First of four parts

AS the world enters its most dangerous geopolitical transition since the end of the Cold War, much of the Philippine political class behaves as though history can wait.

Our political elite remains consumed by internecine feuds. Alliances shift with dizzying speed against the backdrop of the Marcos-Duterte rivalry. One side deploys every constitutional and procedural device to impeach Vice President Sara Duterte; the other paralyzes the streets through the formidable mobilization of a religious bloc. Around them swirl nonstop grandstanding, television panels, social media gladiators, and an army of commentators ensuring that no performance goes without applause.

Meanwhile, outside our political bubble, the world refuses to pause. The intensifying rivalry between America and China, the Israeli-driven US war against Iran, disruptions in global trade, supply chain realignments, technological competition, and the race for dominance in AI, semiconductors, rare earths and advanced manufacturing are reshaping the international order in real time.

These are hardly distant academic debates. The Strait of Hormuz influences what Filipinos pay at the gasoline pump. The Taiwan Strait affects trade, investment and our own security. The countries making strategic decisions today will shape the global economy for decades.

History is accelerating. Philippine politics, by comparison, appears permanently trapped in dress rehearsals for the next election.

Perhaps that is because we continue searching for better politicians — charismatic presidents, instead of building better institutions.

When politics becomes performance

The recent months have only reinforced that impression. The flood control scandal revealed corruption on a scale so extravagant that even fiction writers might have toned it down for credibility — luxury cars, unexplained fortunes, cash displayed like museum exhibits, and enough excess to make satire unnecessary. Yet, accountability remains the rarest commodity in government.

The result is depressingly familiar. Everyone is campaigning. Almost no one is governing. A nation confronting mounting geopolitical risks cannot afford to behave as though the greatest threat to national security is losing the next news cycle. Energy security, food security, education, infrastructure, AI, cybersecurity, maritime defense, and economic competitiveness deserve far more attention than the endless choreography of political survival.

Politics has become consumed by tactics while history rewards those who think strategically. That, more than any foreign adversary, may be our greatest vulnerability.

Strong society, weak state

Which brings us to a larger and more uncomfortable question: Why do Filipinos excel almost everywhere except in governing the Philippines? Why do our people repeatedly succeed inside well-run institutions abroad, yet struggle to build equally effective institutions at home?

That paradox — not corruption alone, nor poverty alone, nor even politics alone — may be the central challenge of the Philippine Republic.

Around the world, Filipinos are respected for their competence, resilience, adaptability and work ethic. Our nurses sustain healthcare systems across North America, Europe and the Middle East. Filipino seafarers help move global commerce. Our engineers, accountants, architects, teachers, healthcare professionals, entrepreneurs and technicians compete successfully in some of the world’s most demanding environments.

Where institutions function, Filipinos excel. They meet standards, solve problems and rise on merit. Yet many return home to find competence treated as an inconvenience rather than an expectation. The problem is not the Filipino. It is the State that has consistently failed the Filipino.

That distinction matters. We have spent decades diagnosing the wrong patient. We keep trying to change leaders when what requires reconstruction are the institutions within which leaders must govern.

Our people, our families and our communities are strong. Our faith remains strong. Our capacity to endure adversity is legendary. Indeed, we have become so good at surviving dysfunction that we sometimes mistake survival for governance.

The state, however, too often struggles to perform its most basic responsibilities efficiently, consistently and fairly.

The resilience trap

We see it in infrastructure projects that take years to complete, bureaucracies that reward process over results, and public services that too often depend upon personal connections rather than institutional effectiveness.

While Filipinos help build world-class institutions abroad, they return home to watch political dynasties, bureaucratic inertia, oligarchic privilege and recurring corruption replay the same familiar script. National progress is postponed — once again — to the next administration.

For generations, Filipinos have compensated for institutional weakness through sacrifice, ingenuity and resilience. When jobs are unavailable, they leave. When services fail, families step in. When opportunities disappear, individuals create their own.

Every year, overseas Filipinos send billions of dollars in remittances that cushion the consequences of policy failures. Families become the nation’s social safety net where government programs fall short.

In effect, ordinary Filipinos continually rescue the Republic from the consequences of poor governance. The danger is that resilience becomes a substitute for reform. Because Filipinos somehow endure, leaders feel less pressure to change. The country survives. The system remains. Yet survival is not success.

While Asia moves ahead

Meanwhile, the rest of Asia continues moving forward. China expands strategically. India rises economically. Vietnam attracts manufacturing. Indonesia modernizes. Singapore governs efficiently. South Korea innovates. Our Asian neighbors continue advancing into increasingly sophisticated industries.

None of these countries is free from political conflict. And for some, democracy is not the language of their governments. The difference is that politics does not completely stop governance. Elections are contested. Leaders change. Rivalries continue. But the work of government goes on.

