Make no mistake: the anti-political dynasty bill that is prevailing in Congress lacks the legal teeth to actually stop the proliferation of political families.

The staunchest critics of the proposal within the august chamber have already pointed out in the two days of plenary debates that the bill has very loose restrictions, allowing many family members to still hold office at the same time, and succeed each other after they max out their three terms.

Even civil society groups outside Congress have sounded the alarm over the bill which they believe would institutionalize fat dynasties.

But the House leadership is hell-bent on embracing this proposal, a watered-down version of the already weak original bill that came from the desks of House Speaker Bojie Dy and Majority Leader Sandro Marcos.

In the lower chamber, the main person tasked with standing for hours and debating critics of the measure is House suffrage committee chair Zia Alonto Adiong, a dynasty scion from Lanao del Sur in Mindanao.

How is he justifying the measure?

The bill’s impact, supposedly, will be felt by thousands of political families

Adiong said the House majority’s anti-dynasty bill could displace thousands of dynastic officials.

His estimates came from the House’s internal policy and budget research department, which found that 9,852 out of 17,983 local elective posts, accounting for 54% of the total, are held by dynasts.

The House has yet to release the full study, so it is unclear if the dynasts counted are those who will be directly affected by the bill’s definition of a political dynasty relationship.

Under the bill, a political dynasty exists when an incumbent official is related to another person within the second degree of consanguinity or affinity — that is, a spouse, parent, child, sibling, grandparent, grandchild, or an equivalent relative by marriage.

Assuming that the research pertains to these relationships in their tabulation, political families can easily find a workaround by fielding relatives within third and fourth degrees of consanguinity or affinity.

That’s common in Philippine politics. Given how tight-knit Filipino families are, they can just field their aunts and uncles, nieces and nephews, great-grandparents, great-grandchildren, first cousins, grand-nieces and grand-nephews, great-aunts and great-uncles, great-great-grandparents, and great-great-grandchildren.

Such relationships are not covered by the restrictions in the House’s anti-dynasty bill.

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There is supposedly support for a second-degree limit on consanguinity and affinity

The original bill by Speaker Dy and Congressman Marcos included relatives up to the fourth degree of consanguinity and affinity in the proposed dynasty ban. After the bill hurdled the committee, the restriction was relaxed.

In the plenary, Adiong forwarded numerous arguments to justify the second-degree limit.

He said the Commission on Elections (Comelec) actually requested that the regulation be limited to the second degree, as a fourth-degree ban would be a “logistical nightmare” in terms of validating political dynasty relationships.

“It would be too burdensome for the Comelec to actually do some assessment when it comes to relationship within the fourth degree of consanguinity and affinity. In many cases, there are first-degree cousins who are living apart from each other. One is living in Metro Manila, the other one is living in Cotabato City,” Adiong said.

Adiong also said the framers of the 1987 Constitution did not reach a consensus on the specific degree of relationship, with lawyer Jose Nolledo and eventual Supreme Court Justice Adolfo Azcuna suggesting a prohibition on relatives within the second degree. Former Comelec Chairman Christian Monsod, another member of the 1986 Constitutional Commission, pushed for a fourth-degree ban.

“They have not resolved this issue. That’s why they passed this on to the Congress, because they could not even have a majority of the votes so that they can decide which degree,” Adiong said, referring to the constitutional provision that prohibits dynasties yet leaves it to Congress to define what a dynasty means.

The ‘will of the people’ argument is used

To be fair, some longtime advocates of the anti-dynasty bill have not closed their doors on relaxing the ban. In the Senate, the bill that passed the committee of Senator Risa Hontiveros, a staunch lobbyist for the measure, only proposes to ban relatives within the second degree.

The problem is how creative House lawmakers have been in writing the measure to allow overlapping constituencies across government levels.

In more traditional versions of the proposal, only one family member is allowed to hold either a national post or a local post. Some versions may allow one family member each. In the House version, one family member is allowed at the national level, one in every provincial government, one in every city or municipal government, and as many congressmen as possible.

As pointed out by numerous opposition lawmakers who debated against Adiong, dozens of members from the same family can hypothetically still hold office at the same time.

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Adiong argued that the bill should balance the need to prohibit dynasties with respecting constitutional guarantees.

His point: citizens should be able to vote for who they want, and politicians should be able to be voted upon.

“Any restriction should be reasonable and should not be unconstitutional and should not be discriminatory,” Adiong said. “If we disallow a certain family (member) simply because they share the same family… that is tantamount to undue disqualification, even if they have not done anything wrong.”

Near-passage in the House

Adiong said in an ambush interview that the majority has the numbers to pass the present anti-dynasty bill. It was slated for approval on second reading on March 18, but the long list of interpellators and limited time apparently delayed the vote until the House returns from its two-month recess in May.

This version of the proposal, however, will have a difficult time prospering in the Senate, home to four pairs of siblings who are unlikely to cave in to a measure that will shrink their political capital.

Speaker Dy is nonetheless proud of this bill, mentioning it as among the supposed accomplishments of the House under his leadership during his closing speech before the break. Dy is from Partido Federal, the party of President Ferdinand Marcos Jr., who has included an anti-dynasty legislation in his list of priorities.

It is important to take note that the father-and-son Marcoses, Dy, and Adiong are dynasts who will hardly be affected by the proposal they seek to pass.

The President’s posturing, however, came at a time when his approval numbers were dwindling, and followed the public works corruption fiasco, a scandal he exposed but later boomeranged, leading to an impeachment complaint that he easily survived – thanks to his allies in Congress.

Opposition lawmakers already maximized their speaking time in the plenary to voice their frustration — Representative Sarah Elago insists it legalizes the existence of dynasties; Representative Chel Diokno says it allows those families to expand their hold on power; and Representative Edgar Erice outright calls it a sham.

The House has tried but failed over the past 39 years to pass such a measure; the closest effort before this year was in 2014, when a similar bill was elevated to the plenary under the leadership of Sonny Belmonte. Why did that attempt fail? There had been a lot of negotiations to dilute the bill, and Belmonte later said he did not want the House to pass a “show piece” — a toothless legislation that “does not say anything.”

The perspective of the present-day House runs counter to that. Despite criticisms, Adiong said the bill is a “deliberate step” toward fulfilling a constitutional mandate.

Is it really? – Rappler.com