Poison pill

In the corporate world, a company’s board, wary of a hostile takeover, may resort to a defensive strategy known as a “poison pill,” designed to make the acquisition prohibitively expensive or even impossible.

The term traces its origins to an old wartime practice where soldiers carried a literal poison pill to avoid capture.

The Anti-Dynasty Bill is among the four measures President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. asked legislators to prioritize — without certifying them as urgent — during a meeting of the Legislative-Executive Development Advisory Council on 9 December.

The following day, House Bill 1297, the Anti-Political Dynasty Bill, was filed with much fanfare about reform, but a review showed it is a compromise bill.

It seeks to implement Article II, Section 26 of the 1987 Philippine Constitution, which mandates that the State shall “guarantee equal access to opportunities for public service and prohibit political dynasties as may be defined by law.”

Nearly four decades after the Constitution was passed, no enabling law materialized, allowing dynasties to flourish unchecked.

To prevent a strong anti-dynasty bill from gaining traction, the ruling majority, dominated by powerful political dynasties, has opted for a weak version.

First-filer advantage under House and Senate rules will make the measure the base, or mother, bill during committee deliberations.

All other proposals will be automatically referred to the same committee and treated merely as potential amendments.

It is a poison pill bill not meant to become a good law, but designed to dilute and ultimately kill genuine reform.

Among the bill’s weak provisions is that it does not ban immediate succession, allowing a term-limited official’s relative to slide into the vacancy without pause.

The omission is glaring since other anti-dynasty bills, including those from progressive blocs, prohibit such a maneuver.

It is also silent on cross-level and cross-jurisdictional tactics, which allow dynasties to diversify and flourish, such as family members dominating the Senate while others are members of the House or hold local positions.

The abuse is particularly evident in the party-list representation, where dynasties hijack “marginalized sector” slots.

Some 40 of the 156 party-list groups are tied to dynasties, and the bill does not offer a safeguard against this.

It is thus engineered for the survival of dynasties, which make up 70 percent of House members.

Filing the bill is politically safer under Marcos Jr., who ironically descends from the political clan that inspired the clause, according to a political analyst.

De La Salle political science professor Julio Teehankee cited an incumbency advantage which, according to studies, has been behind the dominance of dynasties in national and local elections.

Such a situation is “a political market failure. This cannot be considered a democracy. Regulating and banning it as mandated by our Constitution is the solution.”

“This is not about democracy. It’s not about freedom of choice, as these politicians claim it is about. It’s not even about profession. What this is about is the concentration of power,” Teehankee said.

The contentious measure will struggle even more to pass through the gauntlet of close family ties in both the House and the Senate.