Corruption is not unique to the Philippines. What distinguishes nations is whether their institutions contain it or allow it to become systemic. Strong states build institutions that outlive individual leaders; weak states depend on personalities. Strong states reward competence; weak states prize loyalty. Strong states uphold the rule of law impartially; weak states apply it selectively, depending on who wields power.

The real test

The world is entering an era of relentless competition where nations will be judged less by the size of their populations than by the quality of their institutions. Investors seek regulatory stability. Manufacturers require reliable infrastructure. Technology firms need world-class talent and predictable rules. Allies value dependable partners.

Institutional weakness has never been more costly. The uncomfortable truth is that national strength begins at home. A nation consumed by political feuds cannot think strategically. A government trapped in factional warfare cannot govern effectively. Institutions that command little public trust cannot rally the country when genuine crises demand unity.

The Filipino people have already demonstrated their strength across generations and across continents. They have proven that they can compete with the world’s best whenever they are placed inside systems that reward merit and competence.

The real question is whether we can build such institutions here. For decades, we have pinned our hopes on the next election, the next administration, the next charismatic president.

History suggests we have been asking the wrong question. The future of the Philippines depends less on finding the right leader than on building institutions that no longer need one.

Until then, every election will merely change the actors while the script remains the same. Nations are not transformed by discovering better heroes. They are transformed by building institutions that no longer require them. That is the conversation the Philippines has postponed for far too long — and the one we can no longer afford to avoid.

DEATH has a curious habit of improving reputations. With the passing of Sen. Lindsey Graham last Saturday, July 11, Washington will perform one of its oldest rituals. Flags will fly at half-staff. The Senate floor will echo with solemn tributes. Political adversaries will become respected colleagues. Lifelong opportunists will be remembered as statesmen. Eulogies will grow kinder than history, while uncomfortable truths are quietly buried with the dead.

That instinct is understandable. Civility demands restraint. History, however, demands honesty. Whether one admired or opposed Lindsey Graham is ultimately less important than what his political life reveals about a deeper disease afflicting modern democracies. His story is not principally about conservatism or liberalism, Republicans or Democrats, Donald Trump, or Joe Biden. It is about something far older — and infinitely more dangerous: the slow surrender of principle to the seduction of power.

No doubt the word “statesman” would be tossed around like party confetti. Yet many of those delivering the tributes would know, deep down, that they were celebrating a man whose career became defined not by courage but by accommodation, not by conviction but by calculation.

Behind the polished eulogies lies the record of a rudderless, sycophantic political survivor who repeatedly attached himself to the most powerful figure in the room, even after publicly warning the nation of the danger that figure posed.

There is an important distinction between those who sincerely believe they are right and those who know they are wrong yet proceed anyway. The former may simply be mistaken. The latter have made a moral choice.

Knowing better

Lindsey Graham’s greatest failing was never that he misunderstood Donald Trump. He understood him remarkably well. Years before much of the Republican establishment found its voice, Graham described Trump in unforgettable terms: “a race-baiting, xenophobic, religious bigot.” He said he was unfit for office. He warned Republicans that nominating Trump would destroy the party — and that they would deserve the consequences.

Those were not the words of Trump’s critics. They were Lindsey Graham’s own. He saw the danger clearly. He diagnosed it accurately. He described it eloquently.

Then he spent the next decade legitimizing the very man he had warned the country against. There is something profoundly unsettling about a public official who correctly diagnoses the disease, only to spend the rest of his career prescribing it.

That is not ideological evolution. It is not political pragmatism. It is the deliberate surrender of conviction to ambition — the conscious decision to exchange principle for proximity to power. And that, more than any Senate speech or carefully crafted obituary, may become Lindsey Graham’s true political epitaph.

The price of proximity

Perhaps no episode illustrates this more painfully than Graham’s relationship with his closest friend, Sen. John McCain. After McCain’s death, Graham delivered an emotional tribute celebrating courage, sacrifice and the obligation to confront evil even when inconvenient. Few doubted the sincerity of his grief.

Yet those words soon collided with an uncomfortable reality. Donald Trump had repeatedly ridiculed McCain — even questioning the heroism of a man who endured more than five years of torture as a prisoner of war in Vietnam.

One expects loyalty among friends. One expects even more among those who publicly celebrate friendship as a virtue. Instead, political convenience prevailed. The friendship remained in memory; the alliance shifted toward power. There are moments in public life when silence speaks louder than speeches. This was one of them.

