Aquino seeks ‘healthy compromise’ with SC

BERLIN—Talk of President Aquino wanting to remain in office hounded him in the final leg of his European trip here.

But Mr. Aquino sidestepped the issue and instead tackled the one “closest to my heart and that is not presidential term limits.”

“It is the question of judicial review,” he told his audience when asked during a forum organized by the Koerber Stiftung and the Asia-Pacific Committee of German Business Friday night.

The President said he was seeking a “healthy compromise” with the Supreme Court on when it should use its power to review the actions of the two other branches of government.

“What we are envisioning in this dialogue is to find that healthy compromise that gives them the power to provide the check and balance, but doesn’t tend itself to want to use of a power that is very, very strong and very powerful,” he said.

Mr. Aquino said such power was supposed to be used with “restraint” but had been “used too much.”

He earlier assailed the magistrates for striking down his Disbursement Acceleration Program and warned of a possible “collision” with the executive branch.

Mr. Aquino distinguished between how judicial review was hardly used during Martial Law and how it was purportedly applied more often after the Marcos dictatorship.

“It seems that we have swung from one end to the other extreme wherein before they didn’t want to interfere whatsoever, [but] now, it seems they feel compelled to interfere in anything and everything,” he said.

“Normally when you are in one position and you go to the extreme, if that initial position was wrong, the extreme normally is also wrong.”

The President earlier said he was open to amending the Constitution if only to limit the power of judicial review.