A Tale of Two Trajectories

In the 1960’s, the Philippines and Singapore stood at remarkably similar starting lines. Both were independent developing economies with strategic maritime locations, young populations, and leaders who spoke of modernization and progress. The Philippines, in fact, appeared to have the advantage: with established democratic institutions, American-style universities, and a vibrant manufacturing sector. Singapore was a small city-state that had just separated from Malaysia in 1965, with no natural resources and uncertain prospects.

Six decades later, the contrast is stark. Singapore’s nominal per capita GDP exceeds $90,000, placing it among the world’s wealthiest nations. Its institutions rank among the most efficient and least corrupt globally. The Philippines, despite periodic bursts of growth, has a nominal per capita GDP below $4,000 and continues to export millions of workers abroad while struggling with poverty, infrastructure deficits, and institutional weaknesses.

The divergence was not inevitable. It was not simply about Lee Kuan Yew’s brilliance versus whoever occupied Malacañang. The fundamental difference was continuity—a consistent, multi-decade approach to governance, policy implementation, and institution-building that Singapore maintained relentlessly, while the Philippines repeatedly disrupted its own trajectory, often just as momentum was building.

The Power of Continuity: Singapore’s Compound Growth

Singapore’s transformation demonstrates a crucial principle of development: progress is cumulative, not linear. The People’s Action Party (PAP), which has governed since 1959, provided an uninterrupted political environment for ambitious, interconnected reforms that built upon each other over decades.

Consider Singapore’s approach to key development challenges:

Economic Planning: The Economic Development Board (EDB), established in 1961, has operated continuously for over 60 years with consistent mandates across administrations. Its industrial policies evolved from labor-intensive manufacturing (1960s) to capital-intensive industries (1970s) to high-tech and services (1980s onward)—each phase building on the previous one.

Education System: Singapore’s education reforms began in the 1960s with an emphasis on bilingualism and technical training, expanded in the 1980s toward knowledge-intensive skills, and evolved in the 2000s toward innovation and creativity. Crucially, each reform phase preserved and enhanced what worked from previous efforts rather than starting from scratch.

Anti-Corruption Framework: The Corrupt Practices Investigation Bureau (CPIB), established in 1952 and strengthened in 1960, has maintained consistent enforcement standards across all administrations. Civil service salaries were raised to competitive levels in the 1970s and indexed thereafter, creating systemic incentives against corruption rather than relying on periodic campaigns.

Infrastructure Development: Singapore’s MRT system, begun in 1983, has expanded systematically across six administrations, with each government adding new lines according to the long-term master plan rather than pursuing vanity projects or abandoning predecessors’ initiatives.

This continuity created predictability, which proved as valuable as the policies themselves. Investors could plan 20-year projects knowing the rules wouldn’t change arbitrarily. Bureaucrats could develop expertise knowing their agencies’ mandates were stable. Students could invest in education knowing the skills they acquired would remain valued. Citizens could trust that long-term sacrifices would yield long-term benefits.

The result: compound growth. Each decade’s achievements became the foundation for the next decade’s ambitions, creating an upward spiral that transformed Singapore from a poor port city into a global financial hub.

The Illusion of Continuity: Marcos Sr.’s 20-Year Stagnation

Some observers point to Ferdinand Marcos Sr.’s 21-year rule (1965–1986) as the Philippines’ attempt at continuity. This comparison fundamentally misunderstands what continuity means for development.

Longevity without accountability is not continuity—it is stagnation.

Marcos indeed maintained power for two decades, but rather than building institutions, he hollowed them out. His regime demonstrated what happens when continuity serves personal enrichment rather than national development:

Crony Capitalism: Instead of creating competitive markets, Marcos granted monopolies to allies. The coconut industry was controlled by Eduardo Cojuangco under the coconut levy fund scandal. Sugar monopolies enriched Roberto Benedicto. Logging concessions destroyed forests while enriching cronies. These arrangements didn’t build industries—they extracted rents.

Debt Without Development: Philippines’ foreign debt exploded from $2 billion in 1970 to $28 billion by 1986. Unlike Singapore or South Korea, which borrowed to build export industries and infrastructure, much of this debt financed consumption, capital flight, and white elephant projects. The Bataan Nuclear Power Plant cost $2.3 billion but never generated a single watt of electricity.

Institutional Decay: Rather than professionalizing the bureaucracy, Marcos politicized it. Merit-based appointments gave way to loyalty-based selection. The judiciary became a tool of the regime. The military, whose budget tripled during martial law, was deployed not to defend the nation but to suppress dissent and protect the dictatorship.

