Anti-Political Dynasty Bill filed

In a fresh bid to end the monopoly of power of political families in the country and finally fulfill the 1987 Constitution’s mandate to prohibit political dynasties in the country, Senator Robin Padilla filed an Anti-Political Dynasty Bill on Monday.

Citing a 2011 Harvard Academy study that highlighted how political dynasties become a product of the tendency of elites to persist and reproduce their power over time, Padilla said “it is time to break the barriers that prevent the best and the brightest from serving the Filipino people.”

“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,” he said in Senate Bill 2730.

A political dynasty was defined in the bill as the concentration, consolidation, or perpetuation of political powers by persons related to one another.

Meanwhile, political dynasty relationship refers to the situation where a person who is the spouse or a relative within the fourth civil degree of consanguinity or affinity of an incumbent elective official holds or runs for an elective office simultaneously,” the bill read.

“A political dynasty relationship shall also be deemed to exist where two or more persons who are spouses or related to one another within the fourth civil degree of consanguinity or affinity run simultaneously for elective public office within the same city and/or province, or nominees to any party-list, even if nether is so related to the incumbent elective official,” it said.

Under the proposed measure, “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.

“(N)o person who has a political dynasty relationship to the incumbent shall immediately succeed to the position of the latter,” the bill said.