The greatest irony about the “change” narrative in the Philippines is that it has not changed. It has become a seasonal product repackaged every six years. Every election, we search for who has the best “change” packaging—a leader with political will, a strong reformer to fix the system, a powerful personality to impose order.
We keep waiting for a messiah.
But countries rarely transform because of political superheroes. They transform because of strong institutions. These are the silent, technical, and often invisible systems that shape norms and incentives, constrain power and influence, and allow progressive reforms to withstand challenging political climates.
This is not speculation. In “Why Nations Fail: The Origins of Power, Prosperity, and Poverty,” economists Daren Acemoglu and James A. Robinson argue that nations prosper not because of leadership, but because of consistently inclusive institutions—systems that distribute power, enforce rules across the board, and align incentives toward set goals.
On the other hand, where institutions are extractive—concentrated in the hands of a few, highly politicized, and unfairly discretionary—growth and reforms collapse along with expiring political superheroes. That diagnosis sounds uncomfortably familiar.
If real change has to come in this country, we need to face the reality that not one superhero could single-handedly fix all institutions at the same time. Instead, we need many committed Filipinos to work in our various institutions, each doing their part to make the system work.
One of those institutions is government. Its agencies and offices shape how public services are actually delivered.
Let’s take, as an example, the government agencies involved in personnel administration. These offices have the mandate to set the tone for government workers. They are meant to build a culture of merit, performance, and accountability. That tone matters. But too often, the focus is elsewhere.
These agencies spend time and resources policing administrative compliance—tardiness, lunch breaks, submission of routine forms, and attendance to flag ceremonies. Anyone who has worked in or with government offices has seen this firsthand. Meanwhile, bigger questions that actually shape the performance of workers get less attention—how to deal with chronic understaffing, mechanisms for genuine professional growth, and objective measures of real office performance.
In that kind of system, innovation dies quietly and miserably inside government offices. This is not simply a human resource problem. It is an incentive problem built into the institution itself.
Here’s the thing. Whether it’s personnel administration or any of the many agencies that shape how public service is delivered, reform in government is not glamorous. It is slow, technical work.
It requires rethinking how the bureaucracy operates—what it values, how reforms are implemented, and how performance is measured. And it must do two things at once: make public service responsive to citizens; and make it sustainable—not sacrificial—to those expected to deliver it.
And yet government is just one institution; civil society organizations (CSOs) and the media are equally important. We often see both as watchdogs critical of the government, but they are powerful institutions in their own right. Their strength determines the quality of public discourse, and that shapes policies.
I recall a public protest I witnessed in Australia opposing an infrastructure project. The placards did not read “Scrap the project.” They read: “Release the feasibility study.” “Show the cost-benefit analysis.” The battle cry was not ideological. It was institutional. Protesters were not rejecting the government solution being offered. They were demanding transparency, procedural integrity, and data instead of template rhetoric. Imagine if our public debates—with the help of CSOs and the media—moved in this direction.
That shift—from emotional mobilization to institutional accountability—is also part of the boring road to change.
None of these are likely to deliver quick fixes, generate trending headlines, or inspire mass mobilization. But without these collective institutional reforms, we remain trapped in the vicious cycle of waiting for the next political superhero. One who may never come.
Political superheroes are not the problem. Having more of them doing an “Avengers assemble” is not wrong. The problem is thinking that they are enough. Until our institutions are strengthened, reforms will always stand to be episodic rather than sustained.
The road to real change is slow. Technical. Incremental. Boring. But maybe that is the point. This “boring” collective work is what could finally deliver the real change we have been waiting for. In a country built on bayanihan (“communal unity”), perhaps the work of real change was never meant for a single hero.
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Jeffrey Manalo is a career public servant with an interest in governance and institutional reform and a master’s candidate at the Harvard Kennedy School. He writes in his personal capacity.
