Dynasties and restorative justice
Advent this year suggests a reason for hope, with renewed antidynasty moves, and from younger Filipinos. There is Mikee Defensor, grandniece of the late Sen. Miriam Defensor Santiago and daughter of Mike Defensor, who is very active in antidynasty efforts but has not even entered electoral politics.
House Speaker Faustino Dy III of Isabela, whose family goes back to the 1960s with the “original” Faustino Dy, has joined President Marcos in calling for action on the dynasties.
Mr. Marcos’ endorsement of antidynasty legislative action comes as a surprise, considering his lineage, from grandfather Mariano Marcos to father Ferdinand Marcos Sr. He also has a son, Ferdinand Alexander “Sandro” Araneta Marcos III, who is in Congress and is House majority leader.
For today’s column, I’m going to hold back from going into the details of the bills, because I suspect there will be more to come, and, quite frankly, I wonder how far the bills will go. Let’s not forget we already have antidynasty provisions in the 1987 Constitution with a provision (Section 26) explicitly stating: “The State shall guarantee equal access to opportunities for public service and prohibit political dynasties as may be defined by law.”
The section is not self-executory, and laws have to be passed for that. But we’ve made progress through the decades (smile), such as the prohibition on electoral bills going beyond a second term, even if, alas, husbands, wives, parents, and children can take turns being mayor, governor, congressman, etc.
What’s not discussed enough is the restorative justice angle in all this, i.e., how immense wealth and power are amassed through the political dynasties, even without the relatives occupying political positions. Part of the current corruption with flood control projects has been through nepo (nepotistic) links, subcontracting projects to the favored relatives who are not even in politics.
The Janet Lim Napoles scandal was a prime example, where Napoles— who is not a relative of any politician—was implicated in the looting of the Priority Development Assistance Fund, was convicted, and keeps getting extra years in her prison term. Not long after she began serving her term, one of her sons, based in the United States, began to flaunt his wealth in ways that could have made it into a long-playing bad-tasting comedy. Who can forget him showing off, while complaining, about the ankle bracelets he had to wear? (These are electronic gadgets that allow monitoring of a criminal without imprisonment.)
What we need to see is as full an accounting as possible of the looted public funds, something which would be impossible to do, but the Discaya couple already gave a sample of impunity when their stable of luxury cars were featured in media interviews, short of declaring, as Marie Antoinette did in the 18th century during the French Revolution “Let them eat cake,” them being the suffering masses. The couple seemed to have lost their heads earlier with their indecent exposure of wealth. Plunder sounds more dramatic in Filipino: pandarambong, drum roll please.
That is the danger of media coverage of corruption: it can desensitize the victims. What we need is restorative justice, which is not limited to court decisions. For example, some of the most eminent universities in the US and the United Kingdom are now starting to rewrite their histories and admit how their respectable institutions were built with slave labor and the proceeds of the slave trade. Long overdue apologies to the descendants of the victims have been issued, and they do not come close to reasonable calculation, but it is a start.
Corruption is so heinous because it blurs the distinction between the public and the private. The politicians, especially when they have consolidated their dynasty (which can happen in two or three elections), make the public private. Which is why I’m so concerned about how weak the public reaction has been to the almost arbitrary shifting of health budget funds (most especially because so much came from Philippine Health Insurance Corp. funds, on which people are so dependent for relief during catastrophic illnesses). The Supreme Court, thankfully, has ordered that funds be restored, but the masters of sleight of hand do not seem likely to be held accountable. Instead, we will probably be thanking them when the money is “returned” to us in the form of “ayuda,” when elections and floods come along.
Let’s keep hopeful and do our homework. De La Salle University political science professor Julio Teehankee uses the term “crafting of dynasties.” The political dynasties know about what goes into crafting: hard work, public memory across generations. It’s time we learn as well the counter-craftsmanship of restorative justice.
—————-
michael.tan@inquirer.net
