Four governance reform bills

After being lectured upon, shamed and ordered, unanimously, by the Supreme Court to return, asap, the P60 billion hijacked by his Cabinet people from cash-starved PhilHealth to boost the General Appropriations Act (GAA, or budget) with extra cash, only for the money to be waylaid by the corrupt, President Bongbong Marcos Jr. (PBBM) has executed a PR masterstroke.

PBMM has asked Congress and the Senate to prioritize passage of four landmark reform measures: the Anti-Dynasty bill; Independent People’s Commission Act; Party-list System Reform Act and a Citizens Access and Disclosure of Expenditures for National Accountability or CADENA Act that seeks to institutionalize transparency and accountability in the budget process.

The four are economic, political and social reform pieces of legislation. Two – the Anti-Dynasty Bill and the Party-List Reform – have languished in the legislative mill for decades, ignored by a Congress 80 percent of whose members come from political and economic dynasties.

If the bills become laws, if indeed that is President Marcos’ fervent desire, they will usher in a new era of governance never seen in this country – one that is clean, honest, transparent, inclusive, democratic and truly a government of the people, by the people, for the people.

An Anti-Dynasty law will stop families’ decades of monopoly over elective and appointive government positions. Initially to be covered are those related by second degree of consanguinity (based on genes) or affinity (by marriage) – grandparents, brothers, sisters, parents and children, husbands and their wives and/or mistresses and their children.

An academic definition of a political dynasty is a family with at least two of its members securing at least one elected position in at least two elections.

Under an Anti-Dynasty Bill filed by Sen. Panfilo Lacson, no second degree relative of an incumbent elective official seeking re-election shall be allowed to hold or run for any elective office in the same city and/or province in the same election.

In case the incumbent holds a national position, like the president, vice president and senator, his second-degree relatives are disqualified from running only within the same province where the national official is a registered voter. In case none of the candidates are related to an incumbent elective official within the second degree of consanguinity or affinity, but are related to one another within the said prohibited degree, they, including their spouses, shall be disqualified from holding or running for any local elective office within the same city and/or province in the same election.

Bills pending in the House and the Senate seek to reform the party-list system and limit participation to only the truly marginalized – the poor, squatters, farmers, fisherfolk, drivers and OFWs and not just to anybody who claims to have a party and has the money (often billions) to mount a nationwide congressional campaign.

In 2009, Supreme Court justice Antonio Carpio ruled that “it is not necessary that the party-list organization’s nominee to ‘wallow in poverty, destitution and infirmity’ as there is no financial status required by the law.” This effectively allowed anyone to be a party-list congressman.

The Carpio ruling enabled corrupt contractors and political dynasties to invade and dominate the party-list system. This system produced the likes of Ako Bicol party-list congressman Elizaldy Co who forthwith, as House appropriations chair, produced the most corrupt budget ever – in 2024, resulting in the most corrupt Congress ever, and triggering the largest single act of corruption – the looting of over P1 trillion of flood control funds in three years, July 2022-2025, at the repugnant rate of P50 billion a day.

Today, we have 64 party-list congressmen, a third of them dynasties, another third contractors and the last third, basically bored do-gooders with nothing better to do in life.

Senate President Tito Sotto and Sen. Kiko Pangilinan filed on Nov. 12, 2025 SB 1512 to create an Independent People’s Commission to hold government officials accountable for irregularities in public spending by creating an independent people’s commission to investigate anomalies in all government infrastructure projects.

IPC will replace the now decapitated Independent Commission for Infrastructure which has become the research unit of the Office of the Ombudsman. IPC will have subpoena and contempt powers, can freeze assets of suspects, issue hold departure orders, blacklist corrupt contractors, offer immunity protection to witnesses and deputize law enforcement and investigation agencies.

The CADENA Bill of Sen. Bam Aquino will digitalize and publish online minutes, records, proceedings and contents of the national budget process. It will require all budget-related documents, such as the National Expenditure Program, Budget of Expenditures and Sources of Financing and project details, including bill of materials and contractor information, to be uploaded online for everybody to read, check and verify.

A national transparency platform, “automated and verifiable by design,” seeks to prevent the deletion or alteration of public records. Agencies that fail to publish required documents within seven days face administrative penalties. Those that upload false or misleading data may be charged criminally. The platform will be a structured digital format, open source, traceable, tamper-resistant and interoperable, accessible to AI and outside analysts.

Only 100 families have ruled the economy and politics of this country in the last 100 years. Dynasties are blamed for our having repetitiously corrupt and unrepentant public officials whose dominance of political and economic power is blamed for the perennial poverty of Filipinos. In 50 years, the Philippines deteriorated from being Asia’s most prosperous and vibrant economy to the region’s economic laggard – thanks to our rapacious dynasties. Because these corrupt rent-seeking families diverted public resources to themselves, we have today the most stupid 15-year-olds on earth. They cannot read, cannot write, cannot understand what they read and cannot count beyond 20.

Normally, in other regimes, to overthrow a rule by dynasties you line them up against the wall and eliminate them with extreme prejudice. The PBBM-backed bills offer a peaceful and hopefully, effective and lasting solution.

The President, however, did not certify the four bills as urgent.

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