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Explainer 5

That was a clip from the cable TV series, “Rome,” in which…

The Roman Senate gave Caesar a crown; and the Republic died.
What’s to stop a body of frightened men –whether it’s the Roman
senate or the German Reichstag, from surrendering to a dictator?
To the Americans, the answer lay in not allowing legislators to
appoint Caesars.

Tonight, we’ll look at two principal differences between the


parliamentary and presidential systems.

I’m Manolo Quezon. The Explainer.

I.

Last week, we tackled parliamentary government on its own terms.


This week, let’s discuss how the parliamentary system compares
and contrasts with the system we all know, the presidential system.

In our discussion, we learned that the parliamentary system


evolved: as kings lost power, parliament gained authority. We can
say parliament absorbed the powers of the monarchy. Which is
why, in the parliamentary system, the head of state has little, if
any, power, except, if the king is respected and wise, a kind of
moral authority like we see in the King of Thailand. But in a
parliamentary system, real power belongs to the head of
government, the prime minister. And he exercises power by
authority of parliament and no one else. Since the prime minister,
as head of government, is answerable only to parliament, he is both
master and servant of parliament. Or to be precise, of his party.

In a presidential system the president is both head of state and head


of government: the president represents the nation, but he also
appoints, and presides over, a cabinet composed of people who
owe their jobs to him, and no one else. A President has power, not
because parliament has authorized him to do so, or because his
party controls Congress, but instead, because he has been elected,
either by the people or their representatives, to form a government.

The President’s government, or administration, does not make


laws, and it does not have authority over the courts, as a parliament
does. Those powers, united in a parliament, belong to two other
institutions under the presidential system.

There is Congress, the body that makes laws, and there are the
Courts, of which the highest is the Supreme Court, which act as a
referee on legal disputes.

The President and his government are, therefore, both independent


and dependent on the other two branches of government:
independent because a President can run the government
departments basically as he sees fit, but dependent because the
money must come from Congress, and all his actions, like those of
Congress, are subject to review by the courts.

Hence we meet one of the two main principles that separate the
parliamentary from the presidential system. The first principle of
the presidential system is called the separation of powers. We’ll
discuss the second principle, checks and balances, a little later on.

The presidential system was invented in America. If the


parliamentary system in many ways evolved in Britain, why did
America not adopt that system? Why did they establish a new
system no one else had used it before?

The founding fathers of America were paranoid and resentful


people. They’d seen their first, painful attempt at a constitution,
which began in 1777 and was only approved in 1781, called the
Articles of Confederation, fail. They met again in 1787 to try to do
better. Their efforts resulted in the American Constitution.

What were the American revolutionaries paranoid about?


Everything. They were paranoid about establishing mob rule. They
were afraid of the poor gaining power and depriving the rich of
their property. They were paranoid about each other, being rich
and powerful men. They were frightened by the thought of what
might happen if one or some of them got more power than the rest.
They were paranoid about one faction, one group of men, gaining a
permanent advantage over the other factions. You see, their
reading, combined with practical experience, had made them
hyperactively suspicious of human nature.

In the 18th century, there was a French noble known to us as the


Baron de Montesquieu. He wrote a profoundly influential book,
“The Spirit of Laws.”

At the time he wrote his book, there were only a few basic kinds of
government. Each kind, Montesquieu argued, depended on a
particular kind of guiding principle to make them work.

A democracy, for example, required virtue, for if an ordinary


person were to be given power by other ordinary people, only a
dedication to virtuous governing would prevent tyranny;

A government by aristocracy required moderation, for if the


nobles, never known for modesty or a lack of self interest, simply
governed to plunder and steal, it would lead to eternal conflict and
corruption;

A monarchy, if a king had power, needed to be based on honor, for


kings by their nature were above the law, and so the only sure way
to ensure they ruled justly is if they had a sense of shame arising
from a sense of honor;
And finally, for despotism to work, it had to depend on fear: a
tyrant, or despot, no one feared was a doomed dictator: and a
society dependent on dictators would always be fearful of power
struggles.

