All in the family - CHASING THE WIND by Felipe B. Miranda

Forty-two years ago, across the UP’s Liberal Arts or LA building in Diliman, four of us young students were eating lunch under some of the sprawling acacia trees. I do not remember anymore what we had with the rice or whether we used spoons or ate with our bare hands. What I cannot forget was what we had for dessert. It was a deliciously passionate, unanimous denunciation of dynastic politics.

Not even eighteen at the time, all of us already recognized what ailed our purported democracy in 1959. Coming from poor or at best low-middle income families, we were conscious of how some classmates came from pedigreed families whose wealth and power enabled them to oligarchically chart the nation’s destiny. Our batchmates included those whose fathers, mothers, uncles, brothers, sisters and cousins were members of Congress, governors, mayors, Cabinet members or some other high government officials.

From the high moral ground where outliers to this circle of power normally ascend, we viewed Philippine society critically. A few families must not be allowed to rule the nation as if they had an exclusive franchise on its political wisdom, skills and virtues. The rest of the citizenry must be impressed into political rulership, must have a much more active, democrative role in their governance. And we, the four of us —— in the relative wilderness which across the years transmogrified into a student parking lot now facing UP’s CSSP, the College of Social Science and Philosophy —— compacted to end dynastic politics in our own generation.

After a poor man’s lunch under Diliman’s venerable acacia trees, the nation’s just desserts beckoned to us four young UP students in 1959 ever so delectably.

Four decades later, political dynasties in the Philippines show no signs of significant weakening. Despite clear evidence linking it to national plunder, systematic political violence, comprehensive graft and corruption and the willful abortion of democratic initiatives in civil society organization, political families continue to rule the country.

Despite the seductive promises of People Power I to democratize politics as it sought to overthrow Marcos, regardless of a constitutional commitment to terminate political dynasties after Marcos’ fall—— through the challenging and turbulent times of Cory Aquino, the deceivingly upbeat years of Ramos up to 1997 and all the way through yet another People Power II and the subsequent ouster of Estrada in early 2001——no enabling law has materialized to minimize the primacy of political families.

Without such a law, dynastic politicians continue to have a field day. And assuming this enabling law had somehow passed despite clearly putting at risk the very people who enacted it, the reaction reserved by dynastic politicians for such legal impediments would probably be the usual contempt.

The very same kind of contempt manifested by traditional politicians for the very laws they craft on the declaration of assets by public officials or their sworn statements regarding expenses in their electoral campaigns or even simply their official income returns.

Dynastic politics has a long history in this country and it is unlikely that it will be terminated until such time as the citizenry’s level of political education significantly improves. At that point, most of the people in this country will realize the need for organized and strategic action. Then there will be a significantly different meaning that Filipinos will associate with people power.

No longer will they have to wait for the traditional ilustrados nor the presumably better-educated, better-off members of Philippine society to lead them to a regime of democracy and justice. They will also have no illusions of leadership from graduates of their most heavily subsidized universities and colleges.

After all, of the four young students alluded to earlier in this column, three now maintain and continue to strengthen their own political families. Each one has become a nationally prominent politician. The Congressman’s daughter, the Cabinet member’s brother and the Mayor’s wife and son are all meshed together in familial political embrace.

When I reminded the Mayor of our youthful vows under the acacia trees of UP, he looked at me sadly and said, "We have to fight fire with fire."