Here in the Philippines, “blood is thicker than water” in matters of need—and in matters of governance.
When The Philippine Daily Inquirer featured Congressman-elect Doy Leachon, a former taxi driver who defeated a 30-year-old political dynasty in Oriental Mindoro in this year’s elections, it may have given some people a sense of hope that Philippine politics could cease to be a family business.
The general result of the recently concluded midterm elections, however, says otherwise.
The Senate is a good case study. JV Ejercito joins brother Jinggoy Estrada in the upper chamber while Senator Alan Cayetano’s re-election preserves a brother-and-sister tandem with his younger sister Pia. The four join the roster of incumbent senators—which includes TG Guingona, Bongbong Marcos, Serge Osmeña, Koko Pimentel, Ralph Recto, Bong Revilla and Tito Sotto—who have all had parents or close relatives in the Senate.
The Senate’s lower counterpart in the legislative branch is not so different. In the entire century of the House of Representatives’ existence, from 1907 up to the post-People Power era, the same 160 families have continuously dominated the institution, as reported in a 2007 article by the Philippine Center for Investigative Journalism. The recently concluded midterm elections merely reinforced this finding, with a recent Al Jazeera article predicting that 80% of the incoming congressmen come from political clans.
“These elections have shown that by and large, these [political] dynasties have prevailed,” said Vice President for Social Development Atty. Jaime Hofileña.
Same old surnames, same old concerns
Meanwhile, eight decades after President Manuel Quezon underscored that progress “must extend to every hamlet and hearth in this land,” poverty is still a national concern. The current number of poor Filipinos is roughly between 26 to 27 million, nearly twice the country’s entire population during Quezon’s time.
More disturbing is the apparent relationship between political dynasties and poverty, an idea that finds empirical support from a 2012 study by the Asian Institute of Management (AIM). According to the study, areas under “dynastic jurisdiction” scored lower in the Human Development Index while having high figures in traditional poverty measures such as poverty gap and incidence.
Executive Director Ronald Mendoza of the AIM Policy Center, who co-authored the study, reminds the public that correlation does not imply causation. However, he warned that the “two competing explanations” for the study’s results give a “worrying picture.”
“Either poor people continue to vote for political dynasties, or dynasties continue to frustrate poverty-reduction efforts,” Mendoza elaborated in an online article on the economic research portal Vox last year.
Will a law solve the problem?
The greatest irony in the dominance of clans in politics is its explicit prohibition by the highest law of the land. Article II, Section 26 of the 1987 Constitution mandates the State to “prohibit political dynasties as may be defined by law.”
Leaders from anti-political dynasty movements point out that assigning the role of defining “political dynasties” to the dynasty-dominated Congress has prevented the enforcement of the constitutional provision. Yet others are wary of the possible implications of an enacted anti-dynasty law.
“Inasmuch as we have political families that are bad for the country, we also have related officials who have been good for public service,” explains Ateneo Debate Society president Dwight Tan.
If a law is passed broadly defining a member of a “political dynasty” as someone who has relatives in public service, Jesse Robredo would have never been the mayor of Naga City, since he is related to the Villafuertes of Camarines Sur.
On other hand, as noted in a press brief, the Ateneo School of Government (ASoG) considers a politician dynastic when he or she has “more than one family member in any elective public position or [is] running for elective positions and holding such position for several terms before passing it on to either the immediate or extended family members.” If the Congress adopts the ASoG definition, Richard Gordon—the Ateneo community’s most preferred senatoriable in a pre-election survey by the Ateneo Statistics Circle—could not have run as senator.
“Being related to an official does not automatically make you unfit for public service,” Tan says. “This is an issue best addressed on a case-to-case basis.”
Mindsets matter
In the end, the cure to political dynasties may come from the people themselves—by changing the way they think and vote. This is an assessment shared by David Yap, co-author of the 2012 AIM study and faculty member of the Economics Department.
Yap, however, clarifies that the problem is not the poor and their educational attainment. “It’s not just about the level of education,” he says. “It’s about people who care about their democracy, invest in their democracy and believe they are part of the democracy the entire duration of their citizenship, not just during elections.”
Yap argues that dynasties are a “self-perpetuating” system; in order to defeat an incumbent dynasty, one has to match its political and financial capital. If the challenger wins, he is likely to create his own dynasty too. “Dynasties are ‘bad’ because they prevent other people from participating in democratic processes,” he said.
Yap asserts that more than legislation, the best weapon in combating dynasties is empowerment. “You have to make sure that people, both citizens and prospective candidates, have the capacity to participate in full,” he concludes.
