A nation of dynasts

Will the latest move in Congress to address the elephant in the room—the constitutional prohibition against political dynasties—gain ground and finally succeed this time around?

The pending antidynasty bills have received a big push, thanks to the endorsement of the two most powerful elective leaders: President Marcos and Speaker Faustino Dy III. Dy filed his own version of the bill, while President Marcos endorsed the bill as a priority measure (along with three other anticorruption bills).

Under the current 20th Congress, at least 13 bills have been filed in the House of Representatives and five in the Senate to define and restrict political dynasties, thereby fulfilling the constitutional mandate to prohibit the concentration of political power among persons related by blood and close affinity. (see “Anti-dynasty bills differ in degree of kinship,” Headlines, 12/15/25). The major difference between the bills is the degree of kinship (second or fourth degree) that could result in disqualification.

The failure to pass an enabling law to give flesh to Article II, Section 26 of the 1987 Constitution—”The State shall guarantee equal access to opportunities for public service, and prohibit political dynasties as may be defined by law”—has resulted in political clans often occupying every elective office in the land.

In the House alone, at least 226 of the 318 members have relatives in public office. Four families have two siblings serving as senators, totaling eight, or approximately one-third of the 24-member Senate. In the local government units, the Philippine Center for Investigative Journalism counted at least 113 of 149 city mayors as belonging to political dynasties (as of January 2025).

This blatant omission to codify the principle that could ensure a level playing field for all candidates has monopolized political power and control of the national and local budgets in the hands of these dynasts. These few families dictate how the scarce resources of our nation of more than 112 million Filipinos will be allocated.

“Exceptional in persistence and scope.” Just this June, the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), an independent think tank based in the United States (www.cfr.org), noted that at the highest level, Philippine politics has “historically been dominated by a handful of political dynasties, making it hard for a politician to rise through the ranks and gain the presidency.”

The CFR acknowledged that, aside from the Philippines, many Southeast Asian and South Asian states have dynastic politics. “But according to research by a group of Filipino economists, ‘Political dynasties in the Philippines are exceptional in their persistence and scope. Almost 80 percent of Congress and well over 50 percent of all elected local government officials are from political families.’ Their research also shows that just having this level of dynastic politics bloats the government, leads to corruption, inhibits new business creation, and leads to greater inequality and poverty,” CFR stressed, quoting the research done by the Ateneo de Manila University School of Government. (You can access the research here: tinyurl.com/2vbdttpm)

Consequences. There’s no denying that the passage of an enabling law on the constitutional prohibition against political dynasties is long overdue. We’ve been waiting for its passage for almost 39 years. Continued inaction will only worsen the consequences that have hampered innovation and development, particularly in the countryside, where poverty, hunger, and joblessness are most prevalent.

In terms of democracy, the picture has become murkier in the recent elections, suggesting that if this state of affairs continues, we might as well admit that our democratic project is a miserable failure. Dynastic political clans have torpedoed the sacred exercise of the right of suffrage because allowing members of the same family or clan to run for all available elective offices does not afford the electorate any alternative choices. The winning chances of a few courageous independents daring to go against well-entrenched political families with well-oiled machinery and armed with the benefits of being incumbents are almost nil.

The impunity with which these dynasties have made our elections an exercise in futility, or merely a rubber stamp for legitimizing political power at the expense of genuine elections, is evident. The sheer absurdity of siblings or their closest relatives running against each other for the same post, or members of the same family running and winning elective posts from congressmen (for all districts in some provinces) to governors and mayors (including vice governors and vice mayors, in other cases) cannot be considered examples of participatory democracy by any stretch of the imagination. More than just being callous, this political behavior betrays the greed of dynastic families for power and their shameless seizure of public office through the ballot.

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