Economic Decline: By 1984-1985, the Philippines experienced negative GDP growth of -7.3%. Real wages fell. Unemployment soared. Capital fled. The Philippines became the “Sick Man of Asia,” overtaken not just by Singapore but by Malaysia, Thailand, South Korea, and Taiwan—countries that had been poorer or similarly positioned in 1965.

Marcos’s legacy proved that authoritarian continuity without accountability produces systematic deterioration. His 20 years set the Philippines back decades, demonstrating that the wrong kind of continuity can be worse than instability.

A Democratic System Designed for Disruption

The trauma of the Marcos years shaped the 1987 Constitution, which the Filipino people ratified as protection against future authoritarianism. Its architects, having witnessed how concentrated power enabled systemic corruption and abuse, deliberately built in safeguards:

• Single six-year presidential term with no re-election
• Power dispersed among executive, legislative, and judicial branches
• Strengthened checks and balances, including independent constitutional bodies
• Enhanced civil liberties and protections against martial law
• Decentralization through the Local Government Code

These reforms succeeded in their primary goal: preventing the return of dictatorship. The Philippines has maintained electoral democracy for nearly four decades, surviving multiple transfer-of-power moments, impeachment proceedings, and political crises without military coups or authoritarian backsliding.

However, these same protections created an unintended consequence: structural discontinuity became the system’s default state.

The Six-Year Reset Problem: Each new president has only six years to implement their vision, with no possibility of extension even if their programs are working. Ambitious reforms require time to show results—civil service reform, education transformation, industrial policy, and infrastructure build-out all operate on 10-20 year timelines. Yet every six years, a new administration can choose to abandon, reverse, or underfund its predecessors’ initiatives.

The Mandate Illusion: Each president interprets their election as a mandate for change rather than continuity, even when continuity would be more beneficial. There’s political pressure to pursue distinctive programs rather than enhance existing ones, to launch new agencies rather than strengthen old ones, and to create signature projects rather than complete inherited ones.

The Coalition Challenge: Unlike Singapore’s PAP or even Thailand’s bureaucratic elite, the Philippines lacks a stable governing coalition committed to long-term policies, regardless of which individual holds the presidency. Political parties are weak, fluid, personality-based vehicles rather than ideological or policy-oriented institutions. This makes cross-administration coordination rare and voluntary rather than institutional.

The Institutional Vulnerability: While the Constitution created independent bodies (Ombudsman, Commission on Audit, Commission on Elections, Civil Service Commission), their effectiveness depends heavily on presidential appointments and political will. A reform-minded president can empower these institutions; a populist or corrupt president can starve them of resources or pack them with loyalists.

The result: the Philippines faces a fundamental governance paradox. The Constitution prevents authoritarian continuity but struggles to enable reformist continuity. Each administration starts partly from scratch, creating an institutional version of Sisyphus repeatedly pushing the boulder uphill, only to have successors let it roll back down.

The Aquino Break: When Momentum Was Real

Against this backdrop of structural discontinuity, Benigno “Noynoy” Aquino III’s presidency (2010–2016) represented something rare: a reformist administration that achieved measurable progress within democratic constraints.

Aquino inherited a country still recovering from the 2008 global financial crisis and the tarnished institutions of the previous administration. His approach focused on fundamentals:

Anti-Corruption Drive: Unlike previous symbolic campaigns, Aquino pursued systemic accountability. His administration prosecuted former President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo and Chief Justice Renato Corona, sending an unprecedented signal that even the powerful could face consequences. The “Daang Matuwid” (Straight Path) program emphasized transparent procurement and zero tolerance for graft.

Fiscal Discipline: The government achieved budget surpluses, reduced the debt-to-GDP ratio from 56% (2009) to 42% (2015), and improved tax collection efficiency. This wasn’t austerity—it was responsible revenue management that freed resources for productive investment.

Transparent Procurement: The Public-Private Partnership (PPP) program established clear, competitive processes for infrastructure projects, reducing the corruption premium that had historically inflated project costs by 20-30%.

Bureaucratic Professionalization: Merit-based appointments increased in key economic agencies. The Civil Service Commission strengthened performance evaluation systems. While far from perfect, the trajectory was clearly toward competence over patronage.

