Stop political dynasties

I have long wanted to find out if etymologists have come across or even thoroughly studied the word regroove as it was used by some radio announcers years ago. My visit to the internet yesterday showed that lexicographers have only considered regroove in the industrial context of creating or restoring grooves, particularly in tires, by carving into the rubber to restore tread depth and improve traction and nothing about the repetition of musical sound.

I heard this term from my colleagues when I hosted a radio music program decades ago. In those times, we played, presumably for the listening pleasure of our radio audience, records of chosen singers on turntables. We then had no CDs, Spotify, Bluetooth, Google, Safari, YouTube and what have you. Magtukar lang gyud mi og plaka. A deep scratch on the vinyl would cause the needle, which is dagum in our dialect although technically called a stulus, to go back to an earlier part of that record. Literally the needle would jump and return to a groove and repeat the musical tone. Announcers in my time used the prefix RE to mean colloquially again and added it to GROOVE to achieve a play back.

Today let me “regroove” to a line representing the advocacy of the group called Coalition Against Incompetence and Political Dynasties (CAIP-D), headed by Atty. Eugene Orbita. I wrote, two columns ago, about the incompetence of Senators Lito Lapid, Bong Revilla and Manny Pacquiao and show biz personalities Willie Revillame and Philip Salvador to become members of the Upper House of our legislature. CAIP-D signalled the idea that we should NOT vote for these candidates this coming May election because the movement is of the belief that Lapid et al are uselessly incompetent to discern what laws to craft for the benefit of the entire Filipino body politic as they are incompetently useless during Senate deliberations of needed statutes. Better still, we shall use the remaining days of the campaign period to ask friends and relatives to reject these candidates.

Yes, today I will dwell on political dynasties and the equally important task of pleading with our countrymen NOT to vote for candidates Imee Marcos, Camille Villar, Pia Cayetano, Abby Binay, the brothers Erwin and Ben Tulfo. Before sharing with you a study on political dynasties that revealed the good reasons for our rejecting these senatorial aspirants, let me propose few questions that may indicate their obsession for power: Is it not enough for the Marcoses that there is a brother president, a son-governor, a nephew-congressman that they still want to put up a senator Marcos? We have already a Senator Raffy Tulfo who by the way is reportedly only a high school graduate. Do we still need two other Tulfo’s for our senators? Cannot Raffy, Erwin and Ben discuss over dinner table what is good for our country? Why do we need another Villar to join Senator Mark?

Ours is a democratic state and its republican form of government is anchored on the philosophy that our government is “of the people, by the people and for the people.” The words “of, by and for” the people will lead to no other conclusion than that the State shall guarantee equal access to opportunities for public service! It is primarily for this reason that the 1986 Constitutional Commission wrote in Section 26, Article II of the constitution the mandate prohibiting political dynasties.

A study defines political dynasty as the "concentration, consolidation, and/or perpetuation of public office and political powers by persons related to one another within the second degree of consanguinity or affinity." A graphic survey it conducted revealed that constituencies of local government units ruled by political dynasties are poor and undeveloped and the local government units themselves are ranked amongst the lowest. In carefully written literature, the study drew the linkage of corruption and officials belonging to political dynasties. Members of ruling class tend to promote their interests over public welfare.

We can extend the survey findings of corruption and misrule in local government units to the national level. That was what the EDSA People’s Power exemplified. The CAIP-D needs our support to rid our country of political dynasties.