however, that the petitioners have not presented any evidence to support their opposition to the law; instead, the OSG said the oppositors to the law have only made legal arguments against the measure.

The OSG also said that libel has already been defined as a criminal act by the Revised Penal Code, and as such is “unprotected speech” that cannot be shielded by the freedom of the press.

GMANewsTV said the OSG questioned the inclusion of President Aquino as a respondent in at least five of the 15 petitions, citing that the President enjoys immunity from suit during his tenure in office.

 

Fat allowances of Corona not taxed: Happy days linger at SC?

Ed Lingao Leave a comment

IN THE SECOND installment of the PCIJ’s four-part report on the self-appointed perks and privileges of the “Gods of Padre Faura,” the Philippine Center for Investigative Journalism looks at how special and redundant allowances and honoraria bloat the take-home pay of the justices of the Supreme Court.

More tellingly, this story by PCIJ Executive Director Malou Mangahas shows how sundry allowances, bonuses, and fringe benefits of the Supreme Court justices had not been not taxed — a matter that had been verified in the case of impeached chief justice Renato C. Corona.

This is according to the reports submitted to the Bureau of Internal Revenue by the high court’s finance and accounting office. But the situation seems to linger still for the most senior justices of the land who continue to receive an excess of extra pay, while other public officials and employee who don’t get as much, fork out more of their hard-earned money to the taxman.

Read Part 2 of the PCIJ special report here.

The wealth of the ‘Gods of Faura’

Ed Lingao Leave a comment

WHEN CONGRESS IMPEACHED then Chief Justice Renato C. Corona on December 12, 2011 because he had allegedly filed an intentionally flawed Statement of Assets, Liabilities, and Net Worth (SALN), it was a signal for public servants that the document they submitted each year was not to be trifled with.

And when Corona was found guilty by the Senate impeachment court of excluding a substantial portion of his assets in his sworn SALN, transparency in the details of their income and wealth became a clear obligation – and strong public expectation – of all public officials, but especially of the justices of the Supreme Court.

Based on the contents of their 2011 SALNs, however, this lesson seemed to have been lost on the justices of the high court. Not only have most of them apparently underdeclared the true amount of their income – in law, salaries plus allowances – in their SALNs, half of them declined to answer questions about these.

For this joint story project with Solar Network News, the PCIJ validated the data enrolled in the justices’ 2011 SALNs with corporate records and the SALNs that they had filed in prior years.

PCIJ then wrote 14 of the justices separate letters to clarify the apparent disparities in the data enrolled in the various documents. Half or seven of them replied to the PCIJ’s queries.

The other seven, including Chief Justice Ma. Lourdes P.A. Sereno, and Associate Justices Bienvenido L. Reyes and Estela M. Perlas-Bernabe – all appointees of Preisdent Benigno Simeon C. Aquino III – refused to be quizzed about the details of their wealth. Senior Associate Justice Antonio T. Carpio did not respond, too.

But in its recently released Report on Salaries and Allowances for 2011 (ROSA), the Commission on Audit ranked the high court justices among the top 200 best paid, out of 6,489 senior public officials in 864 government agencies in the country.

The 2011 ROSA reveals that seven of the 14 justices are receiving allowances of more than half a million pesos each, and the others, at least P312,000 each. In addition, four justices are being paid more than P2 million in other benefits, incentives, and bonuses.

Of the 10 justices who put a figure in the annual income column of their 2011 SALN form, six declared that they received only P1.08 million to P2.9 million.

Left out was a slew of allowances, bonuses, and benefits that apparently fattened the justices’ take-home pay by two to three times more, or from P2.22 million to as much as P4.63 million.

Part 1 of our report looks at the disparities between the income that 10 justices declared in their SALNs (four others did not disclose at all) and the data enrolled in COA’s 2011 ROSA. It comes with two sidebars: The COA’s ROSA story, and a ‘Money Talk’ guide.

Part 2 looks at the tax implications of this windfall of extra pay that the justices received in 2011.

Part 3 reviews the details of the assets and liabilities of the justices, as they had declared in the 2011 and prior years’ SALNs.

Part 4 focuses on the implications of the unyielding resort to secrecy by the court on transparency, accountability, and integrity of the judiciary – supposedly the main reasons why Congress voted a year ago to impeach a chief justice.