Results that Mattered:

• Investment-grade credit ratings from all three major rating agencies (first time in Philippine history)
• Average GDP growth of 6.2% annually (2010-2016)
• Unemployment fell from 7.3% to 5.4%
• Poverty incidence decreased from 26.6% to 21.6%
• Infrastructure spending as a percentage of GDP began increasing after decades of neglect.
• Business competitiveness rankings improved significantly.

The Philippines earned the moniker “Asia’s Rising Tiger.” More importantly, there was a credible sense that the country had finally found a sustainable trajectory. Investor conferences featured the Philippines as a success story. The diaspora began considering returning. Young Filipinos started believing the country could work.

Crucially, Aquino demonstrated that reformist continuity could work within a democratic, six-year framework—if the commitment to institutions and good governance was genuine.

The Road Not Taken: 18 Years of Reformist Continuity

This brings us to the pivotal 2016 election and the most important counterfactual in recent Philippine history.

Mar Roxas, Aquino’s preferred successor and former DOTC and DILG secretary, represented explicit continuity. His campaign slogan—”Ipagpatuloy ang Daang Matuwid” (Continue the Straight Path)—was unambiguous. A Roxas presidency (2016–2022) would have sustained and deepened Aquino’s reforms:

• Institutionalizing anti-corruption mechanisms beyond presidential will;
• Completing major infrastructure projects already in the PPP pipeline;
• Expanding the tax reform program that eventually passed under Duterte (TRAIN Law);
• Deepening ASEAN economic integration and attracting more foreign direct investment;
• Continuing civil service professionalization until it became entrenched.

Had Roxas succeeded and been followed by Leni Robredo (2022–2028)—another reformist with proven administrative capability and commitment to transparency—the Philippines would have experienced 18 consecutive years of reformist, democratic governance.

Why 18 years matter: This is approximately the timeframe in which:

• Singapore transformed from developing to developed (1965-1983)
• South Korea built its heavy industries and began its tech transformation (1963-1981)
• Ireland transformed from “sick man of Europe” to Celtic Tiger (1987-2004)
• Rwanda rebuilt from genocide to middle-income status (2000-2018)

Eighteen years allow:

• Institutional reforms to solidify: A second generation of civil servants enters mid-career having known only a meritocratic system.
• Infrastructure networks to complete: MRT systems, expressways, port facilities, and digital infrastructure reach critical mass.
• Economic reforms to mature: Industries attracted by improved governance put down roots, supply chains develop, and clusters form.
• Educational improvements to enter the workforce: Students who began with a reformed curriculum graduate, enter careers, and prove the system’s value.
• Social capital to rebuild: A generation of citizens experiences a government that works, rebuilding trust and compliance.

This was not a theoretical possibility—it was entirely feasible. Both Roxas and Robredo were tested administrators with track records of competence and integrity. The reformist coalition had electoral viability. The institutional foundation Aquino built was strong enough to support continued development.

The Philippines could have had its answer to Singapore’s PAP continuity—not through one-party dominance, but through a democratic succession of reform-committed administrations operating within constitutional checks and balances.

The Reversal: Duterte’s Disruption

Instead, Rodrigo Duterte won the 2016 election with 39% of the vote in a fragmented field. His populist campaign promised to “fix the country in 3-6 months,” drain Manila Bay, solve traffic, and eliminate crime through strongman tactics. The electorate, impatient with incremental progress and attracted by the promise of shortcuts, chose disruption over continuity.

Duterte’s presidency (2016–2022) represented a fundamental break from the previous administration’s trajectory:

Institutional Politicization: Rather than strengthening independent institutions, Duterte demanded loyalty. The Supreme Court was effectively controlled through retirement timing and strategic appointments. The Commission on Human Rights was defunded and attacked. The Ombudsman faced relentless criticism. The message was clear: institutions serve power, not the rule of law.

Weaponized Anti-Corruption: While Duterte claimed to fight corruption, enforcement became selective. Political allies and family members facing corruption allegations enjoyed protection. Meanwhile, opposition figures, critical journalists, and independent voices faced investigation and harassment. Anti-corruption became a tool of political control rather than systemic reform.

Economic Policy Inconsistency: The administration sent contradictory signals to investors. While economic managers pursued orthodox policies (tax reform, banking regulations), Duterte’s rhetoric threatened businesses, attacked foreign investors, and created regulatory uncertainty. Major infrastructure projects were announced with fanfare but suffered delays and implementation problems. The much-touted “Build, Build, Build” program achieved only 31% completion rate by the end of his term.

