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TODAY’S preoccupation with the composition of the Supreme Court is
reminiscent of the days when United States President Franklin
Roosevelt, frustrated in his attempts of pass legislation regulating
business and industry as a solution to the economic travails of the
US on his election, thought of a way of putting in more progressive
justices in the Supreme Court.
President Roosevelt was the first to wield the
powers of the Presidency into a most powerful position on the earth.
This is the same powers that President Barack Obama hopes to use as
he tries to restore economic order and FDR-style liberalism.
On Roosevelt’s first term alone (1933 to 1937)
the US Supreme Court struck down 12 pieces of legislation under his
New Deal. Roosevelt was so frustrated that he decided to confront
the Supreme Court with his judiciary reorganization bill. The bill
would have allowed him to appoint additional judges—and
justices—for every one who was 70 years old but who did not
retire.
His opponents called this a court-packing bill.
They pointed out that Justice Louis Brandeis was among the most
forward-looking justices but was 80 years old. But if an additional
justice were named, it might give Roosevelt a majority in the
nine-member Court. The Senate, however, killed the bill. But as a
result of the discussion, Chief Justice Charles Evans Hughes and
Justice Owen Josephus Roberts joined the liberal justices and gave
Roosevelt his needed majority to push through his New Deal program
whose constitutionality was questioned before the Court. Hughes and
Roberts were crucial in approving labor’s right to form unions and
bargain collectively.
The Supreme Court is looming large in the
Philippine political picture as the House of Representatives appears
to be pushing through a resolution for the Congress to constitute
itself into a constituent assembly in order to amend the
Constitution. A major question here is whether Congress should vote
as a one body or separately as Senate and House or Representatives,
not only to approve the resolution but all other matters that would
come up before the constituent assembly.
With seven members of the Supreme Court due to
retire before the question comes up before the court, the Opposition
is expected to examine closely their replacements that would be
appointed by the President. The opposition having been frustrated in
impeaching her out of office is determined that her term be not
extended beyond 2010.
What brought out the fierce opposition was not
only a Cabinet meeting prayer asking that the President be able to
serve beyond 2010 but a resolution filed by Rep. Hermilando Mandanas
of Batangas seeking a term extension for the President and Congress.
The prayer was supposed to be joke and the Mandanas resolution was
supposed to have been withdrawn in August yet. But so sensitive is
the subject that the Opposition took those as signals to go into a
warpath.
There is no gainsaying the fact that there is a
need for changes in the Constitution. Some businessmen, and they
pack a lot of weight, think that the limits to the amount of foreign
investment in certain sectors of the economy are no longer valid in
the faced of globalization. Spaceship earth is running out of
resources and we need to conserve what we have left. And as some
point out, we need capital and expertise to do this.
Again, the ire of the opposition is being vented
on congressmen because they are supportive of the government. The
present Congress was elected in 2007, three years after the
presidential election. After Mrs. Arroyo assumed office in 200l,
there has not been a moment when she was not under attack. If these
attacks had a solid basis, the Congress that was elected in 2007
would have a majority of critics against her. And yet, these are the
same congressmen that have frustrated all attempts to impeach her.
Perhaps we may pick up something in what is
happening in Thailand. Protesters against the government have
succeeded in paralyzing the operations of Parliament and the two
major airports of Bangkok. In a variation of our People Power, they
demanded the resignation of Prime Minister Somchai Wongsawat. They
accuses him of being a stooge for deposed Prime Minister Thaksin
Shinawara, his brother in law. The protesters are composed mostly of
middle-class Thais who complain against democratic-style elections
because the rural voters who constitute the majority are susceptible
to vote-buying. They want the legislators to be appointed, at least
the majority of them, because the rural voters cannot be trusted to
vote responsibly.
The tension was eased when Somchai was forced to
resign by the Thai constitution court dissolved the top three
political parties for electoral fraud. If the court did not
intervene, the military may have had to do it. So what else is new?
opinion@manilatimes.net
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