President Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos Jr. has made the anti-political dynasty bill a priority, urging lawmakers to craft and push legislation prohibiting relatives of politicians from taking office.
The anti-dynasty bill is one among a few others that Palace Press Officer Claire Castro said Marcos asked legislators to prioritize, which include the Independent People’s Commission Act, the Party-list System Reform Act, and the Citizens Access and Disclosure of Expenditures for National Accountability (CADENA) Act.
While political dynasties are prohibited by the 1987 Constitution, no law has been passed to ensure that families and clans do not hold power through generations, despite several efforts to enact such a law. Because of this, members of families have been allowed to run alongside each other during elections and benefit from the power their relatives already hold.
Dynasties and political families are most prominent in local governments. In December 2024, the Philippine Center for Investigative Journalism (PCIJ) reported that 71 out of 82 governors were from political dynasties, and that while 47 of them sought reelection in 2025, 19 had family members seeking to replace them.
But we don’t have to look any further than the national government, where a Marcos and a Duterte have taken office as president and vice president, respectively. The Senate and House of Representatives are both teeming with political families as well, casting only more doubt on the legislature’s ability to see an anti-dynasty bill through to enactment. Here, we ask three questions about the Marcos administration’s push for an anti-dynasty law.
Why Does Marcos Want An Anti-Dynasty Law?
The president has the most to lose from an anti-dynasty law, with his sister in the Senate, his son in the House of Representatives, and many other relatives holding local positions in their bailiwicks Ilocos and Leyte. Marcos also ran on a promise of a new Philippines in 2022 and now continues to push his “Bagong Pilipinas” campaign, a callback to his father’s Bagong Lipunan or New Society — the campaign through which Ferdinand Marcos Sr. would push martial law and consolidate power for years.
Can a Congress Dominated by Dynasties Legislate Against itself?
While there is no exact count of congressional representatives who come from political clans, 1Tahanan Party-list Representative Nat Oducado estimates that 80 percent of House members belong to dynasties. In a DZRH Dos Por Dos interview on Monday, December 15, he also said that the younger legislators agree that reform is needed. “There are some, especially ‘yong mga next generation of leaders coming from dynasties, who are very willing and are listening na dapat medyo may changes or may regulation in terms of concentration of power, and I think this is a good start,” he said.
How will the law define political dynasties?
This brings us to the last question: how do the current bills define political dynasties, and which one of them will be passed into law? Inquirer reports that in the lower chamber alone, 13 bills seek to define and prohibit dynasties, but they disagree on the degree of consanguinity that merits disqualification. Some bills propose allowing kinship to the second degree, which covers spouses, siblings, children, grandparents, parents-in-law, and siblings-in-law.
Others, like the bill filed by House Speaker Faustino Dy III and House Majority Leader Sandro Marcos, propose to ban spouses, siblings, and relatives within the fourth civil degree of affinity or consanguinity from holding positions at the same levels, which would still allow relatives to take office at different levels.