Promises made, promises forgotten

Political inconsistency is hardly unique to Lindsey Graham. Changing one’s mind is not a vice. Circumstances change. Facts evolve. Honest leaders revise judgments. But Graham’s reversals were different. During the 2016 battle over a Supreme Court vacancy, he publicly declared that if a similar vacancy arose in the final year of a Republican president’s first term, the next president — not the incumbent — should fill it. “Use my words against me,” he said. Four years later, confronted with precisely that circumstance, he abandoned his own standard. Principle gave way to political arithmetic.

When principle becomes negotiable depending on who benefits, it ceases to be principle altogether. It becomes strategy.

The courage that lasted three weeks

Perhaps the most revealing episode arrived after Jan. 6, 2021. As violence engulfed the US Capitol, Graham finally appeared to reach his breaking point.

“Enough is enough,” he declared dramatically before the Senate. For a brief moment, many believed the old Lindsey Graham had returned.

He seemed prepared to choose country over party. Conscience over convenience. Character over calculation.

The moment proved remarkably brief. Within weeks, reconciliation replaced condemnation. Political necessity overcame moral clarity. The alliance resumed almost as though Jan. 6 had been an unfortunate interruption rather than a constitutional crisis. History records such moments carefully. Not because people fail. But because they recover from their failures in the wrong direction.

A universal lesson

It is tempting to dismiss Lindsey Graham’s story as merely another episode in America’s increasingly polarized politics. That would be a mistake.

Every democracy eventually produces its Lindsey Grahams — not necessarily corrupt men in the conventional sense, nor ideological extremists. More often they are intelligent, experienced and respected public officials who recognize danger before everyone else, describe it with remarkable clarity, then gradually accommodate it because proximity to power proves more rewarding than fidelity to conviction.

History reminds us that democratic decline seldom begins with fanatics. Fanatics are usually too few to prevail on their own. It advances instead through capable people who know better but persuade themselves that one more compromise, one more accommodation, one more silence is politically necessary. Eventually they no longer recognize where compromise ended and surrender began.

That is why institutions matter more than personalities. Institutions demand consistency. Personal ambition rarely does.

The saddest sentence

If we Filipinos are tempted to watch this drama from a comfortable distance, we should resist the temptation. America’s politics merely magnifies a question every democracy must eventually confront.

When historians examine a political career, they seldom ask how much power a leader accumulated or how many elections he won. Those are temporary achievements. Instead, history asks a far simpler question: What did this person do after recognizing the truth?

In Lindsey Graham’s case, the answer may be painfully concise. He recognized it. He spoke it. Then he abandoned it. There is no sadder epitaph in public life than this: He knew better. And he chose otherwise.

It is a sentence that should give every democracy pause — including our own. For perhaps our greatest challenge has never been the absence of intelligent leaders. It has been the inability — or unwillingness — to translate what many already know into institutions that consistently reward competence, integrity and courage. That thought has occupied me for some time. It is also where this column now leads.

Beginning next week, we come home. For the real question is not why America produced a Lindsey Graham, but why the Philippines continues to produce capable, decent people while struggling to build institutions worthy of them. That, I suspect, is where our national conversation truly begins.

FOR two unforgettable weeks, Alexandra “Alex” Eala gave Filipinos something increasingly rare: a reason to celebrate untouched by the country’s exhausting political theater, economic anxieties and the ripple effects of wars abroad that continue to push prices higher and tighten household budgets.

For a brief moment, the endless spectacle of Senate intrigues, congressional theater, over an impeachment many believe is doomed to fail — not on a verdict of guilt or innocence of the accused, but by sheer numbers of allied senator-judges prejudging the trial.

Even that shameless demonstration by a religious sect flexing its electoral muscle — paralyzing parts of Metro Manila in defense of a favored political ally facing plunder charges — could not compete with the quiet drama unfolding on center court.

Millions of Filipinos turned instead to a different arena, one where surnames conferred no privilege, political endorsements carried no weight, and influence could neither change the score nor rewrite the result. There every point was earned, every mistake punished, and only merit advanced.

Only the scoreboard mattered. Then came the end. Italy’s Jasmine Paolini defeated Eala in three hard-fought sets, bringing the young Filipino woman’s remarkable Wimbledon campaign to a close. There was no controversy, no officiating scandal, no convenient excuse. Paolini simply played better when it mattered most.

And that is precisely why this defeat may prove more valuable than many victories.

The price of greatness

Sports possess a quality politics often lacks: brutal honesty. The scoreboard never flatters. It never negotiates. It does not recognize pedigree, popularity, influence or public relations.

Every point is earned. Every mistake carries a price. Every victory is temporary. Every defeat offers a lesson. That is why the world’s greatest champions are rarely those who escaped defeat. They are those who grew because of it. Roger Federer lost before becoming Roger Federer. Rafael Nadal endured painful defeats on hard courts before mastering them. Novak Djokovic suffered heartbreaking reversals long before rewriting tennis history.

