EDITORIAL 45: Checks and balances
With the publication, Geneva 1748 of Montesquieu’s work “The Spirit of Laws”, was born political theory of separation of powers within the state structure, based on a system called “checks and balances” .
It has been almost 325 years of the birth of Montesquieu (1689) and the current crisis has shown, not only the need for checks and balances system, which some have tried to delete, but also the need to extend them.
In the old separation of religion and state, during the Enlightenment was added separation between the branches of government, and now, it seems necessary to supplement with the election by direct popular vote of the heads of each power and also add the separation of the political activity and economic activity.
Labor market reforms, financial market and state budgets, often misnamed favoring economic development budgets are clear examples of of the system failures emerged, the new unified state powers, through negative effects on the population of countries.
We can affirm that the State must control economic activity to prevent abuses and monopolies, exert some redistributive activity and ensure, citizenship, equal opportunities and access to health, education, justice and protection of the elderly, but when the State, some political parties and politicians become active economic agents, by failing to act in most cases as the first citizen obligations and to remain outside the system of checks and balances, they become an element distorting.
In this sense an ex ombudsperson has accused the authorities of “using the law to protect their own interests and without assuming their own responsibilities encouraging an arbitrary State with politicians, bankers and executives who act against citizens “
The growing public debtthe acceptance of revolving door policy, the use of state budgets and the media as a system to maintain the status of specific organizations would be avoided with the necessary separation between politics and economy and would live no one extractive caste, maintaining their privileges, impoverishes the rest of the population with higher taxes, the consequent rise in unemployment, and reduction of basic public services.
The direct election of public officials of the powers of the State and political representatives in open lists are part of the solution by the separation, without tolerance, between policy and real economic activity.