After more than three weeks, the Senate concluded its fifth public consultation on the proposed law seeking to ban political dynasties on Thursday. The question now is whether it will hurdle the chamber if more than 50 percent of its members are products of dynastic families. 

Since the chances of the measure getting enough support in Congress, in particular, are slim, Wilson Amad—a former senatorial bet and a convenor of People’s Constitutional Reform Initiative—proposed that the public should determine the salient provisions of the anti-dynasty bill through a people’s initiative (PI). 

The Constitution empowers the public to directly propose, enact, amend, repeal, or reject laws through a PI or referendum.

He said the public’s participation in crafting the anti-dynasty law is crucial to ensure that the measure aligns with the sovereign will of the people—who experience first-hand the challenges caused by dynasties at the grassroots—not the preferences of lawmakers. 

“The reason is, we cannot trust the Senate, except for a good few, and [the House of Representatives] to decide [on] this. Why? They cannot act contrary to their nature or nurture,” he said during the Senate committee on electoral reform and people’s participation’s final consultative meeting at Xavier University-Ateneo de Cagayan.

Furthermore, he doubts that Congress will ultimately pass the proposal into law this time, given that it is still dominated by dynasties. 

Amad lamented that political dynasties are “worse” than addiction to illegal drugs because it “destroys generations.” 

The number of anti-political dynasty bills in the Senate jumped to seven after Senator Loren Legarda—whose son, Leandro Leviste, is an incumbent congressman—filed the latest on Thursday. 

On the contrary, lawyer Khristine Lazarito-Calingin, executive director of Balaod Mindanaw, believes that, for now, Congress should be trusted to craft the bill independently, especially since the measure is gaining traction and the number of proponents is growing. 

She surmised that conducting a PI at this stage would be costly, time-consuming, and could disrupt legislative work. 

Committee chairperson Risa Hontiveros, one of the bill’s proponents, said that while the proposal for a PI is “not time-bound”, it could serve as a prompt for further action. 

The Commission on Elections (Comelec) affirmed its support for the passage of the long-overdue anti-dynasty bill, advising Congress to streamline the crafting of the provisions to ensure effective implementation of the proposed law.

“It would be very hard for the Comelec to enforce it if the law passed is ambivalent, contains ambiguities, and is prone to loopholes,” Regional Election Director Renato Magbutay said, adding that the bill must be “friendly” or comprehensible to both the public and the incumbent or candidates for public office. 

Magbutay likewise emphasized that an anti-dynasty law that is free from loopholes could also empower Comelec to enforce it in areas with peace and order problems, particularly in the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao, where election-related violence and killings are prevalent. 

Lawyer Ernesto Neri, Associate Dean of the Xavier University Law School, strongly urged Congress to finally put an end to the never-ending cycle of political dynasties, in which power is concentrated in the hands of a few families. 

He argued that inequity, not poverty, is the root problem in the country, depriving the public of effective and good governance.

“If a society has a small group of people that holds so much power in a society where there is so much poverty, there is bound to be a rupture sometime,” he averred. 

Furthermore, he warned that political monopoly not only affects the community's economy but also affects access to justice by reshaping how the local justice system operates.

At present, the House of Representatives is also conducting public consultations for the passage of the counterpart measure of the anti-political dynasty bill.

Similar measures were filed in previous Congresses, but all languished at the committee level. 

No less than President Marcos Jr. had ordered Congress to prioritize the passage of the said bill in an ambitious effort to curb deeply rooted corruption, as exposed by the flood control scandal.

However, without the president’s certifying the bill as urgent, efforts to end the political dynasty could hit a roadblock, especially when the body mandated to pass such a bill is almost jampacked by dynastic families.