The will to pass anti-dynasty law
Will it be the 20th Congress that will finally succeed in passing an anti-political dynasty bill that previous Congresses have failed to do?
The public is keenly watching whether the Senate and the House of Representatives will follow through on President Marcos’ directive to prioritize four legislative measures, including banning political dynasties from holding public office.
It was Palace press officer Undersecretary Claire Castro who made the policy announcement earlier this month, however, and not Mr. Marcos, who himself is a product of a family dynasty. His father and namesake was a former president, his sister is a senator, and one of his sons, as well as two cousins and a cousin-in-law, are House members.
The House itself, per Inquirer Research data, has at least 226 of its 318 members who have relatives in public office.
The Senate, with only 24 members, has also seen members of the same family occupy seats—either at the same time or one term after another. In the current body, for example, there are four sets of siblings or half-siblings: Alan Peter and Pia Cayetano, Jinggoy Estrada and JV Ejercito, Raffy and Erwin Tulfo, and Camille and Mark Villar. They already occupy a third of the Senate.
There is a lot of skepticism, therefore, about whether Congress will be up to the challenge, given its current composition.
Fourth degree of consanguinity
Two days after Mr. Marcos made the call, Speaker Faustino “Bojie” Dy III and the President’s son, House Majority Leader and Ilocos Norte Rep. Ferdinand Alexander “Sandro” Marcos III, jointly filed House Bill (HB) No. 6771, which proposes extending the prohibition to the fourth degree of consanguinity or affinity.
Other lawmakers have filed anti-political dynasty bills earlier. Per a report in this paper, at least 13 bills have been filed in the House and five in the Senate under this Congress, with key differences on the degree of kinship. The majority of the proposals restrict relationships to the second civil degree of consanguinity or affinity. This would cover immediate family members such as spouses, siblings, children, grandparents, parents-in-law, and siblings-in-law.
Other bills, including the one filed by Dy and Rep. Marcos, propose extending the prohibition to the fourth degree of consanguinity or affinity.
HB 6771, however, has been sharply criticized for its provision that bars members of a family from simultaneously holding the same elective office, but would still allow them to occupy different levels of government positions and jurisdictions. It also does not prohibit a member of a political dynasty from immediately succeeding an incumbent relative in the next election.
A narrow vote
As the progressive Makabayan bloc pointed out, this means that “relatives who are senators, congressmen, governors, and mayors, or presidents, congressmen, governors, and mayors, can sit together.” In other words, this would not be a significant change from the current scenario at the House, where relatives can hold office as congressmen from different districts. “The only thing that is prohibited is relatives sitting together as senators or relatives sitting together as provincial or local officials,” it pointed out.
No anti-dynasty proposal has prospered over almost four decades since the 1987 Constitution, which calls for an enabling law, was enacted. Article II, Section 26 of the Charter states that “the State shall guarantee equal access to opportunities for public service, and prohibit political dynasties as may be defined by law.” This provision was highly debated among the constitutional drafters and was retained only by a narrow vote of 18 to 17. In the end, they chose to pass the responsibility of creating a law defining political dynasties to Congress.
Intense public backlash
The farthest that such a measure has progressed was in 1987—months after the Constitution was ratified—when the Senate approved one authored by then Sen. Teofisto Guingona Jr. It was sent for concurrence to the House, where a counterpart measure languished at the committee level. Succeeding bills have met the same fate, and it was rare for an anti-dynasty measure to make it past the committee to the plenary level.
Dissecting the merits of pending bills, however, will be pointless if the actions taken by legislators after Malacañang urged them to prioritize an anti-dynasty measure are merely performative amid strong criticisms and intense public backlash over corruption of public funds linked to anomalous flood control projects involving public works officials and prominent members of the Senate and the House.
While these bills are a start to finally breaking down the hold on power concentrated among a few families, it still remains to be seen whether these are merely political posturing to momentarily quell the massive public outcry.
If the President is serious about making this his legacy, he should certify anti-dynasty bills as urgent. As the proverb goes, if there’s a will, there’s a way. Until then, such pronouncements will only linger as hot air.
