Inbreeding

With every electoral exercise, the situation gets worse.

- ANA MARIE PAMINTUAN

Across the country, dynastybuilding is becoming deeply entrenched. Politics as a family business is becoming institutionalized.

And just like any business, the principal goal is profit - not for the public, but for the businessman. Those who get in the way of profit-making can end up as dead meat (sometimes literally).

These days, families want to put every able member into every possible position in their turf, from the barangay to the city or town council all the way to the provincial capitol and Congress.

Not content, they want their entire clan, if possible, occupying all 24 seats in the Senate. This is no hyperbole; they will do it, if voters allow it. Their argument for building dynasties boils down to this: because they can.

Yes, they can, but there's such a thing as self-restraint, which is supposed to separate man from beast. Just because you can is no reason to murder political rivals, for example, or order the mass execution of anyone remotely suspected of drug links.

This "because we can" mindset underpinned the massacre of 58 people by the Ampatuans, carried out against those who dared to challenge the clan's decade-long stranglehold on government in Maguindanao.

During that decade, Maguindanao remained among the poorest provinces in the country, while the Ampatuans amassed enormous unexplained wealth, which they used to further reinforce their hold on the province.

With that kind of control, sustained through a combination of the traditional guns, goons and gold, the clan also courted support from the national leadership by delivering votes during elections. Whether the votes were real or manufactured may never be known definitively.