Adult in Malacañang

The rise of the strongmen and the strongmen wannabes, from Trump to Putin, from Xi to Orban, from Bolsonaro to our own Mr. Duterte, was to come later, in a 21st century of extreme political polarization and discernment-warping, truth-distorting social media platforms.

President Fidel Valdez Ramos assumed the Philippine leadership in a totally different environment – a heady time for Philippine and global democracy, the 1990s of shattered walls (who would have imagined the collapse of the Berlin Wall?) and diminished, gloomy apparatchiks. It was the time of Francis Fukuyama's ground-breaking essay on what he termed as the "end of history"--with the triumphal march of liberal democracy across the globe as its main thesis. And, indeed, with liberal democracy as the dominant governing creed of most ancient and new nations.