The state of politics in the democratic world is in flux and none of it more telling than the race to be the next president of the United States.
The world is treated to the unedifying spectacle of former US president Donald Trump — who claimed he was cheated out of victory in the last presidential election — making another attempt to return to the White House.
Why a candidate, who questioned with little to no basis the integrity of the US electoral process, is not automatically disqualified from running is mysterious, to say the least.
Just three months from the election, Trump is polling neck and neck with Kamala Harris, the likely nominee of the Democratic Party.
That Trump, despite or maybe because of the outrageousness he has publicly displayed, still stands a chance of reclaiming the White House he lost four years ago is perhaps the ultimate democratic outrage.
There is, of course, no denying that Trump is tapping into a deep well of voter disenchantment with American politics-as-usual.
Democratic politics cannot properly function if a national polity is not working as it should. And a polity is usually in trouble if it is not in the best of economic health.
The American economy is not just in a normal cyclical downturn; it is in a serious rut. What causes the rut is no mystery.
The country's economic elite has been blamed for shipping the country's manufacturing base lock, stock and barrel to China, all in the name of economic efficiency and globalisation. A large swathe of workers (and voters) find themselves in the lurch. No wonder American democracy today is in such a dire state.
Which is why free trade has become a dirty word in the American political lexicon and both main political parties malign China as the root cause of US troubles.
The US is at the apex of what seems to ail democracy world-wide. Populists everywhere are on the ascendancy. Indeed, we probably have not seen before such a sorry state when developed and developing states converge downhill rather than up.
Nowhere is this more true when we compare the contemporary political trajectories of both the US and its one-time colony, the Philippines.
A Philippine political outsider Rodrigo Duterte preceded Trump in getting elected as their respective countries' presidents.
The Philippines never enjoyed the economic dividends of either democracy or autocracy (under the first Marcos presidency).
Duterte was constitutionally restricted to be anything more than a political populist in Trump's mould.
But what the Philippines represents is something rather familiar in much of the global South where countries try to go the democratic route politically but precious few reap any sustainable economic benefits.
Only the so-called Asian Tigers, Chile in South America and possibly Rwanda in Africa combine political autocracy with economic take-off, giving the lie to a long-held political dogma that only democracy delivers economic success.
It seems only enlightened autocrats can enforce delayed gratification (through forced savings and state-led policies favouring exports or mercantilism) to ensure economic take-off.
There is thus a causal relationship between political and economic freedoms but traditional theories propagated by the West have it backwards.
Political freedom (democracy) should only come after economic freedom.
It is unfortunate that only now, with its democracy in crisis, that Americans are gradually coming around to the idea that perhaps their democracy does not even guarantee sustained economic freedom.
So Trump and his supporters do have a valid political point. It should be interesting to see if the closely related US-China rivalry today ends up as a race to the bottom.
* The writer views developments in the nation, region and wider world from his vantage point in Kuching