Foreign Policy Volatility: Duterte’s pivot to China, public belittling of alliances, and inconsistent positions on the West Philippine Sea dispute created strategic confusion. While the Philippines received Chinese loans and investments, these came with terms less favorable than what traditional partners offered, and several flagship projects stalled or were canceled.

Pandemic Mismanagement: The COVID-19 crisis exposed institutional weaknesses. The Philippines endured one of the world’s longest and strictest lockdowns yet achieved some of Southeast Asia’s worst health and economic outcomes. Corruption in pandemic spending was rampant, from overpriced medical supplies to questionable contracts.

Erosion of Democratic Norms: The “war on drugs” resulted in thousands of extrajudicial killings, fundamentally challenging the rule of law. Critical media outlets lost broadcasting licenses. Dissent was labeled destabilization. Congress became a rubber stamp. The opposition was marginalized through lawfare and intimidation.

Measurable Reversals:

• Philippines fell in global corruption rankings (from 94th to 116th in Transparency International’s Corruption Perceptions Index).
• Debt-to-GDP ratio increased from 42% to 60%, erasing years of fiscal discipline.
• Foreign direct investment remained stagnant despite regional growth.
• Infrastructure quality rankings declined.
• Press freedom rankings plummeted (from 138th to 147th globally).

More fundamentally, Duterte destroyed the narrative that good governance leads to success. His message was that strongman shortcuts, not institutional reform, deliver results—even though his actual results fell far short of promises. The six years that could have consolidated and expanded Aquino’s reforms instead reversed course, proving again the fragility of progress in the absence of continuity.

The Marcos Jr. Factor: Continuity of What?

The 2022 election of Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos Jr., son of the dictator, with Sara Duterte as Vice President, represented both continuity and disruption. It continued Duterte’s populist approach while disrupting even Duterte’s episodic reform efforts.

The symbolism was stark: the Philippines rejected Leni Robredo, a proven reformist administrator who represented the road not taken in 2016, in favor of the son of the dictator whose 20-year misrule set the country back generations.

This choice reflected not just electoral politics but a deeper cultural challenge: historical amnesia and the devaluation of institutional competence. Thirty-six years after EDSA, a new generation raised on social media and historical revisionism chose the Marcos name, either unaware of or indifferent to the lessons of the 1970s-80s.

Early indications of the Marcos Jr. administration suggest continuity of style over substance—cosmetic reforms, publicity-driven projects, and coalition management taking precedence over systemic institution-building.

The Corruption Tax: How Scandals Compound the Cost of Development

Beyond the immediate theft of funds, corruption creates compound costs that multiply across the economy and across time—costs that help explain why the Philippines pays more for less development than its neighbors.

The Foreign Creditor Problem

Recent corruption scandals have exposed a critical vulnerability: foreign development partners are increasingly hesitant to commit funds when corruption risks are high. Even before the massive flood control corruption scandal erupted publicly in July 2025, warning signs were already evident in how foreign creditors were assessing Philippine projects.

In February 2024, South Korea’s Ministry of Strategy and Finance rejected a proposed Economic Development Cooperation Fund (EDCF) loan for a Philippine bridge-building project, citing “risks of irregularities and mismanagement” and corruption concerns linked to local contractors with histories of faulty construction. The project—intended to build 350 modular bridges nationwide with 700 billion won (₱28.7 billion) in financing—was deemed high-risk due to the challenges of managing scattered construction sites and past corruption issues.

Despite this rejection, political pressure from a Korean lawmaker led to attempts to revive the project. In September 2025, as the Philippine flood control corruption scandal was dominating headlines and Senate investigations, South Korean President Lee Jae-myung publicly ordered an immediate halt to any revival of the loan. His timing was pointed: the announcement came just as the Philippines was embroiled in investigations into suspected collusion among politicians, public works officials, and contractors to embezzle billions of pesos from flood control projects.

Lee’s statement was unambiguous about the connection between Philippine corruption and South Korean reluctance to provide development financing. “There is significant meaning in preventing the unnecessary waste of 700 billion Korean won in taxpayer money and preemptively blocking risks that could lead to poor management and corruption,” Lee stated in his Facebook post.

This wasn’t an isolated incident. The 2024 and 2025 national budgets had initially included 11 major flood control projects funded by foreign aid with a combined budget of ₱21.6 billion for 2024 and ₱27.5 billion for 2025, supported by signed loan agreements. However, the ₱21.6 billion allocation for 2024 was completely removed during Senate and bicameral proceedings. For 2025, the original ₱27.5 billion allocation was slashed by ₱18.6 billion, leaving only ₱8.9 billion—a 67% reduction.

