Bienvenido “Ben” Tulfo dismisses allegations that he, his brothers, sister-in-law and nephew as well as sister, resigned tourism secretary Wanda Tulfo-Teo, should not be classified as belonging to a political dynasty since they have “no bailiwick,” they have no control over any local government unit (LGU) and they have different personalities, advocacies and even logic.
Sounds like Erwin Tulfo in his impassioned defense of his being a “tago-nang-tago” (TNT) in the United States since he was “kapit sa patalim” in the US compelled to work hard for as long as 16 hours a day for his two kids and wife to survive. Unlike other TNTs, Erwin claims he was simply a TNT despite claims by the US Embassy that he secured US citizenship using the bogus identity of “Erwin Sylvester Tulfo,” born in the USA of Bruce Springsteen, which is a federal crime, and violated his visa. What were the circumstances that compelled him to abandon the genuine land of his birth? To this, the honorable senator-to-be has kept mum. Surely, the members of the Aviation Security Command (Avsecom) who arrested him for alleged dollar smuggling to Bangkok in the late 1980s and manhandled him could have scared him shitless that he had to flee.
Of course, Ben Tulfo is not his brother’s keeper and he is not expected to divulge the bits and pieces of Erwin’s memoir. Suffice it to say that brother Ramon played a part in freeing Erwin from the clutches of the murderous Avsecom, whose members were fingered as the murderers of ex-Sen. Benigno Aquino Jr. and his supposed assassin, Rolando Galman. Ben is concerned with a big pedagogical issue, which is to define what a political dynasty is. In his Feb. 12 TV interview, he blurted out: “In my opinion, are we three (Ben, Erwin and Raffy) a dynasty? How could we be a dynasty when we don’t have a base? If we all win in the Senate, it’s a national post. You cannot control people in Luzon, Visayas and Mindanao. A dynasty has to have a geographical base and, in that base, you just alternate seats. You alternate taking elective positions; that’s a dynasty.” In a bit of pique, he added: “Do we have a law on this? We do. Why is it not implemented? We don’t know why. Why are you asking me?”
But then, let us return to our sheep. Ben Tulfo is miffed that the Tulfo is being raked over the coals for this brazen to have three members of his family occupy seats at the Senate and four others to be members of the House of Representatives. Perhaps by taking off his dark glasses, Ben could read clearly that decency and common sense have already defined political dynasties. In a more practical sense, it means three Tulfos having separate pork barrels in the upper chamber, four sets of undeserved pork barrels in the Lower House, and an ocean of opportunities to make hay for a minimum of six years for the Senate and three at the House of Representatives.
Ben may argue that since this is supposed to be a free country, any Juan, Pedro and Jose could join the political fray. Yes, they can but the issue is, does anyone who has the character, training and ethics to be a lawmaker willing to join the political rat race? As W. B. Yeats wrote in “The Second Coming”: “Turning and turning in the widening gyre/The falcon cannot hear the falconer/ Things fall apart/ the center cannot hold/Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world/The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere/The ceremony of innocence is drowned/The best lack all conviction, while the worst/Are full of passionate intensity.” The last two lines are particularly apropos, when those who champion the culture of bluster and bogus public service while not changing the corrupt system have the audacity to promote themselves as lawmakers without any knowledge about statutory construction and logic find themselves entitled to legislative seats. Ben Tulfo talks of his brothers and sisters as different individuals, which is evident, with different political persuasions, which is untrue, and have different logics (how many are there in the world after Aristotle?), but would not disclose their clients or the fact that some of them represent Chinese interests. Show the receipts, Ben. Res ipsa loquitur.
There are currently four Tulfos occupying elective positions. Raffy Tulfo is in the Senate after he squirmed past a case filed by his estranged wife while three others are in the House of Representatives: ACT-CIS Reps. Erwin and Jocelyn Tulfo, Raffy’s wife, and Quezon City Rep. Ralph Tulfo, son of Raffy and Jocelyn. Wanda Tulfo-Teo, sister of the Tulfo brothers, who resigned in 2018 as tourism secretary under the Duterte administration after she appointed her husband to the Tourism Infrastructure and Enterprise Zone Authority (TIEZA) in violation of the anti-nepotism law and approved a P60-million tourism promotion deal with a company owned by her brother Ben and Erwin. Her lame excuse: She didn’t know that her brothers owned the company. Ordered by the Ombudsman to return the P60 million, Ben and Erwin promised to do so, only to balk later on. “Palabra de honor” no longer exists. Wanda is now the first nominee of Ang Turismo party-list while her son, Robert Tulfo-Teo, is its third nominee.
Ben’s argument is that since they have no bailiwick, the Tulfos cannot be described as a political dynasty. This is completely out of whack. A political dynasty exists when members of the same family occupy elective positions either in sequence for the same position or simultaneously across different positions. It is also defined as a family with at least two members securing the same post in a minimum of two elections, based on a November 2024 paper by the Congressional Policy and Budget Research Department, the House of Representatives think tank for policy and institutional reforms. Not a single study cited the need for bailiwicks or geographical bases for a family to be considered a political dynasty. In 2016, a lawmaker claimed that of the country’s 60 provinces, political dynasties dominate in 73, for a rate of 94%.
Section 26, Article 2 of the 1987 Constitution prohibits political dynasties but like other provisions of the Charter, an enabling law still needs to be passed by Congress to define it. This is precisely the reason why the Gorgon-called political dynasty has not been tamed and given its just desserts. Truly, some concerned lawmakers tried to put substance to the desire of the constitution framers by filing at least 46 bills on political dynasties from 2004 to 2022 in the Lower House and in the Senate. A study three years ago also analyzed those pieces of proposed legislation from the 13th (2004-2007) to the 18th (2019-2022) Congress. The Makabayan bloc and other lawmakers also filed two bills banning political dynasties in the 19th Congress but these have been sleeping the sleep of the dead. Both have been stuck in the House Committee on Suffrage and Electoral Reforms since 2022. (DIEGO MORRA)
