EVERY election season in the Philippines brings familiar choices — and familiar surnames marketed almost like brands that promise reliable public service.
For nearly four decades, the 1987 Constitution has carried a quiet but powerful instruction: The State shall prohibit political dynasties as may be defined by law.
And for nearly four decades, Congress has politely ignored it.
The reason is not hard to understand. The Constitution assigned the task of regulating political dynasties to an institution heavily populated by members of those very dynasties. Asking Congress to pass an anti-dynasty law has often seemed like asking a family business to legislate its own closure.
Yet today the question is once again on the national agenda: Can Congress finally pass an anti-dynasty law?
A recent Pulse Asia survey shows that 64 percent of Filipinos support the passage of such a measure. Meanwhile, the House committee on suffrage and electoral reforms has approved a proposed anti-political dynasty bill, though critics say it is a diluted version of what reform advocates had hoped for.
Still, even a modest measure has revived a debate that has lingered unresolved since 1987. Like many provisions of our post-authoritarian Constitution, the anti-dynasty clause was written with clarity of purpose, but unfortunately entrusted to the uncertain will of politics.
As a former member of the Senate — and once its majority leader — I remember vividly how discussions about the anti-dynasty provision unfolded in the early years after the Constitution was ratified. At times, the debate took on an almost surreal tone. Senators would rise to speak eloquently about democratic ideals, all while fully aware that their surnames were shared by governors, mayors, representatives and councilors scattered across the country.
The conflict of interest was not hidden. It was structural.
In those years, there were serious attempts to pass an implementing law. But as the discussion moved from principle to definition, which includes spouses, siblings, parents, children and cousins, the debate invariably drifted toward personal circumstance. Once lawmakers began imagining how the rules might affect their own families, the political will evaporated. After all, when an entire political culture grows accustomed to family succession, reform begins to feel like an act of self-displacement. Thus, the anti-dynasty clause slowly became one of the Constitution’s most eloquent but unenforced promises.
So, the question we must ask today is simple: Have times really changed?
Perhaps not enough. But something important has shifted.
First, public opinion has hardened. When nearly two-thirds of Filipino voters support anti-dynasty legislation, the issue can no longer be dismissed as the pet project of reform advocates or academics. It has entered the mainstream of public discourse.
Second, the public increasingly sees how political dynasties and corruption are intertwined. For years, politicians tried to separate the two issues. Corruption, they argued, is a matter of individual wrongdoing. On the other hand, dynasties, they insisted, merely reflect the voters’ democratic will.
But experience has shown that the two phenomena often reinforce each other.
A political dynasty is not automatically corrupt. However, dynastic politics creates the conditions in which corruption can thrive. When political power circulates within a single family, the normal mechanisms of accountability weaken. Elections become succession rituals rather than genuine contests. Oversight becomes timid. Contracts, appointments and influence begin to orbit around the same surname.
Over time, governance risks becoming a family franchise. And even when each official performs his or her duties with competence, the concentration of authority raises an unavoidable question: Who holds the family accountable when the family itself occupies the levers of oversight?
This is why attempts to separate corruption scandals from the dynasty issue miss the larger point. One may prosecute individual acts of corruption without dismantling the political ecosystem that allows such behavior to repeat itself across election cycles.
Dynasties do not merely concentrate power. They can also perpetuate impunity.
Third, the country’s political climate has evolved. Public anger over corruption scandals, particularly those involving entrenched local political clans, has made the dynasty question harder to ignore. In earlier decades, the debate could be dismissed as theoretical. Today, it is grounded in lived political experience. Also, social media has amplified this awareness. What once required careful research now appears instantly on a smartphone screen, and the visual impact can be startling. A family tree of public officials can now circulate online in seconds, revealing patterns that once remained hidden in plain sight.
Still, skepticism is justified.
The measure recently approved at the House committee level has been criticized as a limited antidote. By restricting the prohibition to certain relatives or electoral situations, it may constrain dynasties without truly dismantling them. Political families could simply adapt by rotating positions among relatives in ways that technically comply with the law while also preserving their influence.
We have seen such political choreography before. Yet reform often begins imperfectly. The greater danger may not be a weak anti-dynasty law, but the continued absence of any law at all. After all, 38 years is a long time for a constitutional command to remain ignored.
Ultimately, the issue confronting Congress is not merely legal but moral: Can lawmakers rise above personal and familial interests to honor the spirit of the Constitution they swore to uphold?
History gives us reasons for doubt. But history also teaches that political systems sometimes change when the cost of inaction becomes too high. If voters begin to see dynastic politics not as tradition but as a barrier to accountability and opportunity, lawmakers may eventually discover that reform is the safer political choice.
The anti-dynasty clause has waited patiently for nearly four decades. The Filipino people should not have to wait another generation for it to be honored.
Democracy cannot thrive when public office is treated as a mere family heirloom. And a republic cannot flourish when political power is inherited like land or old money — passed from one surname to another, election after election, as if the nation itself were a private estate.
A republic works best when leadership circulates widely, when patronage yields to merit, and when elections invite genuine competition rather than family succession.
The question before Congress is no longer whether the Constitution spoke clearly in 1987. The question is whether our leaders finally have the courage to listen.