The pattern is clear: corruption doesn’t just waste borrowed money—it prevents future borrowing altogether. Foreign development partners like the World Bank (WB), Asian Development Bank (ADB), and bilateral donors increasingly factor corruption risk into allocation decisions. The ADB’s Office of Anti-Corruption and Integrity has indicated that management and staff will consider issues of corruption more explicitly in the formulation of country strategies and programs. The World Bank’s Integrity Compliance Guidelines require risk assessments relating to fraud and corruption before program initiation, with project managers instructed to watch for common red flags that could indicate integrity issues.

While the ADB has stated it will continue operations despite the scandal, relying on project-level financial audits and procurement oversight, the loss of trust is measurable. When flood control funds are siphoned off through ghost projects and substandard works, the consequence is twofold: local communities remain unprotected, while the Philippines becomes further indebted to foreign donors without receiving the infrastructure benefits the loans were meant to provide.

The Infrastructure Premium

Corruption effectively imposes a hidden tax on every development project. The World Bank estimates that graft inflates Philippine infrastructure project costs by 20-30% on average. This means that for every ₱100 billion borrowed for infrastructure:

• ₱20-30 billion is lost to corruption
• ₱70-80 billion actually builds infrastructure
• The country must repay ₱100 billion plus interest

The mathematics are brutal: the Philippines borrows as much as Singapore but builds only 70-80% as much infrastructure while still owing 100% of the debt. This corruption premium compounds over decades, explaining why Philippine infrastructure quality lags regional peers despite substantial borrowing.

The current scandal demonstrates this premium in action. The Department of Finance estimates that corruption in flood-control projects alone hemorrhaged ₱118.5 billion (about $2 billion) from the economy between 2023 and 2025, with up to 70% of allocated funds vanishing into illicit channels. Greenpeace Philippines identified as much as ₱1.089 trillion at risk since 2023—sums that could have fortified resilient infrastructure against rising sea levels and intensifying typhoons.

Interim results from a joint investigation by DPWH, Armed Forces of the Philippines, Department of National Defense, Philippine National Police, and Department of Economy, Planning, and Development announced by DPWH Secretary Vince Dizon in October 2025 found that out of 8,000 flood control projects investigated, 421 were ghost projects—projects reported as completed but that don’t actually exist or remain unfinished. The report noted that 100,000 flood control projects had not yet been investigated.

The Self-Perpetuating Cycle

Perhaps most damning, reports from voters in community chat groups suggest that stolen flood control funds were recycled into electoral corruption. Voters have reported receiving up to ₱5,000 per person in vote-buying schemes during elections—money that sources trace to the same infrastructure budgets meant to protect communities from flooding. This reveals corruption’s most insidious mechanism: infrastructure funds are stolen not just for personal enrichment but to finance the very campaigns that keep corrupt politicians in power, creating a self-reinforcing cycle where each electoral victory enables more theft, which finances the next electoral victory. Communities are thus doubly victimized—first when their flood protection is stolen, then when that stolen money is used to buy their votes to maintain the system that victimizes them.

The Debt Service Trap

Corruption transforms development loans from growth engines into debt traps. The Marcos Sr. era demonstrates the mechanism:

The debt service ratio (interest and amortization payments as a percentage of exports) reached nearly half of exports by the mid-1980s. The fledgling democracy led by Corazon Aquino inherited a debt service burden amounting to almost half of exports. The Philippines became one of the most heavily indebted countries in the world: seventh in size of debt, sixth in debt-to-exports ratio, fourth in debt-to-GDP ratio, and ninth in debt service ratio.

The human cost was devastating: GDP growth dropped 5.3%, prices of primary export commodities fell 50%, workers’ wages were reduced, and unemployment hit one-fourth of the labor force. As the UP School of Economics report documented, the government had to “squeeze basic services and maintenance expenditures, reduce investment in infrastructure, incur huge deficits, and raise taxes and user fees to service the debt”.

Today’s situation echoes these dangers. As of the first half of 2024, the Philippines’ sovereign debt reached a record high of ₱15.689 trillion (up from ₱14 trillion in 2023), or around 61% of GDP. Debt per Filipino has more than tripled from ₱45,652 twenty years ago to ₱138,684. The debt-to-GDP ratio at 60.7% is slightly above the international threshold of 60%, still considered manageable, but it needs to be brought down to help sustain the country’s favorable credit ratings.

