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By Sheila S. Coronel
, Philippine Center for Investigative Journalism
(First of three parts)
EIGHTEEN years after the fall of Marcos,
Congress is not becoming a more representative institution. In fact,
today’s legislators are richer now than ever before. While poverty
levels since 1986 have remained at roughly between 30 and 40 percent
of the population, lawmakers have become wealthier.
They are also older and better educated. As the
results of a two-year PCIJ study of legislatures since 1898 show,
members of the post-Marcos Congress tend to stay in office longer
than their predecessors.
Moreover, most lawmakers come from political
families—they have relatives who are holding or once held elective
posts. In the House of Representatives, two of every three are
members of political clans. The vast majority of these are second-
and third-generation politicians with parents and grandparents who
had been elected to public office.
In less than two months, Filipinos will be
voting for a new set of legislators. Senatorial candidates have been
campaigning since February. This week they will be joined by those
vying for seats in the House. If the results of previous elections
are a guide, then the likelihood is that most of the legislators who
will assume their seats in July would be so unlike the people who
voted them to power.
The typical representative or senator cannot be
more unlike the typical Filipino. The legislator is likely to be
male, middle-aged and college-educated, most likely with a degree in
law. He has previously held a local government post and there is one
chance in two that he is related to a former member of Congress.
He is also into business and has multiple
sources of income. He has property for rent, earns his salary from a
profession, and has investments in company shares. He is well-off,
with a net worth (most likely understated in his statement of
assets) in millions of pesos. And the likelihood is that the longer
he stays in Congress, the richer he becomes.
In 1962, only 27 percent of representatives were
classified as upper class. In 1992 it was 44 percent. Over time the
assets of legislators have grown. In 1992 the average net worth of
congressmen was P8 million. By 2001 it was P22 million. In the
Senate the average net worth increased from P33 million in 1998 to
P59 million in 2001. A quarter of all senators today have a net
worth of above P100 million.
The typical Filipino, meanwhile, is likely to be
below 35, with a few years of high-school education, and an annual
income of about P150,000 in 2000. The demographic profiles
couldn’t be more unmatched.
Five congresses—the Eighth to the
Twelfth—have been constituted since the fall of Ferdinand Marcos
in 1986. The legislators elected to these bodies have hardly been
representative of those they represent. In that sense, they have not
been different from the past, when members of Congress were drawn
from a narrow elite in terms of property, education (since 1898 they
have been trained mainly in law) and social standing.
There have been changes, though. There are now
many more women in Congress than there have been in the past. In the
current House, there are 40 women, about 18 percent of the body,
compared with only one percent in 1946, six percent in 1965 and 11
percent in 1992.
Today’s legislators are also better educated
than their predecessors, with 27 percent of all representatives
boasting of postgraduate degrees, compared with only 18 percent in
1965.
The sources of their wealth are more diverse,
indicating that many more business interests are represented in
Congress, which can no longer be described as a
“landlord-dominated” legislature. The caciques of old have been
replaced by real-estate developers, bankers, stockbrokers, and
assorted professionals and businesspeople.
The changes reflect the changes in the
Philippine economy, with the decline of agriculture and extractive
industries (logging, mining) and the increasing importance of
manufacturing, trade and services. The changes have been obvious
since the 1960s, when new men from business and the professions were
elected to the legislature.
The rise of these new legislators mirrored the
increasing political assertiveness of new sections of the business
elite and the upper professional class that emerged in the 1950s and
1960s. That period saw the birth of a manufacturing sector that
produced previously imported goods for the local market. Although
many of those who became part of the manufacturing capitalists were
large landowners, there were also those from the professional middle
class and local traders who joined the ranks of the new rich and
then sought seats in Congress.
Philippine legislatures have been hospitable to
the entry of the newly affluent. Their ranks have been open to the
constant infusion of new blood. The post-Marcos Congress is even
more diverse in composition than its predecessors. It includes,
besides the old landowning families that have been in legislatures
for 100 years, also new entrepreneurs, especially those in
construction, real estate and services that emerged among the
fastest-growing economic sectors in the late 1980s and 1990s;
middle-class professionals, especially lawyers from leading law
firms; and leaders of nongovernment organizations.
The legislature also has local officials or
government bureaucrats able to build a base in their districts
although they are not backed by old wealth. In addition, the halls
of Congress have recently accommodated celebrities from the movies,
the mass media and sports.
The legislature has traditionally opened to its
members a world of privilege that enables the enterprising among
them to take advantage of moneymaking opportunities and to
accumulate wealth. A Congress seat can be used as a passport to the
land of deal making, allowing aspiring politicians entry to the
bastions of great wealth and privilege. In this sense, the
legislature can be said to be an agent of mobility, allowing
talented aspirants from the lower and middle classes entry to the
narrow corridors of power and the most exclusive enclaves of the
very rich.
Such mobility, however, is still limited to a
narrow range of Philippine society. For sure, the more
occupationally diverse membership from the more modern sectors of
business, the mass media and civil society means a wider range of
perspectives and interests than at any time in the past. The trend
toward increasing diversification that was noted in the 1960s
continues today.
Moreover, the entry of party-list
representatives in the Eleventh and Twelfth Congress enlarged that
range, as it gave representatives of marginalized social sectors
seats in the legislature. Despite this, however, Congress remains a
fortress of privilege, its gates open to the new and aspiring rich,
but closed—except for some narrow openings—to the poor and
powerless.
