A youth bloc representative in the House of Representatives broke from the chamber’s overwhelming majority and voted against House Bill 8389, arguing that the measure marketed as an anti-political dynasty law does nothing of the sort.
Kabataan Partylist Rep. Renee Co said the legislation fails the basic test its title implies. “This bill does not prohibit but instead merely regulates the dynastic rule of a few families in our country’s politics,” she said, rejecting the framing of the bill as a genuine ban.
At the center of her objection is the bill’s reach. The prohibited family relationship was pulled back from the fourth civil degree down to the second, and even that narrower band carries conditions limiting which levels of government it applies to. Co argued the result is a law full of openings rather than barriers.
She laid out three arrangements that would survive untouched: first cousins running together for different posts in the same area; siblings simultaneously seeking the same position across different localities; and a grandfather, father, and son taking turns occupying the identical seat in succession.
Co tied the persistence of dynastic rule to what she called bureaucrat capitalism—the practice of treating government as a private enterprise for personal gain, which she said pushes certain clans to run public office as a family business. In her framing, that practice is the disease and political dynasties are merely one of its symptoms. She pledged that the youth sector would keep mobilizing beyond the bill to address the underlying condition.
She also pointed to the constitutional history behind the prohibition. The 1987 Constitution sought to bar political dynasties not to discourage families from public service, she said, but because wealthy and powerful clans had already entrenched themselves in positions of power. Nearly four decades on, she noted, that entrenchment is why the government is so often described as a closed circle of the same names.
Co reiterated that her vote was cast on behalf of young Filipinos she described as fed up with the dominance of a few.
