Over the next two decades as the “American dream” gave way to a new bout of declinism, demagoguery, economic crises and political polarization, Filipinos quickly found new paradises to juxtapose with their seemingly hopeless homeland. On one hand, a new generation of aspirational middle classes found in Singapore a new “gold standard” for governance: clean roads, efficient public transportation systems, meritocratically selected leaders and world-class health care and educational institutions. What’s not to love about the renowned city-state?

It didn’t take long before a surreal genre of “Singapore envy” took hold of our public imagination. No wonder, then, that Singapore’s former prime minister Lee Kuan Yew, who once whined about supposed “too much democracy” in the Philippines, became an instant role model for our politicos. The situation reached a critical juncture in the mid-2010s as the Aquino-style liberal reformism lost its luster among Filipino voters, amid the visible inability of state institutions to respond to the material and political needs of a rapidly expanding middle class, which came on the heels of a decade of rapid economic growth and democratic deepening.

Most notoriously, impresarios and die-hard supporters of former president Rodrigo Duterte portrayed Davao as the “Singapore of the Philippines” and enthusiastically endorsed the “iron fist” style leadership represented by Singapore’s founding father. Never mind that Lee, a Cambridge-educated lawyer, never endorsed extrajudicial killings and was never remotely as uncouth as the longtime Davao mayor.

My Singaporean friends were always visibly annoyed (in honor of their leader) and embarrassed (for us Filipinos) when folks foolishly tried to compare Duterte to one of the great statesmen of the 20th century.

Tragically, in our desperation to become Singapore we ended up with Dutertismo, which is a cynical “burn down the house” form of politics. We traded freedom for development and ended up losing both, as Duterte oversaw an unprecedented era of brutality and mismanagement, most notably during the pandemic, when the Philippines suffered the most casualties and the deepest economic contraction among our peers in Asia.

Treating Dutertismo as a historical aberration, liberals and even some progressives meanwhile indulged in their own version of fantastical boosterism. On one hand, some liberals insisted that Benigno Aquino III’s presidency was unfairly underappreciated and tragically distorted by disinformation, and that his great legacy would have been sealed had former Sen. Manuel “Mar” Roxas II succeeded him.

While not embracing the same form of denialism vis-à-vis the visible shortcomings of liberal reformism, namely the total absence of structural reforms addressing the root causes of corruption and uneven development, some prominent progressives began speaking of how the likes of former vice president Leni Robredo would have been a shoo-in for the presidency had we been New Zealand or Norway. Well, we are not!

Following the “UniTeam” shellacking of liberal forces in the 2022 elections, an even more insidious form of cynicism began to set in: an upsurge of “Vietnam envy”, thanks to Hanoi’s remarkable transformation in the past decade alone and panic over the Philippines being taken over by Cambodia and Laos. All three countries have authoritarian regimes!

And amid the recent flood control corruption scandals and persistent public support for the Dutertes ahead of the 2028 elections, some liberal commentators are basically implying that the country is utterly hopeless and, sans any evidence in global comparative terms, are dismissing the Philippines as a hopelessly corrupt nation that will soon succumb to a new era of low growth and democratic breakdown.

It’s precisely against this backdrop that Filipinos need a genuine “politics of hope” that rejects self-Orientalism and cynical mischaracterizations of our country, which actually happens to be average by all key global standards (e.g., the State Capture Index, the State Capacity Index, the Democracy Index and even the Economic Competitiveness Index), as well as actively promotes a vision of inclusive development, good governance and national excellence that gets us to the rank of “first world nations” in the coming decades.

Obviously, we need to get real with the genuine problems facing our nation, but a patriotic leap of faith combined with a package of concrete policy solutions is a prerequisite for sustained nation building.

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The writer is a columnist for the Philippine Daily Inquirer.