The route to Congress, for the most part, is
still through local government posts. Although recently, some have
taken a shortcut, either through the media or through the movies, or
inherited their posts directly from a relative facing the three-term
limit, the usual route is still for prospective legislators, even
those who come from political families, to vie for “lesser”
elective posts.
This trend was evident from the start. Political
office in the Philippines has always been hierarchical: Aspiring
politicians went up the political ladder from local to national
office, from the House to the Senate, and from the Senate to the
presidency. The upheavals caused by martial law disrupted this flow.
The formula no longer works for those aspiring to the Senate and the
presidency. But the path from local office to the House remains well
trodden, although it has been fast-tracked for many because of the
three-term limit.
In the Twelfth House that assumed office in
2001, 138 representatives—61 percent—had been in public office
before their first election to a post-Marcos House. Fewer
representatives now come from the executive branch. Most of
them—49 percent of all representatives, or 81 percent of those who
had held public posts—had been elected to local office.
This shows the importance of a local political
base in winning a House seat. Political families have the edge,
because they can mobilize local patronage and political networks for
their electoral forays. The same is not true of the Senate, however,
because name recognition is more important in that chamber, allowing
celebrities from the media and the movies to win hands down in
national races even if they don’t have a base in their districts.
The House has fewer celebrities, although that situation is
changing.
The passing on of a legislative seat from one
generation to another provides evidence of the castelike structure
of the legislative elite. Four in every 10 representatives in all
the post-Marcos Congresses had relatives in previous legislatures. A
third had parents who were in public office.
These are unusually high percentages and are an
important index of the extent of real “democratization” that has
taken place. But they still show, though, that Congress is not
closed to those who do not come from powerful families. The flipside
of the equation—6 in every 10 representatives are not related to
former legislators and 7 out of 10 have no parents who were in
public office—should not be overlooked.
Once in Congress, however, legislators tend to
stay there. The pattern since 1946 is for the number of first-termers
in the House to decrease as time goes by, as congressmen hang on to
their seats, using the perks and the powers available to their
office to perpetuate themselves in power. Conversely, the number of
those with multiple terms increases with time.
The trend is evident in the post-Marcos House as
well, where the turnover rates would have been faster, as shown in
the steep decline in the number of first-termers from the Eighth to
the Tenth House. By the Tenth Congress, only 17 percent of
representatives were on their first term, compared with 72 percent
in the Eighth House.
This rapid decline was stemmed by the
constitutional prohibition on more than three consecutive terms. The
impact of the ban is evident in the sudden rise to 60 percent of the
number of first-termers in the Eleventh House, only to decline again
when a new House came to power in 2001.
Taken altogether, however, the turnover rate in
the post-Marcos Congress is slower than that in premartial-law
years, despite term limits. From 1946 to 1961 an average of 51
percent of all members of Congress was new. The average for all the
five post-Edsa congresses is only 46 percent. Apparently there is
less mobility in the post-Edsa legislature.
Looking at the history of the Philippine
legislatures from the 1898 Malolos Congress, it would seem that
families, not parties, are their most enduring feature. Regimes come
and go but the families remain. Political parties are formed and
disbanded, but the clans that make them up stay on.
Families survive wars, dictatorships and
uprisings. The most enduring political families are the best
evidence of this: The Aquinos and Cojuangcos of Tarlac, the Osmeñas
of Cebu, the Romualdezes of Leyte and the Marcoses of Ilocos Norte,
among others, have been in Philippine legislatures for four
generations. Some families eventually go into decline after
successive electoral defeats or the death of a powerful patriarch,
but others, stronger and more resilient, hang on and flourish.
Data gathered for the PCIJ study show the
persistence of political families since the fall of Marcos. The
reality is still that politicians are elected largely by mobilizing
their kinship networks and family assets (e.g. money, name recall,
connections). Once in office, they pave the way for other relatives
to be either appointed to the bureaucracy or elected to government
posts. Within a few years a newly elected legislator will likely
have kin in local office, various government agencies and
state-owned corporations. Before long the next generation takes
over.
Two-thirds of the legislators in the post-Marcos
Congress are members of political families. Of these, 70 percent are
second- and third-generation politicians. Nearly all of them also
have multiple relatives in public office.
In the Eighth Congress, the first post-Marcos
legislature, 61 percent, or 122 of 198 representatives, were from
political clans. The proportion has remained pretty much the same
since then, despite the entry of party-list representatives in the
Eleventh and Twelfth House. In the Twelfth Congress, which was
elected in 2001, 61 percent, or 140 of 228 representatives, came
from political clans. In the Eleventh House it was 62 percent. If
the percentages are computed without the party-list representatives,
however, the numbers increase to 65 percent for the Eleventh House
and 66 percent for the Twelfth.
The figures indicate that term limits set by the
1987 Constitution, which banned representatives from seeking more
than three consecutive terms, made no dent on clan power.
Representatives who were elected in the Eighth House, for example,
could sit only up to the Tenth Congress. And yet, the number of
political family members in the Eleventh House is not much different
from the ones before it. In many cases, the clans simply fielded
other family members to replace those who faced term limits. In
other cases, rival clans merely took the place of the incumbent
ones.
(To be continued)
The findings of the PCIJ’s study of
Congress are published in the book The Rulemakers: How the Wealthy
and Well-Born Dominate Congress.
Part 2 |Conclusion |
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