If Vice President Jejomar Binay will win in the 2016 presidential elections, he would be the best example of how a political dynasty can control national and local politics in the Philippines.
While Binay would be on the top of the Philippine officialdom as president, one of his daughters is a senator, another is a congresswoman, and a son, his namesake, is mayor of Makati, the country’s premier city.

The issue of political dynasties is not new in the Philippines and is not limited to the political opposition led by Binay.

In fact, incumbent President Benigno Aquino III is a third generation member of a well-known political dynasty. He is the son of the late President Corazon Aquino and the martyred Senator Benigno Aquino, Jr. His grandfather, the late Benigno Aquino, Sr., was one-time speaker of the House of Representatives.

Interior Secretary Manuel Roxas, the presumptive opponent of Binay in the 2016 presidential race, is also a third generation politician from a political clan. His late father, Gerry Roxas, was a senator and his grandfather was the first president of the Philippine Republic.

The list of the current crop of politicians who are members of political dynasties can go on and on.
In the Philippine Senate alone, three are sons of former presidents. The siblings Jinggoy Estrada and JV Ejercito are both sons of former President Joseph Estrada, who was ousted by a military-backed civilian uprising after only two years in office.

Senator Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos is the son of the late dictator Ferdinand Marcos. He is rumored to have ambitions to run in the 2016 presidential derby. His mother, the former First Lady Imelda Romualdez Marcos, now 84, is a congresswoman representing the province of Ilocos Norte in northern Luzon while a sister is the governor of the province.

A number of bills have been filed in both houses of Congress precisely to put an end to political dynasties as provided for in the Philippine Constitution.

Section 26, Article II of the 1987 Constitution states “The state shall guarantee equal access to opportunities for public service, and prohibit political dynasties as may be defined by law. “
But since l987, the Philippine Congress has failed to enact an enabling law that would implement the constitutional prohibition of political dynasties.

In Senate Bill 2649, also known as the Anti-Political Dynasty Act, Senator Miriam Defensor-Santiago defines a dynasty as a situation when an incumbent official’s spouse or his or her second- degree relatives hold or seek office together, or when a spouse or relative succeeds him or her.
Santiago said that her bill would level the playing field of the political arena and would open it to persons who are equally qualified to aspire for government elective posts but who cannot hope to win against well-entrenched politically-dominant families.

“In many instances, voters, for convenience and out of cultural mindset, look up to these ruling families as dispensers of favors and thus elect them or their relatives to public office,”Santiago said. Supreme Court Justice Antonio Carpio has defined political dynasties as a “phenomenon that concentrates political power and public resources within the control of a few families whose members alternately hold elective offices, deftly skirting term limits.”

One good example of how politically-entrenched families can circumvent the law is Mayor Rodrigo Duterte of Davao City in the southern Philippines. The feisty mayor is known for his extra- legal methods in going after the city’s hoodlums. Under the law, a local official can only hold office for three consecutive terms of three years each. When Duterte’s nine-year term as city mayor ended, he pushed his daughter to run for mayor and he as vice mayor and both of them won. After his daughter’s term as mayor lapsed, Duterte again run for mayor and has since regained his post.
Duterte’s case is being replicated in other cities and provinces in the country where members of political dynasties take turn in holding elective posts to the exclusion of other individuals who cannot win an election because of lack of resources.

A recent study by the Philippine Center for Investigative Journalism traced the emergence of political dynasties in the Philippines to the introduction by the Americans of electoral politics in the early 20th century, when voting was initially limited to the rich and the landed, who then monopolized public office. The study said that the motive behind political dynasties is primarily to protect the families’ interests in the legislature and executive branches of the government to the detriment of the majority.

“Political dynasties are a terrible indictment of the kind of politics we have,” said former Senator Aquilino Pimentel, Jr “I do not believe that any one family has the monopoly of talent to run the government.”

But Pimentel was being dishonest in his observation. His son and namesake, Aquilino Pimentel III, is now a senator of the Republic.

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