The critical question: Will corruption prevent these borrowed funds from generating the economic growth needed to service the debt? Historical precedent suggests yes. A May 1986 report by the UP School of Economics found that most projects financed by foreign loans during the Marcos era were “unproductive; not well chosen or were probably chosen precisely to finance capital flight through the overpricing of projects.” Projects were “overpriced, mismanaged, not viable to begin with, or made unviable by changes in the exchange rate and the international environment.”

The Investment Confidence Crisis

Corruption scandals create ripple effects throughout the investment climate. Foreign direct investment dipped 8% in the third quarter of 2025, with infrastructure-sensitive sectors like construction and real estate hit hardest, as global firms cited governance risks in their pullback.

The Philippines ranked 114th out of 180 countries on Transparency International’s 2024 Corruption Perceptions Index with a score of 33 out of 100, placing it on the lower end among ASEAN countries, alongside Thailand (35) and Vietnam (34). The country has remained around this level since 2019. Various organizations, including the World Economic Forum, have cited corruption among the top problematic factors for doing business in the Philippines.

Despite maintaining investment-grade credit ratings from major agencies, the perception gap is widening. A September 2025 survey by the Ateneo School of Government found 68% of respondents doubting the government’s anti-corruption resolve. This trust deficit translates directly into higher costs: investors demand higher returns (risk premium) to compensate for governance uncertainty, making capital more expensive for Philippine businesses and government projects alike.

The economic modeling is sobering. P&A Grant Thornton estimated in 2024 that widespread graft has stunted per capita GDP growth by up to 1.5 percentage points annually over decades. If impunity prevails, this lost potential could swell to trillions. Compounded over 30 years, a 1.5% annual growth penalty transforms a country that could have been upper-middle-income into one stuck in the middle-income trap.

Learning from Others’ Painful Lessons

The Philippines is not alone in facing these challenges, but it is falling behind peers who have addressed them more effectively. In 2019, the Philippines ranked 113th on the Corruption Perceptions Index, 14 notches below 2018 and 18 notches down from 2015. While the ranking may have seemed better in Duterte’s time compared to the Aquino III presidency when it ranked 129th, other ASEAN countries like Indonesia, Vietnam, and Thailand have improved considerably and overtaken the Philippines.

The contrast with South Korea is instructive. Like the Philippines in the 1960s-70s, South Korea borrowed heavily and faced corruption challenges. The difference: South Korea prosecuted corrupt officials aggressively, professionalized its bureaucracy despite political turbulence, and ensured borrowed funds actually built productive capacity. By the 1980s, its debt service was sustainable because infrastructure investments had generated export industries that could repay loans. The Philippines, by contrast, borrowed similar amounts but built less, exported less, and remained trapped in debt dependency.

What Singapore Teaches—and What the Philippines Must Learn

Singapore’s experience provides several crucial lessons, though the Philippines must adapt them to its democratic context:

Lesson 1: Continuity Beats Genius Lee Kuan Yew was brilliant, but Singapore’s success wasn’t about his personal genius—it was about decades of consistent implementation. Subsequent PAP leaders (Goh Chok Tong, Lee Hsien Loong, Lawrence Wong) may be individually less charismatic, but they maintained the trajectory. The Philippines keeps hoping for a savior president when it needs consistent administrations.

Lesson 2: Institutions Trump Individuals Singapore built systems that function regardless of who’s in charge. The Civil Service, CPIB (anti-corruption bureau), EDB (economic development board), and MAS (monetary authority) operate according to established mandates and professional norms. Philippine institutions remain vulnerable to presidential whims because they lack genuine independence and permanent bureaucratic strength.

Lesson 3: Long-Term Thinking Requires Political Courage Singapore made unpopular decisions (high taxes, mandatory savings, strict regulations) that paid off over decades. Philippine politicians typically optimize for six-year terms or even three-year election cycles, avoiding reforms that impose short-term costs for long-term gains.

Lesson 4: Meritocracy Is Non-Negotiable Singapore’s civil service and government-linked corporations recruit and promote based on performance. The Philippines still struggles with patronage, political appointments, and nepotism, which embed mediocrity into the system.

Lesson 5: Accountability Enables Continuity Paradoxically, Singapore’s continuity is reinforced by accountability—elections are competitive, civil service performance is measured, and leaders face internal party evaluation. The Philippines often confuses accountability with disruption, treating each election as a chance to overturn everything rather than hold leaders accountable while maintaining effective policies.

