HOUSE Speaker Faustino Dy III and Majority Leader Ferdinand Alexander Marcos have stood by their word they would pursue reforms to promote fairness, competition and integrity in public service.
This week, straight after President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. urged Congress to pass his identified priority bills, Dy and Marcos filed House Bill 6771, marking the first major push by top leaders of the House of Representatives to operationalize Constitutional provisions intended to prohibit political dynasties in public service.
It is not lost on the people that both are from such dynasties in their respective provinces.
The proposed measure will be watched by a public that had waited for years for the Constitutional mandate to prohibit political dynasties by providing a clear definition and allowing more Filipinos to roll up their shirt sleeves for pubic service.
Dy picked this out as a core reform, and Identified the Anti-Dynasty Bill as a central pillar of his reform agenda.
The people, obviously tired and helpless in face of dynasty politics, will definitely be watching how the measure will fulfill a Constitutional obligation that has remained untouched for nearly 40 years.
In the bill’s explanatory note, Dy and Marcos said urgent action is needed to uphold political equality and ensure all citizens can participate fairly in governance.
They anchored the measure on the Constitution’s Article II, Section 26 which mandates that “[t]he State shall guarantee equal access to opportunities for public service and prohibit political dynasties as may be defined by law.”
They warned this mandate has been disregarded for decades, allowing dynasties to flourish unchecked – an ugly feature in Philippine politics because of the absence of an enabling law that defines and prohibits them.
Thought-provoking that spouses, siblings and relatives within the fourth civil degree of an incumbent elected official would be barred from simultaneously holding specified elective posts.
HB 6771 also marks a momentous first step by asserting that power in the Senate must not be concentrated within one family.
Under the proposed measure, siblings or close relatives would no longer be allowed to serve simultaneously in the upper chamber, an initial but consequential barrier against dynastic consolidation at the national level.
The note describes the bill as “a faithful execution of the above Constitutional provision – a strategic reform for good governance, and an assertion of the principle that public office is a public trust.”
Dy and Marcos emphasized that merit, not lineage, should be the basis of who serves.
Certainly, the bill has broken ground.
But the people will not be clapping at this point.
They will have their eyes and ears on the legislators’ moves and rhetoric.
Whether they will in fact uphold the integrity, competitiveness and inclusivity of democratic institutions by ensuring that public office is not a family birthright but earned through talentocracy and public trust.
