“The citizen can bring our political and governmental institutions back to life, make them responsive and accountable, and keep them honest. No one else can.”
John W. Gardner, US Secretary of Health and Education, 1965-68 |
Prof. Boncodin, in one of the forums she had appeared in to help people understand the the national budget and what people could do to protect it from corruption and wastage.
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The Philippine Public Transparency Reporting Project and the Pera Natin ‘To! website are made possible by the generous support of the American people through the United States Agency for International Development (USAID). The contents of this website and the views expressed herein are solely the responsibility of the Philippine Public Transparency Reporting Project and the individual authors, and do not necessarily reflect the views of USAID or the United States Government or the American Bar Association Rule of Law Initiative.
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Ombudsman Replies to PPTRP On SALNs |
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Friday, 18 June 2010 |
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We’ve received a response from the Office of the Ombudsman to our April 21 request to access and publish all the Statement of Assets and Liabilities and Net Worth (SALNs) that they hold.
The Ombudsman holds the SALNs of its own officials and employees as well as those of the President, Vice President, and the chairmen and commissioners of constitutional bodies.
It is the second response we have received from all the state institutions which hold SALNs of all elected officials and public employees. The first was a phone call from the Office of the Senate Secretary which acknowledged our request and invited us to visit them to apply for access. This response from the Ombudsman is more detailed and so credit is due to them. It may be found at the bottom of the page of our website news on it here.
In addition to explaining the request process in detail, they also sent us the necessary application form which can also be found on their website.
You can also read their internal revised guidelines governing access here.
Unfortunately, the process for accessing SALNs from the Office of the Ombudsman is quite laborious and ideally it should be reversed at some point. As things presently stand, the burden is currently on members of the public to request the information before the Ombudsman decides whether such a request is ‘legitimate’. Requests moreover cannot be blanket ones and may only be submitted one at a time. Every request needs to be submitted formerly and sworn in front of a prosecutor in their office. The person filing the request may even be subject to “all legal remedies” if the person named in the form feels that his privacy has been violated.
While it is good there is a very clear process, the process itself is a hindrance. Moreover, the implicit warning that the very act of making the request itself could put the initiator on the wrong side of the law is one very good reason to argue for all SALNs to be put online by the administration as a matter of policy. As we wrote in our blog last week some governments worldwide are now starting to publish such information en masse as a matter of principle. This is not to say that personal privacy or security should ever be put at risk in making SALNs more accessible and so it is for the new administration to consider how to best balance the right of privacy with the right to check, monitor and know.
In the meantime and given the current absence of a law on freedom of information, we at PPTRP would like to see the Office of the Ombudsman think about revising its guidelines governing access. It would be a clear signal that things are finally starting to move in the right direction.
Alan Davis
Director, Philippine Public Transparency Reporting Project
Head of Asia Programming, Institute for War and Peace Reporting
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