Critical Difference: Singapore achieved continuity through dominant-party democracy, which has its own vulnerabilities (limited political competition, restricted civil liberties, controlled media). The Philippines must find a different path—democratic continuity without authoritarian control. This is harder but also more sustainable if achieved.

The 2028 Elections: A Defining Crossroads

The 2028 general elections offer the Philippines a historically significant opportunity, but the window may be narrowing. Several factors make this election pivotal:

Generational Transition: The martial law generation is fading. Millennials and Gen Z, who have only known post-EDSA democracy, now form the majority of voters. This creates both risk (historical amnesia) and opportunity (openness to new directions).

Economic Pressure: The Philippines faces growing regional competition. Vietnam has surpassed it in manufacturing competitiveness. Indonesia is positioning itself as a regional leader. Thailand is recovering its economic dynamism. The Philippines risks permanent middle-income trap status if it doesn’t establish a consistent development trajectory soon.

Institutional Fragility: Another six years of institutional erosion could reach a tipping point where recovery becomes exponentially more difficult. Singapore built strong institutions early; once they decay, rebuilding requires decades.

Democratic Resilience: The Philippines’ democracy, while imperfect, remains one of Southeast Asia’s most vibrant. But democratic institutions require continuous reinforcement. Thailand shows how fragile civilian rule can be; Myanmar demonstrates how quickly democracy can collapse.

The Credibility Crisis: The 2024-2025 corruption scandals have created an urgent credibility problem with foreign development partners. Without demonstrable commitment to accountability and transparency, the Philippines risks losing access to concessional development financing precisely when infrastructure needs are most acute. The foreign investor and lender community is watching the 2028 elections closely—not just who wins, but what platform they represent and whether institutions can constrain corruption regardless of who holds power. More fundamentally, grassroots reports suggest that stolen infrastructure funds financed vote-buying schemes, demonstrating how corruption perpetuates itself: politicians steal from development budgets to finance campaigns that keep them in power to steal more, creating an electoral system that rewards theft rather than competence.

What 2028 Requires:

From Political Leaders:

• Explicit commitment to policy continuity: Candidates must pledge to maintain and enhance effective existing programs, not just promise wholesale change.
• Long-term platform presentation: Campaigns should present 12-18 year development visions, explaining how their six years fits into multi-administration timelines.
• Coalition building: Creating stable policy coalitions that transcend personal political ambitions.
• Institutional respect: Demonstrated commitment to strengthening independent agencies, courts, and oversight bodies.
• Evidence-based governance: Policy platforms grounded in data, international best practices, and measurable outcomes rather than populist rhetoric.

From Voters and Civil Society:

• Demand for continuity: Rewarding candidates who pledge to continue effective reforms rather than always choosing “change”
• Historical awareness: Understanding how the Marcos-era stagnation and subsequent disruptions have cost the country
• Long-term thinking: Evaluating candidates on 10-20 year impacts rather than immediate promises
• Civic education: Grassroots efforts to educate younger voters on governance, institutions, and the compound effects of continuity
• Accountability mechanisms: Creating citizen oversight structures that survive beyond individual administrations
• Rejection of vote-buying: Recognizing that the ₱5,000 handed out during elections is stolen from the ₱500,000 worth of flood protection their community needed—and refusing to participate in a system that robs them twice. Vote-buying is not a gift; it’s returning a tiny fraction of stolen public funds to buy complicity in the theft.

Structural Reforms to Consider:

• Strengthening political parties: Moving toward ideological or policy-oriented parties rather than personality-based vehicles
• Protecting key institutions: Statutory protections for agency independence, fixed terms for critical positions, and super-majority requirements for institutional changes
• Mandatory policy transition protocols: Requirements for incoming administrations to complete predecessor projects before launching new initiatives
• Long-term development planning: Statutory 20-year national development plans that bind successive administrations
• Merit-based bureaucracy protection: Civil service reforms that insulate professional positions from political churning
• Enhanced procurement oversight: Real-time auditing, public transparency portals, and severe penalties for ghost projects and overpricing
• Foreign loan accountability: Statutory requirements that all foreign-funded projects meet completion targets before new loans can be contracted, ensuring borrowed money generates the infrastructure it promises

Beyond 2028: Building Sustainable Continuity

Even if the 2028 elections produce a reform-minded administration, institutional changes are needed to make continuity less dependent on electoral fortune:

Constitutional Considerations: The single-term limit, while protecting against authoritarianism, could be modified to allow one immediate re-election (changing to 4-year terms with one re-election possibility). This would give successful reform presidents eight years to consolidate changes while maintaining democratic accountability. However, this requires careful constitutional amendment to avoid creating new authoritarian opportunities.

