This does not bode well for a vibrant democratic system. Under our scheme of
government, each of the three branches (executive, legislative and judicial)
has the additional and important function of checking and balancing the
exercise of powers by the other in what is known as “checks and balances.”
The
Constitution enumerates the several ways each branch exercises this function.
For example, the president as head of the executive branch has the power to veto
any law passed by Congress; the legislative branch, through the Senate, must
ratify a treaty negotiated and signed by the president with another country
before it becomes binding; the judicial branch, particularly the Supreme Court,
has the power to invalidate the actions of both the executive and legislative branches
by declaring them unlawful.
The
conduct of legislative inquiries is one of the powers of Congress to aid it in
crafting legislations. Legislative inquiries help Congress pass new laws or
amend existing ones to address a particular problem, such as the current sugar
shortage. To be sure, this function has been abused several times by scheming
legislators to drag before them and publicly flail public officials they deride
or to grandstand on a particular issue without the least intention of crafting
a law from the exercise.
Given
the importance of the sugar shortage crisis, however, the executive must
cooperate with Congress in getting into the bottom of the problem so that a
solution can be found. Bongbong’s directive to Secretary Dominguez not to attend
the Senate inquiry is an alarming indication of his disrespect to a co-equal
branch of government, which forebodes an authoritarian tendency on his part.
We
all know what happened under Ferdinand Marcos, Sr.’s rule when he started
acting as the executive and legislative at the same time and controlled the
judiciary. Hopefully Marcos, Jr. is not trying to follow this playbook in snubbing
the Senate.
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