A friendly Court?

President Benigno Aquino III. INQUIRER photo

President Aquino last week said he believed that the Supreme Court was less hostile and more cooperative now with the executive branch than before.

In the question-and-answer portion of his appearance at the World Bank-International Monetary Fund meeting in Washington D.C., Mr. Aquino said: “…I think there has been a change in attitude as far as the Supreme Court is concerned. They are now more like partners than they were before.’’

We believe that the President is wrong if he thinks that the Supreme Court should be “cooperative’’ with the Executive. The commission that drafted the present Constitution, and indeed, the delegates to the 1934 and 1971 constitutional conventions, thought it was best that there should be checks and balances among the executive, legislative and judicial branches of government. The system of checks and balances was designed to prevent abuse by any one branch of government.

In the martial law government of President Ferdinand E. Marcos, the system of checks and balances was done away with; the Executive was supreme and the President could do whatever he wanted to do without being checked or audited by the other two branches. The result was a dictatorship, a totalitarian government that could do whatever it pleased. We know what happened to the nation during the dictatorship.

President Aquino is wrong if he thinks that the Executive and the Supreme Court should be “friendly’’ with each other. The Supreme Court should not decide cases on the basis of whether it will please the Executive or not; the rule of law, under which our democratic government operates, dictates that cases should be decided on the basis of the law and the evidence, not on the basis of “friendship’’ or “cooperation.’’

War and sex

Recently, women in the strife-torn village of Dado in Mindanao brought peace to their community by threatening to withhold sex from their husbands if they kept fighting, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees reported on September 17.

Actually, the tactic is not new. It was portrayed by Aristophanes in the play, “Lysistrata.’’ In 411 B.C., the 20th year of the Peloponnesian War between Athens and Sparta, a Greek housewife, Lysistrata, asks the women of Athens to refuse all marital relations until Sparta and Athens make peace. At first the women refuse to participate in the “sex strike,’’ but later accede to Lysistrata and even think up of ways to frustrate their husbands should they try to insist on sex. Ultimately, it is the men who give up and agree to conclude a peace treaty.

Columnist Winnie Monsod said it was not the first time women were successful in trying to bring about peace. She recalled in her column that more recent attempts were in Liberia in 2003 (to end the civil war)—successful; Pereira, Colombia, in 2006 (girl friends of warring criminal gangs called it “the strike of crossed legs’’)—successful; Naples, Italy in 2008 (men made to choose between sex or New Year’s Eve fireworks)—successful but with some backsliding; and Kenya in 2009 (conflict between the president and the prime minister)—resolved within a week after the sex strike.

The sex drive is such a strong instinct that men would agree to do anything—even wage peace, not war—just to continue to have amorous relations with their wives and girl friends. Perhaps the “Lysistrata’’ approach should be tried in the peace talks with the NDF and MILF.

Low

All Time Low. That’s the name of the pop-punk band that played at the Smart Araneta Coliseum last Thursday night. But the words also best describe the acts of female teenagers who threw bras and panties on to the stage during the show. Well, at least, they did not strip themselves of their underwear right there in the coliseum and threw them onstage. Time was when these things were rightly called “unmentionables’’ and placed in cloth bags when they were hung out to dry. Now…we can only say, “O tempora! O mores!’’