Institutional Safeguards:

• Fixed terms for heads of constitutional bodies (Ombudsman, COA, CSC, COMELEC) that don’t align with presidential terms
• Super-majority congressional approval for removal (impeachment) of these officials
• Professional bureaucracy protection—senior civil service positions appointed through merit boards, not presidential discretion
• Mandatory public consultation and impact assessment for major policy reversals

Political Party Development:

• Public financing of parties based on policy platforms and organizational strength
• Requirements for parties to maintain consistent positions across election cycles
• Penalties for party-switching that destabilize coalitions
• Support for think tanks and policy research institutions affiliated with parties

Cultural Transformation:

• Civic education emphasizing long-term thinking, institutional importance, and historical lessons
• Media literacy to combat disinformation and historical revisionism
• Celebration of bureaucratic competence, not just political charisma
• Professional associations (economists, engineers, educators) playing more active policy advocacy roles

The Real Question: Can Learning Happen?

The Philippines possesses extraordinary advantages: a large, young, English-speaking population; strategic location at the heart of Asia-Pacific trade routes; vibrant diaspora networks providing global connections; natural resources; democratic traditions; and demonstrated capacity for excellence (in healthcare, business process outsourcing, and creative industries).

Yet these advantages have been consistently squandered through governance disruption. The pattern is clear:

• Spanish colonialism (333 years): Extractive institutions, feudalism, church-state collusion
• American period (48 years): Democratic forms but elite capture, oligarchic competition
• Post-independence (1946-1972): Electoral democracy but weak institutions, personality-driven politics
• Marcos dictatorship (1972-1986): Authoritarian stagnation, crony capitalism, economic collapse
• Post-EDSA democracy (1986-present): Democratic restoration but episodic governance, policy discontinuity

The pattern must break—and the Philippines now has both the lessons from history and the regional models (Singapore, South Korea, Taiwan) to learn from.

The question is whether democratic institutions can enable the continuity that development requires, or whether the six-year reset cycle will continue to force the country to repeatedly restart the race while neighbors never stop running.

Singapore’s success came from continuity with accountability—strong institutions, consistent policies, meritocratic governance, and long-term vision maintained across multiple leaders. The Philippines’ challenge is achieving similar continuity within a more competitive, pluralistic democratic system.

The 2028 elections are not just about choosing the next president—they’re about whether the Philippines can finally choose continuity over disruption, institutional strength over personal charisma, and long-term development over short-term populism.

If the Philippines learns from Singapore’s playbook while adapting it to democratic values—building institutions that outlast individuals, creating policies designed to survive transitions, and developing political culture that rewards continuity—the “Singapore moment” may still be possible.

But the window is closing. Every six years of disruption makes the next recovery harder. Every cycle of institutional decay requires more time to reverse. Every generation that doesn’t learn history’s lessons makes future progress more difficult. Every corruption scandal that goes unpunished increases borrowing costs, reduces foreign development assistance, and compounds the debt burden on future generations.

The price of disruption has been 60 years of unrealized potential. The price of corruption is measured not just in stolen funds, but in canceled projects, higher interest rates, lost investor confidence, and children who attend schools that were never built with money that was borrowed in their name. The price of vote-buying, as reported by voters themselves in community discussions, is measured in communities that drown in floods that could have been prevented—if the money handed out at ₱5,000 per voter had instead built the ₱500,000 flood walls each community needed.

The questions for 2028: Will the Philippines finally decide these prices are too high to keep paying? Will voters recognize that the cash handed to them during campaigns is stolen from their own future, and refuse to be complicit in their own exploitation?

The header features stylized images of the flags of Singapore and the Philippines (image: Canva)

About the author

RAUL F. BORJAL, known as “Rolly” to his family and friends, was born in Naga City, Camarines Sur, and now resides in Parañaque City, Metro Manila. An alumnus of both Ateneo de Naga University and Ateneo de Manila University, he held senior executive roles in several domestic and multinational corporations, culminating in his retirement as Vice President and Corporate Secretary of a Filipino-owned group of companies.

He is married to the former Wenifreda D. Parma, a cum laude graduate of Ateneo de Naga University, and together they have four children. Rolly is also a co-founder and a member of the editorial board of Dateline Ibalon.