Political dynasties

A lot of people have recently been talking about the issue of political dynasties...

Well, I actually think that it should start to become much more apparent (and hopefully more obvious) to more and more Filipinos that the issue of “Political Dynasties” is not really a political issue that can be prevented through specific legislation that bans political dynasties from existence.

What Filipinos need to realize is that in truth, political dynasties are actually rooted in the problems of the Philippine economic environment, particularly the largely exclusive nature of who can be upwardly mobile, and more importantly, the availability of such opportunities for economic upward mobility and the availability of jobs.

Let’s all look around us... How many Filipinos have what can be truly called “gainful employment?” Very few. Most Filipino employees in the Philippines earn salaries that can’t even sustain a single person, how much more a family of 4! Even greater numbers don’t even have true employment and fool themselves into thinking that their being “takatak boys” or “watch your car boys” or “punas windshield” boys is a form of employment.

With such an economic scenario where the only real means for these people to survive is to have a benevolent relative (usually a mother, father, or an ate) working as a construction worker in the mid-east, a maid in HK, or a “dancer” in Japan, how can poor people rise to become middle class or middle class people rise to become rich?

There is hardly any real social mobility to speak of unless working abroad is factored in. (And Filipinos who work abroad - even if they’re capable and financially better off than when they were back home - cannot be part of Philippine Politics since they’re not “ in country.”)

And why do we have this problem?

Because of the lousy economic policies enshrined in our anti-economic progress anti-development anti-MNC 1987 Constitution.

These provisions keep most Filipinos poor, jobless, unemployed, or forced to find real gainful employment abroad.

Who then are the only people who can succeed in such a scenario?

It’s those old elites who know how to use the pre-rigged system to their advantage and those who know how to be friendly with said elites.

With such an overly exclusivist economic system, it’s no wonder that the number of people who are rich enough to actually get actively involved in politics are people from the same old families!

We have a system that is rigged to keep most people jobless/unemployed, and keeps only the few already rich people continuing to be the only few rich people around.

And thanks to that system, we end up with the same candidates, the same surnames, the same bloodlines in our politics.

In short, it is our economic system’s lousiness and system of active exclusion of most people that limits the entry of would-be politicians purely to those coming from already established oligarchs and “prominent families in small areas.”

Not only that, we have a political system (the Philippine Presidential System) in which campaign costs are prohibitively expensive since people must run for “big offices” —> mayor, governor, president or senator, unlike in Parliamentary-based countries in which campaign costs are borne not by individuals but by serious parties who join in contests as real parties in each little constituency, in which election costs are low.

(In countries using parliamentary systems, there are no elections for who becomes “mayor” instead, the elections are for city or municipal council, and the most senior among the councilors acts as mayor, albeit the real responsibilities are actually shared among the entire council. Same thing with Chief Ministers (for states/regions) and Prime Minister (national level) In such a system, electoral costs are lower, and are more easily borne collectively by real parties, unlike in the highly personalistic system in place in the Philippines.)

Getting rid of political dynasties will not happen overnight. 

Political dynasties are caused by the fact that the only few people capable of entering politics come from the same old established families who already have the necessary monetary resources and the old connections in order to launch their campaigns. This is because of our lousy economic system. Fix the economic system to allow more people to move up the economic ladder and create a huge class of rich people and an even bigger class of middle-class people who are unlikely to be dazzled by largesse and patronage, then we get rid of the economic aspect of the political dynasty issue.

Secondly, shift away from the overly expensive Presidential (and single-person executive system —> Governor/Mayor at lower levels) System that makes electoral campaigns extremely expensive. By shifting to the Parliamentary System, where electoral costs are clearly much lower, people of higher mental capabilities who may not be from the old oligarchic rich elite can enter the race and even win.

Creating legislation to “ban” political dynasties won’t really work. That’s nothing but working on the symptoms. We need to create real solutions.