Chief Justice Diosdado Peralta on Friday justified the Supreme Court’s decision to deny the release of the copies of the statements of assets, liabilities, and net worth of justices and judges for their protection.
In a virtual press conference marking his first year as top magistrate, Peralta said if the SALNs of justices and judges were released, their addresses and those of their children and other personal information would be known and those pieces of information could put them at risk.
“So we came up with the guidelines that we can only release the summary of the SALNs,” Peralta said.
“That is why we are not only protecting ourselves but protecting also those judges in the lower courts.”
Last month, the high court denied the requests of the Office of the Solicitor General and a private law practitioner to secure copies of the SALNs of Associate Justice Marvic Mario Victor Leonen to file a quo warranto case against him.
A quo warranto “is a special civil action brought in the name of the Philippines against a person who usurps, intrudes into, or unlawfully holds or exercises a public office, position or franchise.”
Denied were the requests filed by Solicitor General Jose Calida and lawyer Lorenzo Gadon, who both wanted to secure Leonen’s SALNs.
Gadon requested copies of Leonen’s SALNs for the years 1990 to 2011.
Published reports alleged that Leonen did not file his 2003, 2008 and 2009 SALNs.
The non-filing of SALNs, as required by law for all government officials and employees, was used as a basis in the ouster of then Chief Justice Maria Lourdes Sereno. The quo warranto petition against Sereno was filed by Calida.
Associate Justice Leonen was appointed to the high court in 2012. Before his high court post, he was a professor of the University of the Philippines College of Law.
Coincidentally, Ombudsman Samuel Martires also wrote a memorandum that barred the release of the SALNs of government officials and employees unless there was a notarized letter of authority from the declarants themselves.
Martires said copies of SALNs could be released only to declarants or their authorized representatives, to the courts in relations to pending cases, and to Ombudsman officials for fact-finding investigations.