To the Americans, who had just rebelled against both a parliament


composed of immoderate aristocrats, and a monarchy which they
believed had no honor, despotism was not an option to consider.
But neither was democracy worth while if couldn’t foster virtue.

What’s the enemy of virtue? The corrupting influence of unlimited


power. I like to think that the founding principle of American
government is a phrase coined much later, but which we all know:
as Lord Acton wrote, power tends to corrupt, and absolute power
corrupts absolutely.

Therefore, one defense against the dangers of government by


whimsy, and the weak defense of liberty tradition has to offer, was
not to rely on an unwritten Constitution, as the UK has to this day,
but rather, to write it down so everyone, both officials and ordinary
citizens, knows who can do what.

Now even if the American revolutionaries were paranoid, they also


had respect for the individual. The surest defense of personal
freedom, in their mind, while ensuring a viable national
community, was a popular idea at the time, that of Subsidiarity.

Subsidiarity means that the state is really composed of many


institutions; these range from the family, to churches, to schools,
towns and states; government is what binds all these together by
ensuring peace and order; but the state has the obligation not to
interfere in each part’s legitimate jurisdiction; invading what is
properly the territory of a part, such as the family, or of property
owners, endangers liberty, and thus, every part of the whole.
Parliamentary supremacy to them, was as potentially tyrannical as
a dictator or a king with absolute powers.

Let’s go back to the year 1780, when the people of the state of
Massachussets clearly expressed in their own state Constitution.

[Slide: "In the government of this commonwealth the legislative


department shall never exercise the executive and judicial powers,
or either of them; the executive shall never exercise the legislative
and judicial powers, or either of them; the judicial shall never
exercise the legislative and executive powers, or either of them - to
the end that it may be a government of laws and not of men."
-Constitution of State of Massachussets, 1780]

Notice that famous sentence, a government of laws and not of men,


which explains a long-standing criticism of parliamentary
government: that it tends to be government by factions, which can
ignore both the opposition or the public, which has no defense
outside of elections.

So if the Americans, and we, in turn, have a system in which


powers are separated into three branches, how do those branches
deal with each other? The manner they do so, operates on the
principle of checks and balances. How this principle works, helps
us understand important differences between the presidential and
parliamentary systems. And that’s what we’ll tackle when we
return.

II.

That was from the first Star Wars. The film saga is actually a
lesson in how checks and balances are the last line of defense
against tyranny.
Let’s look at this graphic and go through how checks and balances
works out in the presidential system. Each of the three branches,
the Executive, the Legislative, and the Judicial, has definite
responsibilities, but its behavior is subject to some kind of review
by the other.

If you are the President, you appoint a cabinet, to head


departments. But there is at least a minimum guarantee that you
have appointed people with some kind of competence. That
guarantee is that your presidential appointments require
Congressional confirmation. Now if both the President and
Congress are irresponsible crooks, you might get some moron in
the cabinet. But chances are, since the cabinet doesn’t come from
Congress, and since both Congress and the President derive their
mandate from the people, if a presidential appointee is
controversial and unpopular for whatever reason, that appointment
can be blocked.

The President’s cabinet runs the departments, but the budget for
government doesn’t go straight to the President. If that were to
happen, he could treat the treasury like his own personal wallet,
like the Marcoses did. Congress has to approve the budget, and
therefore, there’s at least some kind of guarantee of transparency
and control over spending.

At the same time, only Congress passes laws. There are three
controls over the laws Congress chooses to pass. If, for example, a
law is harmful to the President’s program, he can veto part of it or
the whole thing. This also makes sure that in case Congress gets
hysterical, someone can force the reconsideration of the law. If
Congress, despite a veto, thinks the President’s just being stubborn,
it can override the veto.

And even if the President and Congress collude or plot to approve


tyrannical or illegal laws, the Supreme Court, independent of the
President and Congress, can declare the law unconstitutional and
thus, not valid. The President, too, if he thinks Congress is
ignoring the needs of the times, can propose legislation, but he has
to convince Congress to pass it.

