The Tamesis
February 4, 2026
Manila “Walang ganyan sa States,” the highly strung character repeatedly said in the infamous 2003 Petron Ultron television commercial. From traffic jams to pollution and bumpy roads, the self-styled protagonist constantly reminds her awkward drivers of the unimaginable gulf that exists between conditions in her miserable homeland and her adopted American paradise.
Over the next two decades, as the American Dream gave way to a new wave of decline, demagoguery, economic crisis, and political polarization, Filipinos soon found a new paradise alongside their seemingly hopeless homeland. On the one hand, a new generation of aspiring middle-class people found in Singapore a new “gold standard” of governance: clean roads, an efficient public transport system, elite-selected leaders, and world-class healthcare and educational institutions. What’s not to love about this famous city-state?
It didn’t take long for a surreal “Singapore envy” to take over our public imagination. No wonder former Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew, who once complained that the Philippines had “too much democracy,” immediately became a role model for our politicians. The situation came to a head in the mid-2010s, when, after a decade of rapid economic growth and democratic deepening, state institutions were clearly unable to meet the material and political needs of a rapidly expanding middle class, and Aquino-style liberal reformism lost its luster among Filipino voters.
Most notoriously, handlers and die-hard supporters of former President Rodrigo Duterte have portrayed Davao as the “Singapore of the Philippines” and enthusiastically supported the “iron-fist” leadership style epitomized by Singapore’s founding father. Never mind that PM Lee is a Cambridge-educated lawyer who has never supported extrajudicial killings and has never been as rude as the long-time mayor of Davao City.
My Singaporean friends are always visibly annoyed (in honor of their leader) and embarrassed (for us Filipinos) when people foolishly try to compare Duterte to one of the greatest politicians of the 20th century.
Sadly, in our desire to be Singapore, we end up falling into Duterteism – a cynical “burn the house” form of politics. We traded freedom for development, only to lose both as Duterte presided over an era of unprecedented brutality and mismanagement, especially during the coronavirus pandemic that has seen the Philippines suffer the highest human toll and worst economic contraction among Asian countries.
Meanwhile, liberals and even some progressives view Duterteism as a historical aberration, indulging in their own version of fanciful boosterism. On the one hand, some liberals insist that Aquino’s presidency has been unfairly undervalued and tragically distorted by disinformation — and that his great legacy would be sealed if former Sen. Manuel “Mar” Roxas II succeeded him. While not engaging in the same form of denialism over liberal reformism’s apparent shortcomings, namely the complete absence of structural reforms that address the root causes of corruption and uneven development, some prominent progressives are beginning to talk about how, if we were New Zealand or Norway, someone like former Vice President Leni Robredo would be a sure winner. Well, we’re not!
In the wake of the blistering attacks on liberal forces by the “unity team” in the 2022 elections, a more insidious cynicism has begun to emerge: a rise in “Vietnamese envy” due to Hanoi’s remarkable transformation in the past decade alone, and fears of the Philippines being taken over by Cambodia and Laos. These three countries are all dictatorships! Amid the recent flood control corruption scandal and continued public support for Duterte ahead of the 2028 elections, some liberal commentators have essentially suggested that the country is completely hopeless and, without any global comparative evidence, cast the Philippines as a hopelessly corrupt country that will soon slip into a new era of low growth and democratic collapse.
It is in this context that we need a true “politics of hope” that rejects self-Orientalizing and cynical mischaracterizations of our country, which actually happens to be average on all key global benchmarks (such as the State Capture Index, State Capacity Index, Democracy Index, and even the Economic Competitiveness Index), and actively promotes a vision of inclusive development, good governance, and national excellence that will place us among the ranks of “First World Countries” in the coming decades. Clearly, we need to confront the real problems facing our country, but a leap of patriotic faith coupled with a package of concrete policy solutions is a prerequisite for continued nation-building.
