President Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos Jr. is prepared to undergo a lifestyle check, including the release of his statement of assets, liabilities, and net worth (SALN), but political analysts said such a move must be paired with genuine reforms and must also address the corruption issues that attended his father and namesake’s strongman rule.
“All members of the Executive are ready for a lifestyle check,” Palace press officer Claire Castro told reporters in Malacañang on Friday. “Every member of the Executive is ready, including the President.”
It would be the first time for Mr. Marcos to release his SALN since he assumed office in June 2022.
But according to University of the Philippines political science professor Jean Encinas-Franco, a lifestyle check must include real reforms to address systemic corruption. She said the President should likewise address the corruption allegations that attended Ferdinand Marcos Sr.’s dictatorship.
Maria Fe Mendoza, former dean of UP’s National College of Public Administration and Governance, also cited the “baggage” from the dictatorship that the President has to contend with.
Mr. Marcos has ordered a lifestyle check on all government officials starting with those in the Department of Public Works and Highways, in the face of growing public displeasure over scandalous multibillion-peso flood control projects.
Pressed by reporters if Mr. Marcos would release his SALN, Castro said it would be part of the lifestyle check. ”That’s why everyone is ready, including the [release of their] SALN,” she said.
Leading by example
At the House of Representatives, Deputy Minority Leader Antonio Tinio and Assistant Minority Leader Renee Co issued a joint statement saying Mr. Marcos should lead by example and undergo a lifestyle check.
“While we support genuine anticorruption efforts, we demand that President Marcos lead by example and subject himself to the same scrutiny he demands from others,” they said, adding that Mr. Marcos “cannot absolve himself from corruption investigations simply by subjecting others to the same process.”
Sen. Risa Hontiveros said it would be a “good example” if the President also undergoes a lifestyle check and releases his SALN. She said a lifestyle check can help create “an environment of transparency.”
In 2020, then Ombudsman Samuel Martires issued a circular restricting public access to the SALNs of government officials.
Martires said at a House hearing in September 2021 that he would not release the SALNs of government officials including that of then President Rodrigo Duterte.
In his Memorandum Circular No. 1 issued in September 2020, Martires said SALNs would only be released if the request was made by the government official who filed it and his or her official representative; if it is legally ordered by the court in relation to a pending case; and if it is made through the Office of the Ombudsman’s field investigation office for the purpose of a fact-finding probe.
During his presidency, Duterte did not release his SALN to the public from 2018 until he stepped down in 2022.
Mr. Marcos said in an interview in January 2022 that there was no reason to release a SALN if it would be used to attack a government official. He cited the case of former chief justice Renato Corona, since deceased, who was impeached for violating some provisions of his SALN.
Media mileage
Encinas-Franco told CoverStory on Friday that a lifestyle check would enable the President’s anticorruption drive to gain more media mileage and public attention.
But “the trouble with a lifestyle check as a measure against corruption is that the crime has already been committed,” she pointed out. “Therefore, the guilty party can exert efforts to hide the ill-gotten wealth.”
Encinas-Franco said a lifestyle check “must be coupled with honest-to-goodness reforms to address systemic corruption, such as using technology for transparency purposes, a thorough study, and mapping of infrastructure needs to enhance budget efficiency and to avoid a piecemeal approach to infrastructure.”
“Piecemeal approaches enable corrupt politicians to have discretion in projects that are supposed to be a result of serious planning and scientific research,” she said, adding that in order to prove his sincerity in his anticorruption drive, the President “has to respond to [accusations of] the legacy of corruption hurled at the first Marcos administration.”
Allegations of corruption and abuse were widespread during the Marcos Sr. presidency from 1965 to 1986, with the then first family said to amass at least $10 billion in ill-gotten wealth.
The real impact
For Mendoza, a lifestyle check is “very important as a symbolic measure that [an official] is not above the law.”
“Lifestyle checks were not done regularly and SALNs were not released during Duterte’s time,” she told CoverStory. “[Then] Ombudsman Martires believed these are not effective because those with ill-gotten wealth have been too clever to hide them by various means.”
She said “strengthening” the Anti Money Laundering Law would be “better.”
Asked if the planned lifestyle check would have a real impact on the administration’s anticorruption efforts, Mendoza said it’s “too early to tell.”
“The real impact would be is when our Presidential Anti-Corruption Commission becomes an Independent Commission Against Corruption, like in Hong Kong, with all the powers and independence needed to rid the country of corruption,” she said, adding:
“Also, [the real impact is] when the process indeed leads to the prosecution and imprisonment of those found guilty. Then all these measures will be not only symbolic but working to seriously get rid of this societal malaise.”
Asked what else the President should do to prove his sincerity in his anticorruption drive, Mendoza said: “Because of the baggage of his dictator father and alleged mastermind of kleptocracy during his reign, Bongbong may not always be perceived as sincere in his anticorruption efforts.
“He should cut the drama, mobilize the citizenry, bureaucracy and the private sector to act as one in this drive, and avoid historical revisionism and distortion to sanitize the Marcos Sr. ‘legacy of infamy.’
“By admitting there were wrongs in the past, he may encourage the older generation to help him have a fresher start.”
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