Reform and Abolition: The Philippine Party-list System 195 vote-rich urban slum communities who may have put local politicians in power for decades eventually are targets of demolitions to make way for shopping malls, condominiums, hotels, and other businesses. In provinces like Cavite and Cebu that host suburban commercial zones, industrial estates, golf courses, tourism resorts, and luxurious residential villages, discretionary powers enrich politicians by controlling zoning ordinances, construction contracts, and using police forces for union-busting. They serve as “gate-keepers and facilitators” to Manila-based and foreign investors.13 The Napoles scam that rocked Congress in recent years dragging the high and mighty of Philippine dynastic politics – national to local politicians – is the latest example of how power from elective positions is used to plunder the national budget using the traditional pork barrel and in the guise of economic development for the poor. For decades, smuggling, illegal gambling, to narcotics and other criminal operations have greased the political machines of many politicians, funded election campaigns, and have in fact become a material source of new dynasties. The greed behind the control of elective position is what makes elections intensely competitive that often end up in violence involving private armed groups nanced by political warlords as well as by means of other fraud practices. Since they are usually conned among feuding political families, elections are characterized purely as an intra-elite rivalry especially in the more coveted higher elective positions like the presidency, Congress, as well as key positions at the provincial and municipal / city levels. Election hot spots like Abra, Masbate, Nueva Ecija, as well as Mindanao provinces like Maguindanao remain theaters of rivalry where elections are decided by the gun and other forms of cheating. Election is where politics is thicker than blood: Rivalry aficts members of political clans as well as illustrated by the political feuds among the Cojuangcos in Tarlac and Central Luzon; the Villafuertes in Camarines Sur; or even sibling rivalry among the Estradas. Especially in the provinces, political rivalry is driven by territorial turng, sometimes called “bailiwicks”. The traditional legislative practice of creating new political divisions among provinces and congressional districts is a means of expanding dynastic turf or for resolving territorial disputes among feuding families. The use of coercive mechanisms of the state maintained by the elite against movements or mass-based political forces pushing for reform-oriented populist or new politics has also been validated. Attempts by cause-oriented political groups and movements to participate in the electoral arena with radical platforms meant to address real issues are suppressed by the powers that be. Illustrative of this policy of suppression by the state run by dynasties are the removal from Congress of winning candidates of the Democratic Alliance (DA) in 1946, the demonization in 1957 of the Nationalist Citizens' Party (led by the nationalists Claro M. Recto and Lorenzo Taňada), and the unleashing of counter-terrorist operations against the progressive Partido ng Bayan (PnB) in 1987 as well as, since 2001, the progressive bloc of Party-list groups in Congress. The hegemony of the ruling elite is perpetuated not only by