A family business

“The Senate is not a family business,” posted my friend R. on Facebook, and I found myself nodding at what sounded like the patently obvious truth, which somehow seems to still elude our family-oriented countrymen.

Among the loudest alarms raised by the forthcoming midterm election is the likelihood that, once again, Filipino voters will be choosing people with the same surnames to add to what has become, over the decades, a cozy nest of clans.

It isn’t just the Senate, of course, which is infected with dynastisis. From Congress down to the Sangguniang Kabataan where fledgling politicos learn to tweet, our entire political system has been one big and long-running Family Feud. Husbands, wives and their kids serve as senator, congressman, governor, mayor and councilor with utter shamelessness, claiming a form of manifest destiny contestable only by another family.

It’s gotten so bad that – surprise, surprise – Sen. Robinhood Padilla, last accused of doing little on the job but preening his mustache, filed SB 2730 last July against political dynasties (already in our Constitution, but lacking an enabling law). Citing a Harvard study (which always seems to bear more weight than common sense), Padilla said that political dynasties “persist and reproduce their power over time, undermining the effectiveness of institutional reforms in the process.”

More informatively, Padilla noted that “a dataset of Philippine local elections from 1988 to 2019 showed the number of governors with at least one relative in office (dynasty) increased by almost 39 percentage points, from 41 percent in 1988 to 80 percent in 2019. The dynasty proportion of vice governors rose from 18 percent in 1988 to 68 percent in 2019. The percentage of mayors in the dynasty increased gradually from 26 percent in 1988 to 53 percent in 2019… Political dynasties, in effect, have exhausted resources to attain economic and political dominance while at the same time compromising political competition and undermining accountability… It is time to break the barriers preventing the best and the brightest from serving the Filipino people.”

Tell that to the Philippine Senate which, because it has only 24 members, magnifies the prevalence and persistence of dynastisis even more.

One of the ways the US Senate differs from ours is the way it’s composed, with two senators from each of the 50 US states, which, in their federal system, gives equal weight to giant Texas and tiny Vermont. That should make it highly unlikely for two related people to be in the Senate at the same time, right? Well, sort of. As it turns out, in US history, two pairs of brothers actually served in the Senate together. One pair I’m pretty sure you never heard of – Theodore and Dwight Foster, who simultaneously represented Rhode Island and Massachusetts at the start of the 1800s. The next pairing didn’t happen until more than 150 years later – with Edward and Robert Kennedy representing Massachusetts and New York in the 1960s.

Our Senate puts America’s to shame in that department.

It helps, of course, to be related to a president, or to prepare oneself to be one. By my count, there have been five Aquinos in the Senate – Ninoy, Butz, Tessie, Noynoy and Bam; four Marcoses – Ferdinand, Imelda, Bongbong and Imee; four Estradas – Joseph, Loi, JV and Jinggoy; three Roxases – Manuel, Gerry and Mar; three Osmeñas – Serging, John and Serge; three Laurels – Jose, Sotero and Doy; and two Magsaysays – Gene and Jun. “Cong Dadong” Macapagal never became a senator, but his daughter Gloria did. Fidel Ramos’ contribution to the Senate was his sister Letty.

To these presidential surnames we have to add those of other political families such as the Dioknos, Tañadas, Kalaws, Angaras, Guingonas, Antoninos, Rectos, Pimentels, Revillas, Villars, Cayetanos and possibly Tulfos. The Cebu Osmeñas – John and Sergio Jr. – once served together in the Seventh Congress in the early 1970s; the Cayetanos – Pia and Alan – followed suit in the 14th, in the late 2000s, and the Villars – Cynthia and Mark – in the current 19th.

That’s not to say that some members of these political clans were not deserving or distinguished. Many certainly were – in the right hands, a family tradition of public service sets high standards and expectations. Never mind the ancient Fosters, but I don’t think America minded having Ted and Bobby Kennedy in the Senate, with Ted serving continuously for an astounding 47 years until he died.

They have no term limits in America. We imposed ours in the 1987 Constitution – a well-meaning gesture meant to democratize our legislature, but which backfired and produced exactly what it wanted to avoid. Our political families quickly learned to adjust and do a merry-go-round, ensuring further that one member or other would occupy all spots in the wheel. What developed over the years was less a revitalization of the institution with bright new talents than a pooling and coagulation of old blood.

So rather than an anti-dynasty law which seems to have little chance of passing a House full of dynasties anyway, perhaps we should revisit term limits, so we can retain the services of truly outstanding senators (like Franklin Drilon, for example) for life, rather than punish ourselves by replacing them with inferior siblings and cousins.

There are and have been high-performing senators whom we don’t and shouldn’t mind serving over and over again, politicians with genuine and critical advocacies they have devoted their lives to. Our political history has been fortunate to have seen the likes of such men and women as Senators Claro M. Recto, Jose Diokno, Lorenzo Tañada, Raul Manglapus, Emmanuel Pelaez, Helena Benitez, Eva Estrada Kalaw, Juan Flavier, Rene Saguisag, Miriam Defensor Santiago and Edgardo Angara, just to speak of the departed.

Sadly, our political realities preclude the truly poor from winning a Senate seat, and only extraordinary circumstances like EDSA can lift up capable and virtuous candidates of modest means such as Dr. Juan Flavier and Atty. Rene Saguisag to that exalted position. But their interests can be articulated and defended by men and women with the capacity and quality of mind and spirit to see beyond themselves. These are senators whom we expect to make laws that build a nation, rather than empower and enrich themselves and their progeny even further.

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Email me at [email protected] and visit my blog at www.penmanila.ph.