Filipinos have witnessed that journey before. Long before Alex Eala captivated Wimbledon, Manny Pacquiao had already shown the world that greatness is forged not in uninterrupted triumph but through adversity. The skinny teenager who left poverty behind did not become an eight-division world champion because he never lost. He became one because every setback sharpened his resolve and every defeat strengthened his craft.

Greatness is seldom a straight ascent. It is built through disappointments transformed into discipline and determination. Pacquiao walked that difficult road before her. Alex has now entered the same demanding school. Wimbledon was never the destination. Wimbledon merely introduced her to the curriculum.

What Wimbledon really revealed

Ironically, the most important thing about Wimbledon was not that Eala defeated defending champion Iga Świątek. Nor was it that she eventually lost to Jasmine Paolini.

The tournament revealed something much deeper. Before Wimbledon, Alex was considered an exciting prospect. After Wimbledon, she is regarded as someone who belongs on the sport’s biggest stages. That distinction matters enormously.

The question is no longer whether she has the talent to compete against the world’s best. She already has. The question now is how quickly experience catches up with talent. Every match against elite opponents teaches lessons that cannot be learned in practice. Every defeat exposes tiny margins invisible to spectators but obvious to champions.

The difference between reaching the fourth round and lifting the trophy is measured not in dreams but in details: shot selection under pressure, emotional composure during critical points, physical endurance through two demanding weeks and the confidence that only repeated battles can provide. Those lessons cannot be purchased. They must be earned. Eala earned them.

A nation cheering for merit

Perhaps the most encouraging sight during Wimbledon was not on Center Court. It was here at home. Millions of Filipinos rallied behind a young athlete whose only qualification was excellence.

Nobody asked which political family she belonged to. Nobody cared about regional loyalties. Nobody debated ideological affiliations.

Nobody demanded that victory be redistributed in the name of fairness.

Filipinos simply admired competence. That should tell us something important about ourselves. For all our political frustrations, our instinctive admiration remains remarkably healthy.

When excellence appears before us, we recognize it immediately.

We cheer discipline. We celebrate perseverance. We admire preparation.

We understand merit. Perhaps the tragedy is not that Filipinos fail to value excellence. Perhaps the tragedy is that our institutions too often fail to reward it.

Then Wimbledon ended.

The other court

Reality returned. Back home, scoreboards often become less decisive than alliances. Political dynasties compete less on competence than on inherited influence. Election victories frequently depend less on preparation than on machinery.

Public office too often rewards popularity more than performance.

Failure can be explained away. Accountability can be delayed. Responsibility can be negotiated. Center Court offers no such luxuries.

A missed backhand remains a missed backhand. An unforced error remains exactly that.

The scoreboard is gloriously indifferent to excuses. Perhaps that is why so many Filipinos found Wimbledon strangely refreshing. For two weeks, we witnessed a society operating almost entirely on merit.

No special treatment. No inherited advantage. No backroom negotiations. Only performance.

Imagine what our country might become if our public institutions functioned with similar discipline.

The long road ahead

History suggests that Eala’s greatest victories may still lie ahead. Not because talent guarantees success. It does not. But because she has already demonstrated something more important than talent. She has demonstrated resilience.

Champions are rarely defined by the matches they win. They are defined by what they become after the matches they lose. Yesterday’s defeat will eventually disappear into the statistics of Wimbledon. The lessons will not.

Years from now, should Alex Eala one day lift a Grand Slam trophy — that I know she eventually will — tennis historians may well trace that triumph not merely to the victories that inspired confidence but to defeats like this one that demanded growth. Every champion has such moments. Perhaps we have just witnessed hers.

Beyond Wimbledon

For Filipinos, the larger lesson extends far beyond tennis. Alex reminded us that excellence remains possible. That discipline still matters. That preparation still defeats excuses.

She also reminded us of a less comfortable truth: merit flourishes where institutions reward it. Sport does this with remarkable honesty. Our politics, too often, does not.

On Center Court, no one asks whose daughter you are, which dynasty you belong to, or which patron stands behind you. The scoreboard is gloriously indifferent. It records only what you have earned.

For two unforgettable weeks, Alex Eala allowed an entire nation to glimpse what a society governed by merit rather than entitlement might look like. Then Wimbledon ended.

The long road beyond Wimbledon now begins — not only for Alex Eala, but perhaps for all of us.

On a personal note, these Eala-endorsed sleepless nights have left this octogenarian with renewed hope. Someday, my granddaughters — Sylvie, Claudia and little Sabine — may also pick up a tennis racket. Whether they become champions matters less than the country they inherit, one where every child, on every court of life, succeeds because of merit — not pedigree.