SALNs IN A SCOFFLAW SOCIETY

“B IGGEST Batch of Women Cadets to Greet DU30,” read a headline, referring to the new women PMAyers. I made possible the entry of women into the PMA in a 1991 bicameral committee conference on a bill on Women in Nation Building, or RA 7192, authored by my college chum, Raul S. Roco. (A bicam meet is conducted when the two chambers’ differing versions need to be harmonized, or enhanced, making that body that powerful, as the Third House. I simply had the sex requirement deleted. There is of course the Fourth House, the camara de

la imprenta, where it is said a naughty lawmaker would add a zero or two at the end to a budget, say, for an avenue, he he.)

I trust Gen. Florencio Magsino has forgiven me by now for fathering the breach in the last bastion of machismo, to last and even spread. Last time we met some years ago, he was still chiding me for my impertinence.

The chauvinist Prez and the times may not have been kind to women like Sen. Leila de Lima, Ombudsman Chit CarpioMorales, journalists Maria Ressa/ Pia Ranada, CHED chief Tatti Licuanan, and Chief Justice Meilou Sereno, for standing up to the Prez, whose expansionary appetite seems boundless. He wants total control of the government and the press. But, these gutsy, undiscou rageable women, like Celing Muñoz Palma, doggedly soldier on.

Unexpected quo warranto

The marathon House (of arguably namby- pamby tutas?) hearings may finally end but then there’s the remarkable and unexpected quo warranto (QW) proceeding filed by the Solicitor General Joe Calida. All along, the talk had been of RA 6713, until Rep. Vicente Veloso ( former Court of Appeals justice) triggered a Eureka! moment in the Lower House, and in the SolGen’s QW petition, Compañero Joe unexpectedly hammered on RA3019, thusly:

“80. The SALN requirement in the Charter recognized what has already been in the statute books. As early as 1960, Congress imposed that requirement in RA3019. Section 7 of the law accordingly states:

“Section 7. Statement of assets and liabilities. Every public of- month of January of every other year thereafter, as well as upon the expiration of his term of of - corresponding Department Head, or in the case of a Head of Department or chief of an independent - dent, or in the case of members and employees thereof, with the - responding House, a true detailed and sworn statement of assets and liabilities, including astatement of the amounts and sources of his income, the amounts of his personal and family expenses and amount of income taxes paid for the next preceding calendar year:….( italics added)