SEN. Robin Padilla yesterday filed Senate Bill No. 2730 proposing to prohibit political dynasties in the country.
“Calls to stop the monopoly of political power remain unyielding. It is time to break the barriers preventing the best and the brightest from serving the Filipino people,” Padilla said in the Explanatory Note of SBN 2730.
He lamented that framers of the 1987 Constitution “missed the opportunity” to define political dynasties.
“To merely state our policy against political dynasties and leave it to Congress to pass an enacting law to breathe life into it is futile since members of the Legislature come from political dynasties,” he said.
“Given that this measure complies with the legislature’s mandate to enact an anti-political dynasty law and is a step towards leveling the playing field in politics and governance, the passage thereof is earnestly sought,” added Padilla, who is the chairperson of the Senate Committee on Constitutional Amendments and Revision of Codes.
Padilla noted that relatives who run for public office have been in the uptrend, citing data of Philippine local elections from 1988 to 2019 which showed the number of governors with at least one relative in office increasing by almost 39 percentage points, from 41 percent in 1988 to 80 percent in 2019.
The same data showed the dynasty proportion of vice governors rose from 18 percent in 1988 to 68 percent in 2019
The percentage of mayors in the dynasty also increased gradually from 26 percent in 1988 to 53 percent in 2019.
“Only municipal and city councilors have kept their dynasty share below 25 percent since 1987. The dynasty share for councilors had only increased from 18 percent in 1988 to 23 percent in 2019,” Padilla said.
Padilla said a study by Tusalem and Pe-Aguirre in 2013 showed that congressional funds are higher in areas with more political dynasties, but these provinces also have higher crime rates and poor governance, and there are noted lower spending on employment, infrastructure, and health care.
“Political dynasties, in effect, have exhausted resources to attain economic and political dominance while at the same time compromising political competition and undermining accountability,” the actor-turned-senator said.
Padilla also cited a Harvard Academy research study in 2011 which highlighted how political dynasties became “a product of the tendency of elites to persist and reproduce their power over time, which undermines the effectiveness of institutional reforms in the process.”
Under the proposed bill, no spouse or person related within the fourth degree of consanguinity or affinity, whether legitimate or illegitimate, full or half blood, to 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, or any party list in the same election.
If the constituency of the incumbent elective official is national in character, such relatives shall be disqualified from running only within the same province where the former is domiciled or in any, including the same, national position.
“No person who has a political dynasty relationship to the incumbent shall immediately succeed to the position of the latter,” the bill also proposed.
The bill requires any person running for any elective public office to file a sworn statement with the Commission on Elections (Comelec) that he or she does not have a political dynasty relationship with any incumbent public official running for an elective public office in the same city and/or province other than the position earlier mentioned.
A petition to disqualify a candidate on grounds of political dynasty may be filed before the Comelec, which will conduct summary proceedings. The Comelec shall deny due course to any certificate of candidacy filed in violation of the proposed Anti-PoliticalDynasty Act.
While the votes for a respondent shall be counted if the Comelec cannot decide on the petition before the completion of the canvass, his or her proclamation shall be suspended if the basis for disqualification is strong. If the disqualified candidate has been proclaimed, the candidate shall ipso facto forfeit the right to assume the office.
