It was simply convenient for President Benigno Aquino III to sound off a call to Congress to pass the anti-dynasty bill so he could sign it into law before he leaves office.
Maybe he’s confident that his sister Kris Aquino won’t run for any government position. Maybe it’s a warning to his other relatives not to run for any government position simultaneously.
Or maybe Filipinos should take him on his word that he doesn’t want the country to slide back into the unlamented old days of martial law oligarchy instituted by the Marcoses and their minions.
To his credit, he’s not alone in wanting to see the end of the minority elite rule.
The current version of the pending anti-dynasty bill limits two family members from holding national or local positions. Sen. Nancy Binay, whose father Vice President Jejomar Binay stoked the fires for support to the anti-dynasty bill with his position to lift term limits indefinitely—one-to-sawa (sated) is how he termed it borrowing from a text and call promo—said the focus should be on appointed positions rather than elective positions.
Opposition to the anti-dynasty bill is mixed in Cebu, with Dumanjug Mayor Nelson Garcia complaining that the bill had no clear-cut definition of what a dynasty is.
Garcia defines a dynasty as something akin to royalty in which kings and queens pass on their privilieged lives to their sons and daughters to posterity.
He said this isn’t the same with the Philippines, where government officials are elected by the people.
The common excuse Garcia and other politicians always use is to challenge why we have to prevent people, even if they are family members or related by blood, from running for public office if they enjoy public support?
For politicians, it means continuing patronage, amassing a loyal following of barangay officials and supporters and, more often than not, using taxpayers money to prop up their fiefdoms.
Overstaying elected public officials get so comfortable in their posts that they soon treat critics and others who don’t support them as vermin.
One need only watch that confrontation between Makati City Mayor Erwin “Junjun” Binay and a subdivision security guard on YouTube to see for themselves how one family so entrenched in power treat other people lower than themselves.
We don’t know whether this anti-dynasty bill will be passed in time for President Aquino’s signing, but we do know this: the entrenched minority elite won’t allow anything to threaten their grip on power.
Congress will not let dynasties die.
It’s up to the people in the end to decide whether to let a moneyed, political elite continue to define governance at the highest levels.
Either we vote them out of power or we continue to serve them.
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