FILIPINOS, with a basic understanding of national and global affairs, recently saw split-screen images of leadership and competence on display, dueling images that made them weep for the country.

One image was that of Vice President Sara Duterte, hewing and puffing and apparently shellshocked after being asked by a reporter on what was her take on the Pax Silica project in the Philippines, without a doubt the most ambitious technology-related program that Ferdinand Marcos Jr.’s administration is undertaking. It’s a question so routine and, in theory, about an issue within the mastery of the vice president of the land.

In an ideal world, in the ideal functioning of polity, the second most powerful political official in the land has to have a handle on major policy proposals and ambitious government programs. Whoever sits in that office is mandated to fully grasp the broad contours and minutest details of Pax Silica. That post is a heartbeat away from the presidency, remember. And no technology-related project on the scale of that United States-led initiative has ever been undertaken by the government.

Instead of giving a credible explainer on the pros and cons of Pax Silica — for example, that proposed project’s impact on the environment and on our strained water and power resources, or the investment structure, or on who would benefit more from that project — the Duterte princeling was a picture of total befuddlement.

Unlike in certain quiz shows, there are no lifelines in moments like those — questions from reporters operating on the assumption that even if the vice president were not a policy wonk, she, at the very least, knows and masters the most critical and ambitious projects of the government. Not being allied with the president was no justification.

Mastering the critical issues of the republic when you hold the second most powerful office in the land is mandatory, regardless of whether you are with the ruling political coalition or the opposition.

It was that dumbfounded moment after being asked about Pax Silica that made many Filipinos with a modicum of civic virtue, but still were not sold on the criticism that the Duterte princeling is the towering exemplar of inarticulation and vacuity, realized that she was and will not be ready to be president of the land. Was she thinking about when she heard “Pax Silica”? Maybe the quarry sites of Davao.

It was also that precise moment when many Filipinos with a sense of civic virtue realized another sad fact related to articulation and high-mindedness: that Duterte, in her entire public life, never spoke of neither nobility nor trailblazing national initiatives, frontier ideas, lofty national pursuits, or moonshot ambitions.

Or faced a forum of international leaders and dignitaries to speak about the grand ambitions of the country. Or its noble past that needed to be recaptured. That Sara-speak amounted to the usual boilerplates, hollowed-out words that are both tired and turgid. That more than 90 percent of her public pronouncements were about herself, her family and the compilation of their grievances.

A better world

The other image that came onscreen was that of Canada’s Prime Minister Mark Carney. He was hosting an investment summit in Toronto, with investors from 30 countries — and managing assets worth around $100 trillion — in attendance. The pitch was simple: Come and invest, and we will help build a better Canada and a better world. The investors pledged to invest.

The investors were not even supposed to be there. US President Donald Trump and his flunkies recently dismissed Canada as one without a real country status, a mere “state” in the dismissive words of Vice President JD Vance. Trump would often mock Carney as “governor,” which means governor of the 51st state of the US, which Trump said was for America to annex.

Two Trump flunkies, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, often mocked Canada’s dignified response to the harsh and punitive tariffs from the US. “What, will they sic their two submarines on us,” Bessent was quoted as mockingly saying.

Out of the US’ shadow, Canada under Carney is acknowledged by many democratic countries as the de facto leader of the democratic world and top advocate of the international liberal order today. Canda’s second-quarter growth rate was 3.3 percent on an annualized basis, better than that of the US, Japan and Germany. The foreign direct investments for that quarter were one of the world’s biggest.

Deftly moving to deepen its economic ties with the European Union, the third-biggest economy after the US and China, Carney recently announced a multifront cooperation with the continent bloc, starting with the laying down of undersea cables to Europe. These cables will serve as the foundational structures for a Canada-EU collaboration on data centers, satellite networks, cloud storage and computing.

Canada, Carney pledged, will lay pipelines to move gas directly to Europe, now strained for gas sources due to the Russia-Ukraine war. Icebreakers will be built along the Arctic Pass to enable Canada to directly ship potash and fertilizer into Europe.

Canada is not only enticing the best minds to decamp from the elite US universities to Canada. In the broad cooperation plan with the EU, the two have committed to develop university-based research institutes that will compete with the US-based research institutions.

The Philippines needs a leader like Carney to turn things around. Tragically, the leading presidential candidate, according to all polls, is Sara Duterte, and the news about her is about her guns, her money, her power, her needs, her confidential funds, and her tantrums. What a sad country.