NAZISM
MANILA, MARCH 14, 2012
(MANILA TIMES) IT'S very good that each
government employee is required to file his or her Statement of Assets,
Liabilities and Net Worth (SALN). The SALN is an important basic tool in the
hands of government anti-graft operatives.
The problem is that the SALN forms sworn to and filed are not seriously
scrutinized as a matter of course. Only when the government official or employee
has become a high-profile subject is his or her SALN looked into.
In local government units, many ordinary employees—clerks and other
below-supervisor workers—in addition to the top officials of towns, cities and
provinces—are obviously living beyond their means but no one bothers to look at
their SALNs.
In the Chief Justice Renato Corona Impeachment Trial, one of whose articles
against him is that he did not file his SALN, it appears that the Chief Justice
did file his SALN. But the prosecution lawyers allege in effect that he did not
because the SALN filed is allegedly untruthful.
The Civil Service Commission has introduced a new form of the SALN. The good
intention is to make government officials and employees file more accurate
SALNs. The new form covers more financial aspects of the government people's
lives.
With these, graft busters can better determine if an official or employee is
living beyond his legal income. The new SALN comes into effect on April 15,
2012.
We agree, however, that while the new SALN form is better in forcing the
filer to tell more about his financial affairs, some of the facts required from
ordinary civil servants are so difficult to assemble accurately. The result is
that many a filer will most likely make mistakes.
Consequently they will become easy prey to blackmail, intimidation and
harassment by crooked graft-busters. And there are a lot of these.
The new SALN form requires the civil servant to declare his personal and
family expenses. How many families have breadwinners, whether employed in the
government or in the private sector, who efficiently know their expenses?
Civil servants will now have to keep a notebook to record and keep receipts
of the meals and drinks they have, his wife must make sure the grocery store and
the wet market fish and meat mongers issue receipts. How about the cell phone
that was snatched? Will the graft-buster believe him?
What about the clerk at the Pasay or Trece Martires City Hall. He eats his
meals at the turo-turo, his wife goes marketing at neighborhood markets whose
vendors don't issue receipts. He will surely not be able to file an accurate
SALN. And this will mean he might loss his job.
The new SALN requires the disclosure of the amount and sources of "gross
income." This term means income from salaries, business, sales of real and
personal property, rents, royalties, dividends, prizes and lottery winnings,
pensions, share from partnership income.
Some honest people are so muddled that they don't even have a file of their
bank statements (which are now so rare). Do government employees have to hire a
"SALN accountant"?
Civil servants paid through their ATM (automated teller machine) bank
accounts, will only know what their interest incomes are if they spend a whole
morning at the bank and if the bank deigns to assign an employee to deal with
his request.
The CSC and the Aquino administration people who like the new SALN form may
not realize it but their new imposition makes them "practicing Nazis."
It is nothing less than bureaucratic Nazism to impose these difficulties on
the majority of the civil servants to ferret out the relatively few rats of
graft and corruption.
Chief News Editor: Sol Jose Vanzi
© Copyright, 2012 by PHILIPPINE HEADLINE NEWS ONLINE
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rights reserved
PHILIPPINE
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