Trapped by dynasties

The Holy Week falling within an election cycle is an opportunity for us to reflect on the local and national candidates and to help us decide who among them deserve our votes.

In the race for the Senate, I have already initially formed my choices, though I might not fill out all 12 slots for the position. More or less, my preferences align with the senatorial choices in the UP Law 2025 mock elections, in which the following candidates emerged as the top 12, in this order: Bam Aquino, Kiko Pangilinan, Luke Espiritu, Heidi Mendoza, France Castro, Teddy Casiño, Leody De Guzman, Sonny Matula, Arlene Brosas, Danilo Ramos, Liza Maza, and Danilo Arambulo.

Among the top 12 choices of UP Law students, however, only Bam Aquino and Kiko Pangilinan have a realistic chance of breaking into the Senate’s winning circle this year. However, they need all the push they can get from supporters and allies, and there is still enough time to go all-out and make the necessary adjustments to reach the goal of winning in the final stretch a few weeks from now.

Notably, within that same set of UP Law’s top 12 senatorial choices, none come from dynastic families, except for Bam Aquino, by virtue of being part of the politically-prominent Aquino clan. But even his classification as part of a political dynasty is debatable, considering that no other Aquino has held elective office, at least at the national level, for the past several years.

Last year, during one of my visits to foreign embassies in Manila as part of a series of dialogues with civil society and NGO networks, I was struck by how spot-on a foreign analyst was about the country’s main problem today. It was an unexpected but welcome validation of what many of us here have long known: that the Philippines’ main problem --the one keeping it stuck in a lower-middle-income trap-- is its political dynasties.

The 1987 Philippine Constitution addresses political dynasties in Article II, Section 26, which states: “The State shall guarantee equal access to opportunities for public service, and prohibit political dynasties as may be defined by law.” The phrase “as may be defined by law” means that the provision is not self-executing. Congress still needs to pass a law that defines what constitutes a political dynasty.

We all know what members of political dynasties say about this; that it’s not their fault if the people vote them into office in free and fair elections. Dynastic politicians argue that as long as people freely choose their leaders, even if they come from the same families, there is no reason to push for a ban.

Actually, there is. In his 2012 scholarly work, Ronald U. Mendoza examined how many members of the 15th Congress came from political dynasties. He found that dynasties made up 70% of district lawmakers. They were richer and won by wider margins than others. But the places they governed were worse off. Their constituents had fewer opportunities and faced more poverty and inequality.

The framers of the 1987 Constitution were not naïve to the Filipino’s deeply-rooted cultural tendencies that shape our politics: our inclination to choose the familiar, to re-elect names over platforms, and to place familial trust over institutional integrity. They foresaw that unless political dynasties were prohibited, these cultural patterns would weaken the foundations of the modern state.

The anti-dynasty provision was thus a safeguard against the perpetuation of a political culture fundamentally at odds with modern and democratic governance.