At the End of the Day

THE THEORY OF Constitutional Checks and Balances in government grew from the classical theory of separation of powers in goverment--between the executive, the legislative, and the judiciary. This allows a branch of government to provide a check on the other branch when it falls into the decadence of corruption and abuse of power. In theory, the legislative and judicial branches can reign on a rouge executive; the executive and the judiciary on a rouge legislative, and; the executive and legislative branches on a rouge judiciary. In fact, however, the executive and legislative branches of today have a hard time checking a rouge judiciary. In the general rule of the majority, a judiciary with majority behaving like they are not accountable to their wrongdoings, who can put a check on an institution that supposed to have "absolute" power in the interpretation of the Philippine Constitution? Of course, the problem is not the Constitution. It is the interpretation that

WITH THE CORONA counsels seeking the Supreme Court intervention to stop the Impeachment Trial on Chief Justice Renato Corona, and the Impeachment Court junking the Santiago motion for reconsideration (MR) against the issuance of subpoena on two banks to furnish the court records of Corona accounts, a showdown is offing between the Senate acting as an impeachment court and the Supreme Court known for its rulings "perceived as not impartial." There are two good things that will come out of this development. First, it will demand a show on how far the balance of power in the Constitutionally-mandated branches of "democratic republican government" work when such balance is assailed by no less than the Chief of the high court himself. With majority of associate justices known to be Corona allies as far as certain controversial rulings are concerned, there is a strong possibility that the majority of SC justices en banc will favor the petition to stop the impeachme