Here we go again. Let us be clear: professional tennis is not the Olympics.

Alex Eala enters tournaments as an individual athlete. She competes for ranking points, prize money, and career. The expenses of training, coaching, travel, and competition are carried by herself, her team, and private sponsors—not by a Philippine government that appears whenever glory can be claimed.

Yes, Eala is Filipino. Yes, she speaks proudly of her roots and appreciates the crowds that make tournaments feel like home. But gratitude is not a national debt. She does not owe the Philippines her victories, her identity, or the burden of becoming proof that the country is somehow succeeding.

Her rise belongs first to her.

Still, politicians and their supportive corporate media rush toward every win with congratulatory posts, resolutions, receptions, and declarations of “Filipino pride.” They wrap themselves in her achievement and present a moment of borrowed joy as national unity.

But unity around a tennis match is easy. It asks government to solve nothing.

While people cheer, corruption continues to swallow public money. Prices remain punishing. Wages remain inadequate. Services fail. The masa is told to feel represented by one exceptional athlete while the institutions supposedly representing them continue to betray their trust.

Whether deliberately planned or simply politically convenient, the spectacle works as a diversion. For a moment, everyone is invited to celebrate the flag beside Eala’s name and forget what is being done beneath that same flag.

Filipinos have every right to admire her. They may celebrate beside her because she generously welcomes them into her journey.

But Eala’s victory is not proof of good government. It may prove the opposite: how far one Filipino can rise through talent, sacrifice, family, and private support without the state carrying her there.

The victory is hers. The credit belongs to neither the government nor the nation.

Since the pandemic forced me to work from home, I have rarely needed to take Metro Manila’s trains. This weekend, I did, and within minutes, I was reminded why this foolish country can feel so hopeless. Because nothing changed at all.

The train arrives. Passengers board. Then they plant themselves directly in front of the doors, as if the entire coach ends two feet behind them. They block people trying to enter. They obstruct those trying to leave. To think many of them will not even get off until the opposite end of the line.

The train operator repeatedly announces that passengers should move toward the center of the coach. Nobody listens. The doors open again, the same idiotic ritual repeats, and everybody acts surprised that boarding takes forever.

This is not merely bad train etiquette. It is civic failure in miniature.

Too many stupid Filipinos demand progress while refusing the smallest acts of discipline required to produce it. Move inward. Make room. Let people off before getting on. These are not complicated instructions. Yet even the simplest consideration for strangers is treated as an intolerable burden.

Call someone out and you may be met with anger, insults, or wounded pride; as though being corrected is a greater offense than inconveniencing an entire coach. If you are truly unlucky, you’ll even land in a hospital.

And then we wonder why the country is so easily abused.

This is exactly the public our oligarchs and political dynasties want: impatient, undisciplined, easily distracted, and permanently hostile to accountability. They loot the treasury, deliver inferior public services, wrap themselves in barongs, designer suits, and Catholic Church-approved respectability—and still receive applause from the very people they rob blind.

A population that cannot be bothered to move away from a train door will struggle to remove the parasites blocking the nation’s future.

Perhaps that is the ugliest lesson of the commute: the train is crowded, the country is stuck, and everyone insists on standing in the way.

If I were younger and moneyed, I would leave this miserable hellhole.

But like everyone else, I am still here—waiting for people to move.

An MMDA road-clearing operation recently caught a public-school teacher riding a motorcycle without a helmet. He was stopped, questioned by Special Operations Group chief Gabriel Go, and issued a citation. Go reminded him that teachers are expected to set an example for their students. Despite the teacher’s request that the encounter not be uploaded, a video with his face blurred was subsequently posted online.

Teacher organizations immediately entered the controversy. They accused Go of humiliating the teacher, questioned the publication of apprehension videos, and demanded action against the MMDA official.

There is a legitimate question about whether government operations should become material for an official’s personal social-media account. But where were these groups when Go used the same method against ordinary motorists and other violators?

They found their voices only when the person apprehended happened to be one of their own.

