‘Let dynasts kill each other off’

A lawmaker pushing for an antipolitical dynasty bill has offered a way out of any deadlock among family members who failed to agree on who among them should run for elective posts. They should just “kill each other off” to settle their problem.

Capiz Rep. Fredenil Castro acknowledged that House Bill No. 3857, or the proposed act prohibiting the establishment of political dynasties, did not have all the answers for deciding who among family members should run for public office to comply with the proposed two-per-family limit on political clans.

“Under the proposed law, three or more relatives within the prohibited degree—that is second degree by affinity or consanguinity—will be consulted on who should run if there are five or four or three of them planning to run for office,” said Castro, chair of the House committee on suffrage and electoral reforms.

“In case they do not agree among themselves, everybody will be disqualified. The proposed law is effectively telling them ‘if you don’t come to a settlement with each other, nobody will run from your family,’” he said in a forum.

He said Congress planned to approve the antipolitical dynasty law before October.

Aimed at Binays

In an interview, Castro gave what appeared to be the main reason for Congress to fast-track the passage of the antipolitical dynasty bill—to prevent what he claimed was a looming possibility of one family controlling Malacañang, the Senate and the House of Representatives.

Castro said he agreed with Caloocan Rep. Edgar Erice, the bill’s main sponsor, that the country was faced with the possibility of having one family controlling Malacañang, the Senate and the House in the next administration.

“There will be no check and balance anymore,” he said.

In his sponsorship speech, Erice said that without an antidynasty law, nothing would stop Vice President Jejomar Binay, if he would win the 2016 presidential election, from appointing Sen. Nancy Binay Senate President and anointing the relative who would replace Makati Rep. Abigail Binay (who is in her last term) as Speaker of the House.

In an interview, Erice said that ideally, the antidynasty bill should be approved before the filing of the certificates of candidacy in October so that it would immediately be implemented in the next administration.

Emerging consensus

Castro said there was an emerging “consensus” among lawmakers to allow other family members to run in other provinces outside the clan’s political bailiwick.

But Castro said that some political rivals could take advantage of the enmity among political clan members by paying off parents or siblings to run for office just to sabotage the chances of their kin.

In this case, Castro said the only option was to see who would be the “last man standing” in the family. “Let them be so that if their numbers would be reduced after killing each other, the others would be qualified.”

Castro said he was assured by Majority Leader Neptali Gonzales II that HB 3857 would be voted on for second reading in the plenary before Congress adjourns sine die on June 11.

The lawmaker said Speaker Feliciano Belmonte Jr. had assured him that the latter would support the bill despite having several relatives in key elective posts, such as his daughter Quezon City Vice Mayor Joy Belmonte.

This was confirmed in a text message by Belmonte: “I am in favor of the antidynasty law which we hope to pass in the House. It is not directed at any family in particular, but to all who fall within our definition.”

Charter against dynasties

Castro said that while the 1987 Constitution explicitly prohibited political dynasties, Congress had not enacted an implementing law to prevent a few families from cornering the country’s elected posts.

A 2011 study by the Asian Institute of Management Policy Center found that seven out of every 15 legislators belonged to political dynasties and that they were often voted in poor districts.

In a phone interview, Castro said he was also assured by his counterpart, Sen. Aquilino “Koko” Pimentel III, that the Senate would fast-track the passage of its version once the House approved the measure.

Erice said the bill had become an “easier sell” in the House, where 60 to 70 percent of the members belonged to a political clan, after the bill’s provision on the number of elected positions to be allowed for each family was relaxed from one to two.

He said this meant that only 60 members of the 280-strong House would be affected by the bill compared with the 108 members who would be affected if the bill would limit it to one position per family.

Overlapping terms

The bill bars relatives up to the second degree of consanguinity to hold or run for both national and local office in successive, simultaneous, or overlapping terms.

Those related by blood or marriage cannot run at the same time even if they have no relative as an incumbent elected official.

Castro said the prohibition would encompass national, local, barangay and youth elective posts as well as seats for party-list organizations in the House.

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