The presidential and parliamentary systems both claim to include a


system of checks and balances. The difference is that in the
presidential system, it is explicit, while in the parliamentary
system, it is implied. Again, we go back to a question the
Americans tried to resolve: can any government be expected to do
what is right? Their belief was, no: the system must be designed so
that government’s parts serve to limit the natural tendency of all
officials to try to bully everyone else.

And this is something crucial to understanding why checks and


balances can be so complicated and time-consuming. Efficiency, in
the presidential system, is not an ideal: to the Americans,
governmental efficiency would raise government above the people,
who wouldn’t have any real chance to prevent government from
becoming abusive. To prevent abuse, the presidential system
prefers each branch abuse each other, because it allows ordinary
people to go about their lives undisturbed.

We can also look back to critics of the parliamentary system


during our First Republic, to see why some people prefer checks
and balances.

The Malolos Republic was a parliamentary Republic: Emilio


Aguinaldo was made President not through the vote of the people,
but the vote of the Malolos Congress, a unicameral body.
Apolinario Mabini, who was chief political adviser of Aguinaldo,
thought that setting up a parliament was premature. He was even
more dissatisfied with the kind of parliamentary government set
up.
"…the first Congress … imported into a country disturbed or
threatened by a revolution the Constitution adopted by another
nation in time of peace… Why did they not copy the Constitution
adopted by the French Revolution or by the North American one or
by any other nation that fought for its independence? At least logic
and common sense would so counsel."

Mabini asked why the Malolos Republic was patterned after the
oligarchic constitutions of some South American countries and
post-Napoleonic France, rather than the constitutions of people
who’d actually revolted against tyranny, such as the Americans or
the original constitution France drew up when it overthrew Louis
XVI. But being a good patriot, he decided his duty was to serve,
since his President had agreed to the new system.

But as our first prime minister, Mabini couldn’t resist making a


devastating criticism of the system. This happened when he
opposed a decision by the Malolos Congress.

Faced with a shortage of funds, the Congress proposed to establish


a bank, to lend money to the Republic, at interest. The bank would
be set up and owned by people close to the members of Congress.
Being a parliament, neither the President, Aguinaldo, nor anyone
else, would be able to stop such a self-serving proposal.

Mabini ended up invoking the only real check and balance under a
parliamentary system: he took his case to media, what we’d call an
expose today. Mabini wrote in a newspaper, “"Such is the work of
the first Congress: a work of obstruction and not of development."

The response of the members of Congress was to spread rumors


Mabini was paralyzed because of a venereal disease. Mabini, of
course, was dismissed as prime minister, and only history has
vindicated him: but it didn’t do either the national treasury, or the
reputation of the Republic, any good at the time.
If the separation of powers in the presidential system was viewed
as a move forward, compared to parliament’s combining the
executive and legislative, and if checks and balances are meant to
prevent government steamrolling over ordinary people, why is
there a proposal to abandon these two ideas? We’ll talk to ___, to
find out why these two ideas are being challenged.

Closing:

Parliaments and presidential governments have both fallen under


the sway of dictators.

But in defense of the presidential system, presidents who have


become dictators have often had to shut down a constitutionally-
independent Congress, as Marcos did in 1972. There is less of an
opportunity in the presidential system to legitimize a dictatorship:
a Congress may not stop a tank, but the tanks having to surround
Congress on behalf of a president means no one can suffer from
the delusion that what’s happening is either constitutional, or legal.

I once saw a documentary on the unicameral parliament of China.


It’s a singe-party dictatorship, of course. Two delegates dared to
vote against their party. Fellow delegates rushed to shake their
hands –how thrilling, they said, to see democracy in action!

One of the two said, if it’s so thrilling, why didn’t you also vote
against? The only response they got was, “well, you know, there
are many reasons…”

Actually, only one. There aren’t any checks and balances.

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