That selective outrage destroys much of their credibility. If recording and publishing traffic apprehensions are inherently degrading, teacher organizations should have opposed the practice consistently—not merely when a colleague was caught violating the law.

Worse, their vigorous defense made it appear that the teacher’s profession entitled him to softer treatment. They may concede that he deserved the ticket, but their overwhelming emphasis on his embarrassment effectively turned the offender into the victim.

Teachers should be role models for compliance, not a fraternity that closes ranks when one of its members is held accountable. The correct response was simple: acknowledge without qualification that their colleague broke the law, require him to accept the consequences, and remind all educators that the respect accorded their profession carries corresponding responsibilities.

The Philippines is already suffering from a grave learning crisis. Filipino students remain among the world’s weakest performers in reading, mathematics, and science. At such a time, teacher organizations should be concentrating on classroom competence, professional standards, and the deteriorating quality of education—not spending their institutional energy shielding an erring colleague from the discomfort caused by his own actions.

Our teachers demand respect because they shape the youth. Then they must earn that respect through example.

Teach children to obey the law. Demonstrate accountability when caught doing wrong. Improve educational outcomes. And stop behaving as though professional dignity means protection from criticism.

No helmet, no ride. No profession is exempt.

The United States now wants to cripple the International Criminal Court, denouncing it as a threat to national sovereignty whenever it investigates Americans or close U.S. allies.

Will Philippine President Marcos defend the institution his government found useful when Rodrigo Duterte was arrested and sent to The Hague?

Do not expect it.

The Philippines withdrew from the ICC in 2019, but the Court maintains jurisdiction over alleged crimes committed while the country was still a member. Marcos’s government nevertheless insisted that Duterte’s arrest was carried out through Interpol, not as formal cooperation with the ICC.

That distinction may satisfy government lawyers. Politically, it changes little.

Marcos need not endorse every ICC decision. But after using Interpol cooperation to enforce an ICC warrant while insisting that the Court no longer had authority over the Philippines, his government cannot credibly remain silent while Washington tries to disable the institution altogether.

If Manila now avoids criticizing the United States, the message will be clear: sovereignty is sacred when it protects those in power, negotiable when it removes a rival, and disposable when Washington objects.

Under Marcos, principle appears to end where political convenience and American approval begin.

The Philippine elite have perfected a particularly repulsive habit: they claim every triumph as their own, then suddenly discover legal technicalities when accountability comes knocking.

Ateneo’s treatment of Tab Baldwin appears to follow that familiar elite playbook. During the championship years, he was never presented as some distant “consultant.” The university publicly embraced him as its head coach, credited him with building the basketball program, praised his role in its success, renewed his contract with institutional fanfare, and celebrated the titles won under his leadership. His achievements were woven into the Ateneo identity whenever they enhanced the school’s prestige.

Now that serious questions are being raised, Ateneo would have the public believe that he was merely an outside contractor—useful enough to glorify, but apparently not close enough to acknowledge when responsibility becomes inconvenient.

That is not moral leadership. It is institutional cowardice dressed in legal language.

For ordinary Filipinos like me, this spectacle is painfully recognizable. The privileged collect the trophies, the influence, and the money. The poor collect the consequences. When lives are lost, the powerful summon lawyers, redefine relationships, and wash their hands with carefully chosen words.

The hypocrisy becomes even more offensive because Ateneo markets itself as a Catholic institution supposedly guided by compassion, justice, and service. But what is the value of those teachings when they disappear at the first threat of liability? Faith becomes nothing more than branding when mercy is preached in classrooms but accountability is avoided in boardrooms.

It is difficult not to ask whether the response would have been different had the victims carried surnames associated with wealth, influence, or political power. Perhaps then there would have been less semantic gymnastics and more urgency.

I expected better from Ateneo. That may have been my mistake. Beneath the polished language of excellence and social justice lies the same elite instinct that has poisoned Philippine society for generations: protect the institution, preserve the prestige, and let those with less power bear the cost.