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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.
I.
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.
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.
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.
Let’s go back to the year 1780, when the people of the state of
Massachussets clearly expressed in their own state Constitution.
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.
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.
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.
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."
Closing:
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…”