114 Chasing the Wind: Assessing Philippine Democracy declares that “accountability to such institutions appears as a mere impediment to the full authority that the President has been delegated to exercise” (O'Donnell in Diamond and Plattner 2009: 37). The experience of Chile is illustrative of this assertion. The intense rivalry between the presidency and the legislature was addressed by giving more powers to the President. Ironically, however, this resulted in weakening the legislature and the absence of broad support for the President's programs. As Arturo Valenzuela, a professor of government at Georgetown University and former Deputy Assistant Secretary for Inter-American Affairs of the U.S. Department of State, observed: “In Chile, there was an inverse correlation between the power of the presidency and the success of Presidential government. The stronger the President, the weaker the Presidential system—a perverse logic that came to a head in the Allende years” (Valenzuela in Diamond, Linz and Lipset 1995: 97). In the Philippines, the strong President enables the executive to encroach the authority of the Congress and the Supreme Court as well as the authority of other state bodies thus weakening horizontal accountability. Moreover, these same powers encourage employment of delegative authority and their abuse, thus placing the rule of law in jeopardy. In this section, the actual practice of separation of powers and system of checks and balances show executive encroachment on the power of other government bodies as well as the employment of delegative authority and the consequent abuse of power. The power over the budget is constitutionally vested in Congress which in practice is exercised by the President. Power over the Budget “The power of the purse” is vested in the House of Representatives under the 1987 Constitution. Article VI, Section 24 of the constitution states that: All appropriation, revenue or tariff bills, bills authorizing increase of public debt, bills of local application, and private bills, shall originate exclusively in the House of Representatives, but the Senate may propose or concur with amendments. (1987 Constitution of the Philippines, Article VI, Section 24). This constitutional power of the House of Representatives is supposed to vest it the principal role in the budget process. However, as observed by the Philippine Human Development Report 2008/2009, it is the executive and not Congress that, by law and practice, actually wields effective power over the purse (p. 31) This practice which started in the era of Martial Law has been