A year after ousting dictator Ferdinand E. Marcos in 1986, Filipinos ratified a new Constitution to fend off future autocrats and widen access to opportunities for public service. Among the key provisions was a ban on political dynasties.
Four decades hence, a handful of clans exercise a near monopoly on all levels of power, making a mockery of the country’s democratic institutions.
Dynasties control almost 80 percent of the House of Representatives and more than half of the Senate, according to Alex Lacson, the head of an anti-dynasty campaign network, Alyansa ng Nagkakaisang Mamamayan’s (ANIM).
A report by the Ateneo University School of Government said clans hold 85 percent of all gubernatorial posts and 67 percent of local executive positions.
In 1987, when the Constitution was ratified, there was no case of a husband and wife being a mayor and vice-mayor, or governor and vice-governor. Now, it’s very common, especially in the provinces, Lacson told UCA News.
All in the family
President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. recaptured Malacañang, the county’s seat of power, with a landslide victory in 2022. The Marcoses, who went into exile in the immediate aftermath of their fall in 1986, are now the country’s dominant dynasty.
The president’s sister, Imee, is a senator. Speaker Martin Romualdez is his first cousin on the side of his mother, Imelda. His son, Sandro Marcos, is the House senior deputy majority leader. The Speaker’s wife, Yedda Marie, and two of her cousins, as well as another cousin, Angelo Marcos Barba, are also members of the House.
Imee’s son, Matthew, is the governor of Ilocos Norte, the clan’s home province in the northern part of the main island of Luzon. Aunt Cecile Araneta-Marcos is his vice governor.
From Imelda’s roots in the central Philippines, another cousin, Alfred Romualdez, is mayor of Tacloban City in Leyte province. Other relatives head barangays, the smallest administrative units, which also function as electoral machines despite a law mandating neutrality.
An embarrassment of siblings
Anti-dynasty advocates’ worst nightmare emerged on Oct. 8, the deadline for filing certificates of candidacies for the 2025 midterm election. More than 43,000 registered to contest 18,000 posts nationwide.
All 12 members of the president’s senatorial slate come from political dynasties with multiple members in executive and legislative posts.
The next Senate will be full of siblings: Pia and Alan Cayetano, Camille and Mark Villar, whose mother, outgoing senator Cynthia, will be taking over Camille’s seat in the House of Representatives; incumbent senators JV Ejercito and Jinggoy Estrada, sons of deposed president Joseph Estrada.
The Tulfo clan, relative newcomers to electoral politics, seeks to have Erwin and Ben join neophyte senator and brother Raffy in the 24-member chamber.
Senator Ramon Revilla Jr. heads the largest dynasty in Cavite province, which had the second-largest number of votes in the 2022 national elections. The senator’s wife and two sons are in Congress. Other family members hold provincial and city posts.
Other popular candidates, like boxer Manny Pacquiao and actor Lito Lapid, also head dynasties.
By 2025, the Senate, traditionally the more independent of two legislative bodies, will be monopolized by clans.
From Luzon to Mindanao in the country’s South, the same scenario has unfolded.
In Pampanga, Governor Delta Pineda is swapping posts with his vice governor mother; two sisters hold local positions. The rival family of Deputy Speaker Aurelio Gonzales has four members running in the 2025 polls.
Finance Secretary and former senator, Ralph Recto, joined his wife, former Batangas governor Vilma Santos when she filed her candidacy for the same post, together with son Luis as running mate. A second son, Ryan, eyes a House seat.
Former president Rodrigo Duterte also filed his candidacy for mayor in Davao City, where he ruled for decades with his daughter, Vice President Sara. His son, Sebastian, the incumbent mayor, is his running mate. The oldest son Paolo will try for another term in the House. Paolo’s son, Rigo, is running for the city council.
Entrenched corruption
There are tremendous economic benefits to becoming a political dynasty.
The budgets are in the billions of pesos per province and congressional districts, and hundreds of millions per city and municipality. Not to mention other economic opportunities like land and mining claims in the provinces, Lacson said.
Former congressman and governance expert Walden Bello traces the growth of dynasties to the local, land-owning elite’s embracing of American machine politics, built on the exchange of jobs and social security for the long-term loyalty of the voter to the ‘boss’ and his party.
There’s an urban-rural dimension to the clan or elite system. Loyalties to clans are stronger in rural areas where they have greater control of resources like land and where poverty is high, Bello said.
With power comes abuse. When traditional and insurgent dynasties clash, blood flows.
The Ampatuan clan of Maguindanao, responsible for the 2009 election-related massacre of 58 people, including 35 journalists, rose to power under the first Marcos president.
Successive administrations coddled them for their power to command votes and their ability to rain violence on political enemies. A raid on their compounds following the massacre found arsenals with the weapons coming from the military and the police.
The Marcos clan reigns supreme in the field of pillage. The Supreme Court in September ruled that a sprawling Marcos estate in their home province was ill-gotten due to an unconstitutional lease dating from the dictator’s reign.
But that is a slim victory. In 2021, 35 years after the fall of the older Marcos, the Philippine state had recovered only 175 billion pesos (US$3 billion) worth of assets, less than 60 percent of the estimated 299 billion pesos looted.
Dynasties weaken checks and balances, according to Bishop Broderick Pabillo, Vicar Apostolic of Taytay in Palawan and chairman of the bishops’ Commission on Laity.
How can politicians be held accountable when their successors are related to them, Pabillo said. They protect the same interests together with the same cronies.
Bishop Jose Colin Bagaforo, president of Caritas Philippines, believes a new law curbing political dynasties could halve corruption in the country.
But there is little chance of dynastic lawmakers voting for their own demise.
www.ucanews.com/amp/political-clans-choke-fragile-philippine-democracy/106678