I JUST watched Alex Eala lose to Belinda Bencic a few minutes ago as I write this, and it occurred to me that her loss could provide the perfect coda to my three-part examination of our domestic political dynamics: “The Philippines — strong people, weak state”; “The president we keep waiting for”; and “Why institutions never outgrow presidents.” The theme running through all three is simple: the Filipinos are a great people shortchanged by their political leadership.

The Filipino is not the problem

We are a nation whose people excel abroad in almost every human endeavor, particularly in countries where competence and merit are rewarded and institutions are stronger than personalities. Alex is my exemplar. But so are millions of OFWs who leave their families behind and discover in foreign lands that Filipinos can compete with the best when the playing field is reasonably level and the rules actually mean something.

And then they come home.

They return to a country whose political system too often negates the very qualities that allow them to flourish elsewhere: merit, discipline, accountability and respect for rules. When Alex came home a fortnight ago to receive the adulation of Filipinos and the praises of our president and government, there was an irony we perhaps failed to notice.

Outside Malacañang, the country was watching another great political confrontation, in the hallowed halls of the Senate, no less — making a mockery of a constitutional assertion — senator/judges in an impeachment proceedings performing as partisan prosecutors and defense lawyers. Inside Malacañang, it was celebrating a young Filipino whose rise was built on discipline, merit and measurable performance. Two very different Philippine stories occurring almost simultaneously.

We honored a young Filipino woman whose success was built upon precisely those qualities our political system has difficulty rewarding. Nobody gave Alex a tennis match because of her surname. No political patron could appoint her into the quarterfinals. No dynasty could inherit her ranking. No padrino could negotiate away a double fault. The umpire does not ask which family you belong to before making the call.

You perform — or you lose.

If only our Republic is run that way.

While the country was cheering

For while we feted Alex, Filipinos elsewhere were again wading through floodwaters and asking familiar questions about flood control projects, contractors and missing accountability.

Our political leaders, meanwhile, were doing what they do exceedingly well: fighting one another.

The nation is consumed by the impeachment battle surrounding VP Sara. Alliances are being assembled and dismantled. Accusations fly. Political families reposition themselves. Even some of my own friends are already distracting themselves with the most premature of Philippine political pastimes: Who will be president in 2028?

Sara? Someone else? Who can win? Who can defeat whom? Have we learned nothing?

We have spent three columns arguing that whoever becomes president enters the same political architecture — one capable of chewing up reformers, accommodating mediocrities, and converting even good intentions into political compromises.

Yet here we are again, searching for our next savior before we have finished quarreling over the present one — Leni, Sara, Raffy, Bam — or the actor Robinhood! While Alex was learning to defeat the person across the net, Philippine politics was already deciding who should occupy Malacañang. Apparently, presidential elections are our national version of changing the driver while refusing to repair the car.

When government goes underwater

Consider the floods. Rain is a natural phenomenon. Flooding may sometimes be unavoidable. But when drainage systems repeatedly fail, projects exist on paper while communities remain underwater, contractors prosper while citizens suffer, and investigations commence only after public outrage, we are no longer discussing meteorology. We are discussing institutions.

The same principle applies to impeachment. Whether one supports or opposes Sara is secondary to a larger question: Can our constitutional mechanisms investigate wrongdoing fairly, establish facts credibly and impose accountability without becoming instruments of factional warfare?

Strong institutions should investigate a vice president without persecution, defend one without favoritism, punish wrongdoing without vengeance and establish innocence without political accommodation. Otherwise, justice depends upon who controls the machinery. And that is where things become interesting.

And who judges the judges?

Take Sen. Loren Legarda. Her son, Batangas Rep. Leandro Leviste, built Solar Philippines and secured for his Solar Para sa Bayan a 25-year congressional franchise in 2019. He was a 25-year-old billionaire — kuno!

Before approval, the franchise drew objections from energy groups, cooperatives and legislators, who warned of unusual advantages for one company; an ethics complaint alleged Legarda used influence to favor her son’s enterprise.

To be fair, Legarda abstained when the Senate voted on the franchise. There is no evidence that she voted to enrich her son. But the matter did not end there.

Last July 31, the Ombudsman ordered a preliminary investigation into plunder and graft complaints involving Legarda, Leviste and former energy secretary Alfonso Cusi concerning solar projects and some P10.44 billion in alleged unpaid government obligations. Investigators are examining allegations that Legarda helped her son secure government privileges.

Legarda has categorically denied the accusations as false and baseless. She deserves the presumption of innocence. But notice the institutional comedy. A sitting senator facing questions about her own exercise of public influence may nevertheless sit in judgment upon the alleged misconduct of a vice president.

And she is hardly alone in inhabiting our strange ecosystem of accusers, accused, investigators and judges. Several politicians associated with controversies surrounding flood control projects have themselves faced allegations or investigations. Yesterday’s investigator can become today’s accused; today’s accused may become tomorrow’s judge.

Only in Philippine politics can the players occasionally serve as referees — and then argue about where the goalposts should be.

