Charter guarantees transparency in use of funds

This refers to your editorial last Sept. 16 titled, “Beyond control.”

The 1987 Constitution is clear as day: “The Judiciary shall enjoy fiscal autonomy. Appropriations for the Judiciary may not be reduced by the legislature below the amount appropriated for the previous year and, after approval, shall be automatically and regularly released.” This provision was included by the framers of our Constitution precisely to safeguard judicial independence, one of the core values of a republican democracy. Our constitutional structure decrees that we have three co-equal branches of government, each sovereign within its own sphere, limited only by the Constitution.

There is so much wisdom in the constitutional delineation of powers among the three branches of government with a system of proper checks and balances, and where no one department has an overruling influence over the other. As Montesquieu wisely counseled, the accumulation of all powers in the same hands, whether of one, a few, or many, and whether appointed or elected, may justly be pronounced as the very definition of tyranny. We do not have to look far back in our history where executive usurpations led to authoritarianism.

The present constitutional structure holds the Judiciary, like the other two branches, always accountable within the legal system and to the broader political spectrum. Transparency will always reign as guaranteed by constitutional safeguards through, say, the Commission on Audit. In fine, at present, the three departments are hardly beyond control.

Just a word more, on the Court echoing its spokesperson. I speak for the Court. Never the other way around.

—JOSE MIDAS P. MARQUEZ,

court administrator,

chief, Public Information Office,

Supreme Court of the Philippines,

Padre Faura Street, Ermita, Manila