IN a recent Senate committee hearing, former Constitution commissioner Christian Monsod was quoted as saying that if we follow the “intent’ of the Constitution, we should end up enacting an anti-dynasty law that prohibits persons related to an elected official within the fourth degree of consanguinity or affinity from running for public office. These would include great-great-grandparents, great uncles and great aunties, first cousins, grandnephews and grandnieces — a marked improvement upon the original proposal that seeks to bar persons related to an elected official within the second degree of consanguinity or affinity from running.
In Monsod’s view, the law has to cast a net as wide as possible in order to dismantle dynasties that have entrenched themselves so deeply into our system. Monsod was one of the 48 men and women appointed by revolutionary President Cory Aquino in 1986 to write the 1987 Constitution. He could therefore speak with some authority on the “intent” of the Constitution, notably Section 26 of Article II, which provides, “The State shall guarantee equal access to opportunities for public service, and prohibit political dynasties as may be defined by law.”
I have only one small problem with his position. As the same provision unequivocally reads, there is no constitutional intent to be interpreted. Instead of defining what a political dynasty is, and declaring it as absolutely prohibited, the “founding fathers” decided to cop out — they chose not to define what they wanted to prohibit, but left it in the hands of Congress, with no further instructions, to spell out what they wanted to forbid. Thus, when the Constitution says, “to prohibit political dynasties as may be defined by law,” it created a situation that could not be sustained in law.
Congress and everybody else understood it to mean the law will have to prohibit a whole class of people from entering public service for no other reason than that they are related to an incumbent official. But since the state does not have the right or the power to declare that as a crime, the attempt to comply with the mandate of Section 26 Article II would make the state guilty of a serious crime against an entire political class, possibly including the unborn.
This bears repeating. We do not live in an absolute monarchical dictatorship, and the state cannot, without due process, exclude a single citizen from seeking any public office that is open to everybody else. Our good friend Christian Monsod, however, seems to believe the prohibition should cover as many people as possible. Now, if he sincerely believes this position is solidly grounded in the Constitution, he and his fellow commissioners could have, and should have, formulated the prohibition in one complete provision, instead of throwing it to the Congress ad referendum.
At this writing, there are 21 bills in the House, six in the Senate, all calling for a ban on political dynasties. The details vary. But they all seem to agree that relatives of public officials within the second degree of consanguinity or affinity should not be allowed to enjoy the same rights to run for public office as everybody else. The public excesses of these dynasties seem to justify the proposed legal ban, even though there is no juridical justification for a generalized ban. Our constitutional and legal system cannot arbitrarily proclaim, on the say-so of some power elite, that not all Filipinos have earned the right or privilege to participate in the political and electoral life of the nation. We can all agree that the proliferation of political dynasties threatens to bury the principle of equality in our political system, but the proposed prohibition is not the rational answer to the problem. We have to find a solution based on the inviolable right of every citizen to participate in the nation’s political and electoral life, like everybody else.
In some places, there are local government units run by entire families like extensions of the household; this is not right and cannot go on forever. But the solution is not to prohibit by law other family members from replicating a member who has been elected into office. This appears to be an unintended consequence of a failed political reform that sought to introduce term limits into our electoral system. Prior to this, a functioning public official could continue in office for an indefinite period without need of a close relative standing by to take his place. After the introduction of term limits, an elected official had to prepare his potential successor, normally in the person of a spouse, a son or a daughter, or a close relative. This is why we find husbands and wives heading a particular local government unit while their children occupy the city or municipal council or provincial board, and two siblings or a mother and son or daughter sit simultaneously as members of the Senate.
All this is abhorrently in bad taste, but it is infinitely more wrong to enact a law that excludes certain Filipinos from the exercise of a political right that is guaranteed to all.
fstaad@gmail.com