This is not about declaring Legarda or anyone else guilty. It is about a system where legislators grant franchises, political families enter regulated businesses, government agencies supervise privileges politicians themselves created — and eventually politicians sit in judgment upon one another.

Build the court, not another savior

Which brings me back to Alex. On a tennis court, your mother cannot move the baseline for you. Your surname cannot lengthen the service box. A padrino cannot whisper to the umpire that perhaps 40-love could be reconsidered.

The lines existed before Alex arrived. That is what institutions are supposed to mean. Build the court properly. Draw the lines clearly. Establish the rules beforehand. Find competent officials to enforce them. Reward performance. Penalize violations. Then allow human talent to flourish.

Alex will win some matches and lose others. Her loss to Bencic actually makes the metaphor better. A functioning system does not guarantee victory. It guarantees a fair opportunity to earn it.

That is what millions of Filipinos discover abroad. We keep looking for another president to save the Philippines when perhaps we should finally build a Philippines that does not need saving by a president.

We do not need a Republic that promises every Filipino victory.

We need a Republic where nobody — president, vice president, senator, dynasty or padrino — gets to move the lines.

Alex already has such a court.

It is time the Filipino people had one too.

The Senate President crowed yesterday that the party he nominally coheads, PDP-Laban, has a “pleasant problem” — too many potential senatorial candidates. Koko Pimentel’s estimate is they have up to 20 possible choices for the 12-person slate for the 2019 senatorial race. But his list includes the five administration-affiliated senatorial incumbents up for reelection next year. This is a group that has made noises that, much as it prefers to remain in the administration camp, it is unhappy with the way PDP-Laban has been designating its local leaders and candidates, and therefore prefers to strike out on its own, perhaps in alliance with the other administration (regional) party, Hugpong ng Pagbabago, headed by the President’s daughter and current Davao City mayor, Sara Duterte.

Setting aside, then, the five-person “Force,” the administration-oriented but not PDP-friendly reelectionists (Nancy Binay, Sonny Angara, Cynthia Villar, Grace Poe, and JV Ejercito), what Koko’s crowing over is a mixed bag. Some of them have been floated by Speaker Pantaleon Alvarez (with whom Mayor Duterte clashed in recent months): six representatives (Gloria Macapagal Arroyo who is in her last term in the House of Representatives; Albee Benitez, Karlo Nograles, Rey Umali, Geraldine Roman, and Zajid Mangudadatu), three Cabinet members (Bong Go, Harry Roque, and Francis Tolentino), and two other officials (Mocha Uson and Ronald dela Rosa), which still only adds up to 11 possible candidates (who are the missing three?).

Of all of these, the “Force” reelectionists are only fair-weather allies of the present dispensation; their setting themselves apart is about much more than the mess PDP-Laban made in, say, San Juan where support for the Zamoras makes it extremely unattractive for JV Ejercito to consider being in the same slate. Their cohesion is about thinking ahead: Creating the nucleus for the main coalition to beat in the 2022 presidential election. The contingent of congressmen and congresswomen who could become candidates for the Senate, however, seems more a means to kick the Speaker’s rivals upstairs (at least in the case of Benitez and Arroyo) and pad the candidates’ list with token but sacrificial candidates, a similar situation to the executive officials being mentioned as possible candidates (of the executive officials, only Go seems viable, but making him run would deprive the President of the man who actually runs the executive department, and would be a clear signal that the administration is shifting to a post-term protection attitude instead of the more ambitious system-change mode it’s been on, so far).

Vice President Leni Robredo has been more circumspect, saying she’s not sure the Liberal Party can even muster a full slate. The party chair, Kiko Pangilinan, denied that a list circulating online (incumbent Bam Aquino, former senators Mar Roxas, Jun Magsaysay, TG Guingona, current and former representatives Jose Christopher Belmonte, Kaka Bag-ao, Edcel Lagman, Raul Daza, Gary Alejano and Erin Tañada, former governor Eddie Panlilio and Cebu City Mayor Tomas Osmeña) had any basis in fact.

What both lists have in common is they could be surveys-on-the-cheap, trial balloons to get the public pulse. Until the 17th Congress reconvenes briefly from May 14 to June 1 for the tail end of its second regular session (only to adjourn sine die until the third regular session begins on July 23), it has nothing much to do. Except, that is, for the barangay elections in May, after a last-ditch effort by the House to postpone them yet again to October failed.

Names can be floated but the real signal will come in July, when the President mounts the rostrum and calls for the big push for a new constitution—or not. Connected to this would be whether the Supreme Court disposes of its own chief, which would spare the Senate—and thus, free up the legislative calendar—to consider Charter change instead of an impeachment trial. In the meantime, what congressmen do seem abuzz over is an unrefusable invitation to the Palace tomorrow — to mark Arroyo’s birthday. An event possibly pregnant with meaning.

