EDITORIAL - No SALN is probably ever totally true

Everybody is now going head over heels in declaring their SALNs. A SALN is a statement of assets, liabilities and net worth which all government employees and officials are required to file each year. These statements are supposed to be open for public disclosure.

But because of the recent impeachment trial that led to the ouster of Chief Justice Renato Corona for failing to disclose huge amounts of money in his SALN, everybody has suddenly become an eager beaver to open up his SALN.

This sweeping eagerness to display transparency is simply too good to be true that, instead of being exultant over this seeming transformation of the Filipino, alarm bells suddenly are ringing like crazy.

And for good reason. The SALN is not the true measure of a government official’s real worth. The figures contained therein represent only what the official is willing to disclose. No person has been born who will bare his true worth before the public.

There are as many ways to configure a SALN as there are government officials filing them. And the interesting thing about the whole thing is that the configuration of the SALN according to what the filer wishes to be known does not necessarily indicate an intent to commit fraud.

It is simply human nature that dictates this automatic aversion to any precise disclosure of the true worth of anything. You buy something new and a friend asks how much it cost, and your answer will likely go — “sus, barato ra kaayo ni oy, sale man gud.”

If a person cannot be forthright about something of lesser importance as a pair of new shoes, the more he will be unwilling to make a clean breast of something for which he could be inconvenienced as a result, like getting taxed for instance.

So if a person will always try to do what is necessary to be able to pay the least amount in taxes, why would the disclosures in the SALN be any different? It is human nature as well to try to shave and save on the SALN.

This is not to suggest everyone is doing a Corona. But that is only as far as the hugeness of the amounts are concerned. As to not being one hundred percent forthright about SALN disclosures, who is anyone kidding? Thus the rush to bare SALNs is a most funny thing.