[Rappler’s Best] An anarchy of families

‘Here at home, we’ve seen in the past days a volley of missiles from families — not against each other but against an already shrinking space for non-pedigreed, idealistic Filipinos who want to run for public office’

First, a moment of remembrance. It’s been a year since Hamas raided Israel, killing more than a thousand people and taking around 240 hostages. The retaliation from Israel has been savage and relentless, so that the world is now witness to a multi-front war in the Middle East, and Western leaders who had been optimistic about a ceasefire have been turned into lame ducks.

Here at home, we’ve seen in the past days a volley of missiles from families — not against each other but against an already shrinking space for non-pedigreed, idealistic Filipinos who want to run for public office. The filing of certificates of candidacy for the May 2025 senatorial, local, and party-list elections began last Tuesday, October 1, and will end tomorrow, October 8. (See all daily updates, context, fast facts, and video here.)

A parade of clowns, do-gooders, and bright spots has been popping on our screens since then. But the families! Even a nation so used to them is appalled by their rapacious appetite this time around. 

• Not even Vilma Santos’ star power could dent criticism of her family’s pakyaw move (no English translation would do justice) in Batangas: she’s running for governor, her actor-son Luis is running for vice governor, and her other son Ryan is running for the congressional district vacated by his father, Ralph Recto, who is now finance secretary. In the other congressional districts of Batangas, spouses just swapped posts with each other, depending on whether it’s the husband’s term that’s expiring or the wife’s — in which case, there’s the mayoral post to turn to (a situation that mirrors many other local government units). Our story on this could not have been more aptly titled: “Bets from political families unite under Recto party.”
• In the Senate, we’re faced with the prospect of nearly 40% of the chamber’s 24 seats being in the hands of four families by 2025. In a historic first, two brothers carrying the same family name (as opposed to half-brothers JV Ejercito and Jinggoy Estrada, who are now in the Senate) are running for the same post in the same election. Erwin and Ben Tulfo have filed their COCs; should they win, they’d be joining their brother Senator Raffy Tulfo, who won in 2022. Congresswoman Camille Villar also filed her COC in hopes of joining her brother Mark in the Senate. Senator Pia Cayetano is seeking reelection to keep sibling solidarity with Senator Alan Peter.
• As it’s all in the family, retiring Senator Cynthia Villar is switching seats with daughter Camille, who is vacating her congressional seat. Senator Nancy Binay is running for mayor of Makati while her incumbent mayor-sister Abby seeks to win her Senate seat. 
• There’s family drama, of course. Running against Nancy Binay for Makati mayor is her brother-in-law, husband of her estranged sister Abby. Even the Marcoses are not spared; they again dumped their own cousin to endorse a virtual unknown for Laoag City mayor. 

If you ask Ben Tulfo, this isn’t dynasty-building in their case. “We don’t have any district,” he told reporters. “Maybe at the [local] level, you can say that, when you become a governor or mayor…but running for the Senate is a national office, you can’t have a dynasty.” Incidentally, Ben’s nephew and Senator Tulfo’s son is running for reelection in Quezon City’s second district, while the party-list headed by the senator’s wife, ACT-CIS, which topped the 2022 party list race, is running again.

Families have run this country forever. It’s not unique to the Philippines, given the resilience of political families in Asia. Aside from the Philippines, leaders of Thailand, Cambodia, Laos, and Brunei are all children of former leaders. Indonesian President Prabowo Subianto is the former son-in-law of former dictator Suharto, while his vice president is the ultimate nepo-baby, the son of former Indonesia president Jokowi Widodo.

But prevalence does not make it right, nor should it be acceptable. I had to read again — and seek solace in — the seminal book edited by Alfred McCoy three decades ago whose title inspired this newsletter’s header, An Anarchy of Families: State and Family in the Philippines. It tells us how the power of family-based oligarchies “derives from and contributes to a weak, corrupt state.” McCoy reminds us how the late dictator Ferdinand E. Marcos incentivized his oligarch-allies, as he blurred the lines between business and government, and in the end “compromised the integrity of the bureaucracy and allowed the privatization of public resources.” And because they profited from monopoly, not competition, naturally they caused the economy to bleed and eventually collapse in the dying years of Marcos Sr.

Beyond this, allowing dynasties to thrive effectively skirts term limits, turning elective posts paid for by taxpayers’ money into family corporations with a long blood line of succession. In the words of retired Supreme Court senior associate justice Antonio Carpio in his dissent in Navarro v Ermita on the creation of the province of Dinagat Island: Political dynasty is a  “phenomenon that concentrates political power and public resources within the control of a few families whose members alternately hold elective offices, deftly skirting term limits.” 

So we cannot be nonchalant about the resurgence and fattening of these dynasties. Especially since the fattest of them all is the Marcos-Romualdez enterprise, which is in power today.

• In this year’s commemoration of the February 1986  EDSA revolt that toppled the Marcoses, researcher James Patrick Cruz took a deep dive into how well-entrenched the Marcos family has been.
• It was dynasties that helped propel Marcos to the presidency in 2022. How? Watch this explainer.
• But whether Red or Pink, it was political families who ruled in the 2022 races, according to this piece by Inday Espina Varona.
• Rappler mapped major political families that won in the 2019 midterm elections under the Duterte regime. Our count then was that at least 163 families had members who included a senator, House representative, or governor serving at the same time as relatives in other local positions.
• An Ateneo School of Government study published after 2019 showed that from 2018 to 2019, political dynasties grew by about 1%, or 170 positions per election period. In 2019, fat dynasties, where more members hold positions simultaneously, occupied 29% of local posts — up from only 19% in 1988.   

From the trauma of the first Marcos presidency, the post-EDSA Constitution explicitly banned political dynasties. “The State shall guarantee equal access to opportunities for public service and prohibit political dynasties as may be defined by law.” 

But Congress, packed with families, would not bite the hand that feeds it, right? Thus the absence of an implementing law to this day. 

What can we do about this? Share your thoughts in the Philippine politics channel on the Rappler Communities app. – Rappler.com

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