Here’s a striking statement about love shared with me by an English college mentor. “Love knows no grammar. How it works can’t be measured by any parts or figures of speech. It goes beyond the literate and illiterate. The sad reality is that, even a fool who has got no philosophy is not spared of its harsh reality.” After almost three decades, I reminded him through a private message of his words. Here’s what he said. “Thank you, Jord. This statement about love is searing to the heart. And, yes, fools do fall for it too. But I thought that we as well speak of the beauty that it gives and not so much focus on the harsh realities. After all, our country has had enough of the negativities.” Thank you, dearest Sir Eugene.

In these decisive times when our nation trembles under the weight of corruption, inequality, and disillusionment, it is you―the youth, burning with idealism, courage, and an unyielding sense of right―who must stand at the forefront of CHANGE. The future of the Philippines hangs in the balance, calling not for silence or apathy, but for unity, conviction, and action. Let your dreams be the spark that ignites renewal; let your voices thunder against injustice; let your hands build the nation our forebears envisioned but never fulfilled. Now is the hour to awaken, to rise, and to lead the march toward a just and transformed Philippines.

Remember, the pages of our history resound with the triumphs of youth who dared to dream and act. From the Propagandists who wielded the pen against tyranny to the Katipuneros who took up arms for freedom, it was always the young who ignited revolutions and rebuilt nations. As Dr. Jose Rizal declared, “The youth is the hope of our motherland,” but that hope is not a gift to be passively claimed; it is a duty to be earned through courage and purpose.

Today’s generation must transform awareness into action―to confront corruption with integrity, to challenge inequality with empathy, and to counter apathy with participation. The time for mere commentary has passed. What the nation demands now is commitment, creativity, and collective resolve. When the youth stand united in conscience and conviction, no obstacle is insurmountable, no reform impossible. The power to redeem the nation’s promise lies not in the hands of the few, but in the awakened spirit of the many. Rise, therefore, as one generation with one objective―to forge a Philippines worthy of its people’s deepest hopes. And to those who were once the torchbearers of youth but have since laid down their fire―hear this call.

The nation does not forget its veterans of hope, those who once believed that change was possible but have since grown weary in the long twilight of disappointment. Thus far history grants no sanctuary to resignation. It demands of every generation the same unrelenting duty―to defend what is right, to confront what is wrong, and to labor still for what remains unfinished.

Now is the moment to rise again. Let not caution disguise itself as wisdom, nor comfort as peace. The courage that once stirred your youth still flickers within; rekindle it, and let it burn anew for the sake of those who follow. Your experience, tempered by time, must now join hands with the fervor of the young - to guide, to mentor, to strengthen.

Together, let the wisdom of the seasoned and the passion of the rising coalesce into a single, indomitable force for renewal. For the task of nation-building is not bound by age, but by conviction. The call of the motherland resounds to all who still believe that the story of the Filipino is not yet complete―and that redemption, though delayed, is still within our grasp if only we choose to act once more. And to those whose hands have long gripped the levers of power―hardened by privilege, dulled by entitlement―hear this with clarity: the era of self-preservation must yield to the dawn of selfless service.

The nation can no longer afford leaders who mistake possession for stewardship, nor governance for dominion. The time has come to relinquish the throne of complacency and make way for the custodians of vision, courage, and renewal.

To step aside is not to surrender, but to honor the sacred rhythm of nationhood―to allow new voices, new hearts, and new minds to breathe life into institutions that have grown stale from neglect. True leadership is an act of stewardship, and stewardship demands humility―to know when to lead, and when to pass the torch. Those who have ruled long enough must now become mentors, not masters; guides, not gatekeepers.

To the youth who will inherit this burden and blessing alike, the call is equally profound. Lead not with arrogance, but with awareness; not with impulse, but with integrity. Let optimism be your discipline―a conscious act of faith in the nation’s capacity to rise again. Lead with inclusivity that unites rather than divides, with courage that reforms rather than destroys, and with resilience that endures when hope seems frail.

For the measure of a new generation’s greatness lies not in its defiance alone, but in its wisdom to build where others have failed. Let your leadership become the living testament that the Philippines, once disillusioned, has learned at last to believe again―through you.

Now, the Filipino youth stand at a defining crossroad of history. The echoes of the past and the murmurs of the future converge upon this moment, and in your hands rests the fragile, however formidable promise of a nation reborn. You are the inheritors of unfinished dreams and the architects of what is yet to be. United in thought and deed, strengthened by the wisdom of history and the fire of conviction, you possess the power to shape a Philippines anchored in justice, animated by democracy, and sustained by the collective flourishing of its people.

The mantle of responsibility has passed to you. Do not falter beneath its weight; bear it with courage, for it is through your resolve that the nation will rise from the ruins of complacency. Let your unity transcend boundaries of region, class, and creed. Let your integrity redefine leadership, and your compassion restore faith in the Filipino spirit.

This is your hour. Let this narrative be not merely a call to awaken, but a solemn commitment―to the country that nurtures you, to the people who believe in you, and to the generations who will follow your example. Stand firm, for you are the heartbeat of a nation yearning to live with dignity once more. Speak right and shine!

Rise, Filipino youth, and let history remember that when your time came ―you stood unwavering, and the nation moved forward.