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By Rene Q. Bas
ONE of the signs that many in our
present crop of politicians have abandoned the core values, and
therefore do not have them in their nature as virtues, is their
shameless drive to perpetuate their families in posident Estrada,
followed by the essay “They are not fit to write our laws” and
the essay “The dynasty issue can define the Senate
campaign”—reopened the issue.
In a Sunday special report
devoted to the political dynasty issue we published Mr. Tatad’s
challenge to candidates of the pro-administration and opposition
camps “to declare their individual and collective stand on the
issue of political dynasties and the worthiness of political
turncoats.”
That the challenge has fallen on
deaf ears among the candidates confirms our finding that the present
members of Congress will not pass an enabling law for the
Constitution’s provisions against political dynasties “because
most of the lawmakers are members and beneficiaries of political
dynasties themselves.”
Tatad’s and our antipolitical
dynasty advocacy, however, has reverberated among columnists of the
national dailies.
In the United States, a Filipino
American novelist, Roger Olivares (whose novel Noli Me Tangere 2 I
wrote a notice about last year) and here in Metro Manila his elder
brother, Dan Olivares, who are both siblings of the late advertising
expert Rudy Olivares, have just organized the Citizens Antidynasty
Movement.
They have a proposal to the
entire Filipino people to end political dynasties in a democratic
and peaceful way. The first step, Roger Olivares proposes, is for
Filipinos “to show massive outrage against the dynasties by being
counted.”
The citizens can just “click”
their outrage and be counted (in the manner of Channel 5/ABC’s
Philippine Idol audience votation) by texting “No to Dynasty” to
his mobile phone numbers, which The Times does not yet have at this
writing. Or the outraged Filipinos can send their “No” to the
website, www.endpoliticaldynasty.com.
Step two is the media and the
Church leaders to take up Kit Tatad’s challenge to the
candidates—pressure them to make dynastyism an issue in the
election campaign.
Step three is for the candidates
to write and sign a vow to work for the passage of the antidynasty
law. Each candidate’s written vow will be presented to his bishop
and deposited with the Catholic Bishops’ Conference as a sign of
good faith. If the candidate wins the vow will haunt him if he or
she does not act on his vow.
Dan Olivares, who is the
executive director of Citizens Antidynasty Movement, and his
volunteers have prepared a list of all the families who have started
a dynasty.
The Times calls on readers to add
to the list if some political families in the community, town, city
or province are not on the list.
The Times wishes to alert readers
that some of the families and persons on the list are not engaged in
a plan to perpetuate their families in positions of power. There
are, in fact, members of families whose candidates are fighting each
other.
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