4 MIN READ
By RAFAEL SIRIBAN
www.nordis.net
Another proposal has joined the stalled anti-dynasty bills gathering dust. One can only imagine that somewhere in the Batasang Pambansa Complex, there is a room reserved for anti-dynasty legislation, none of which has ever come close to passing.
So in a dynasty-dominated Congress, the question remains the same: will these new bills end up in that hypothetical room?
As early as the Eighth Congress, right after the ratification of the 1987 Constitution, attempts were made to fulfill the mandate: “The State shall guarantee equal access to opportunities for public service, and prohibit political dynasties as may be defined by law.”
Filed by former Vice President and then-Senator Teofisto Guingona, Senate Bill No. 82 passed third reading in the upper chamber only to be blocked in the House of Representatives.
Since then, the closest an anti-dynasty bill has ever been to becoming a law came in the 16th Congress, when House Bill 3587 passed the committee level– the usual graveyard of anti-dynasty proposals– and reached the House plenary.
Available data on the Congress website shows at least 42 filed in the House and 27 in the Senate so far in the past Congress. Currently, five bills are filed in the Senate and 18 in the House.
On December 11, House Speaker Faustino Dy III and presidential son and Majority Leader Sandro Marcos, both from entrenched political families, filed a so-called “landmark” anti-dynasty bill that critics say is misleading and contains loopholes.
The proposals differ most in defining what a “political dynasty” is, particularly in terms of the degree of ties. For instance, Senators Risa Hontiveros and Padilla ban up to fourth-degree relatives, Bam Aquino up to third, and Kiko Pangilinan and Ping Lacson up to second.
Political analyst Julio Teehankee says the most effective bills would ban up to the fourth degree of consanguinity and affinity. These extend up to one’s first cousins, parents and children, aunts and uncles, grandparents and grandchildren.
He added that Dy and Marcos’ proposal, while preventing up to the fourth degree, still enables persons from dynastic families to rule across different places and levels. So, there can be senators, congressmen, governors, and mayors, down to barangay chiefs, who are related all at the same time. It also allows succession and partylist “hijacking,” in which relatives use the partylist system to entrench their dynastic rule.
Moreover, bills that prohibit up to the second degree of kinship, such as those filed by Representatives Leila De Lima, Pangilinan, and Lacson, typically reach the farthest point in the legislative process, according to Ona Caritos of the Legal Network for Truthful Elections.
Simply put: narrower scope, higher chances of passage. It’s complicated and nuanced, really.
There is something this time, though, that could either break this seemingly never-ending pattern or do nothing about it at all.
With these renewed proposals came President Ferdinand Marcos Jr.’s call for Congress to “prioritize” the Anti-Dynasty Bill, the Independent People’s Commission Bill, the Party-list System Reform Bill, and the Citizens Access and Disclosure of Expenditures for National Accountability (CADENA) Bill. Evidently, these measures are all related to the government corruption scandal that has haunted his term.
But before anyone gets their hopes up, there is a key distinction to note: Marcos Jr.’s call is not a certification of urgency.
The Constitution, under Article VI, Section 26(2), requires that a bill undergo three separate readings in both the House and the Senate on separate days before it becomes law. This is the standard procedure unless the President certifies the bill as urgent because it is needed “to meet a public calamity or emergency.” The President, then, is empowered to push the Congress to fast-track the legislation process by allowing them to hold the second and third readings on the same day.
So when Marcos Jr. advised Congress to prioritize these legislative measures, he was merely urging them to do so. It carries no direct procedural effect and rests heavily on his political influence. This is why critics say these are mere PR stunts unless he certifies the bills as urgent.
In response, Palace is now using the “public calamity and emergency” provision to justify why the president won’t certify the four bills as urgent. They argue that the Anti-Dynasty Bill and the three others do not meet this standard.
To quote Antonio Contreras writing in defense of Marcos, “These are structural reforms that require broad debate, not emergency measures that warrant bypassing constitutional procedures.”
But Marcos Jr. willingly made justifications when he certified the Maharlika Fund Bill in 2023 as “urgent,” even though it did not, by conventional standards, address any public calamity or emergency. Notably, past presidents have used this power to enact legislation that may not meet the usual criteria for a calamity or an emergency.
Rodrigo Duterte used it for the Anti-Terror Law in 2020, Corazon Aquino for bills aimed at standardizing and upgrading benefits for military veterans in 1989, and Fidel Ramos for the Expanded Value-Added Tax Law in 1994, among many other instances.
So it’s only fair to ask: what is “urgent” for the president? Is it only when it aligns with his personal agenda, but not when it’s a reform that may curb the Marcos influence significantly?
That is, of course, if this is all about saving face. And Marcos has every reason to save face. His latest approval rating of 21 percent from WR Numero shows he is one of the most unpopular presidents of the Fifth Republic, next to Gloria Arroyo’s 16 percent rating in 2010. The mass demonstrations since his State of the Nation Address have intensified outrage toward his administration, which has backfired on his attempts to be hailed as a crusader against corruption.
So, will we see a strong Anti-Dynasty Law being passed under the Marcos administration? Unlikely. Marcos himself comes from one of the most entrenched political families in the country. It is doubtful that he is willing to alienate allies from dynastic families who helped him into power. This would only cause further loss of not only his political influence, but also of his family’s. Ergo, Dy and Sandro’s watered-down bill of loopholes.
If the president wanted to, he would have already. And even if he did certify it as urgent, who’s to say that a dynasty-dominated Congress will pass one?
After all, politics is theatrical, and this move can be seen as an attempt at image repair. What matters is seeing right through the blurring line between optics and genuine will for reform. And if Marcos can prove these “face-saving” claims wrong, then I’d be more glad to welcome it.#nordis.net
