Portugal’s Prime Minister clearly is fed up with the Portuguese Republic’s Constitutional Court whose judges have developed a habit of knocking back his austerity proposals, saying they are ‘unconstitutional.’
Pedro Passos Coelho today launched an unveiled attack on this crucial body in Portugal’s fledgling democracy and advocated the need for "much greater scrutiny" in the selection process for those judges who guard the Constitution of the Republic.
The Prime Minister argued that the judges that determine the constitutionality of his parliamentary acts "should be subject to far greater scrutiny than they have had so far."
The statements were made in Coimbra during the closing of the conference rather ironically titled "Democracy and new Representations," a get-together that is part of the 40th anniversary celebrations of the Partido Social Democrata (PSD).
When it comes to judge selection, "We have not been as demanding as we should have been," said the Prime Minister as if it was up to him, or indeed any Prime Minister or political party to make the selection.
Pedro Passos Coelho questioned why is it that a society with transparency and democratic maturity can give these powers to someone who had not been “democratically scrutinised.”
"Choose better judges" - underlining his total disagreement with the rejection of three key parts of his State Budget 2014 announced last Friday, Pedro Passos Coelho argued that the problem is not in the Constitutional Court but rather with the quality of the judges that make up its numbers.
The Constitutional Court is composed of thirteen judges. Ten in fact are elected by parliament and the other three are co-opted from other courts according to a selection made by those judges already elected.
Francisco Balsemão, one of the PSD’s founding fathers and former Prime Minister, said that the Constitutional Court assumes "a political attitude and is increasingly restrictive," and that the Portuguese Constitution is the fundamental law of the country, and that the judges are not sufficient adaptable to these changing times.
