I FIRST visited Manila 40 years ago, two years before president Ferdinand Marcos Sr was ousted in the People Power revolution in 1986, which brought high hopes that the Philippines would live happily ever after. It has not.
Today, similar scenes unfold in Dhaka — albeit not as peacefully. Hundreds have reportedly died as Bangladesh convulsed in recent weeks.
Marcos Sr fled Manila as demonstrators were about to storm the presidential palace. Likewise, Bangladesh's ousted prime minister Sheikh Hasina, (in power almost as long as Marcos did) dashed into exile in India before protesters entered to thrash her palatial residence.
Marcos Sr's successor, Corazon Aquino, was probably mistaken in thinking simply restoring the Philippines' constitutional order would set her country right. In the process, a historic opportunity was missed to revamp a rotten political-economic system.
Bangladesh, after ousting the equally autocratic Sheikh Hasina, may be confronted with even greater chaos.
She so decimated any opposition that, for a while, it looked as if the country will revert to military rule.
I was rather fixated with Bangladesh in recent weeks because of the strong parallels that can be drawn with the Philippines.
Under Sheikh Hasina, there was a semblance of economic prosperity on the back of a thriving garments industry and something of an infrastructure-building boom, not unlike the Philippines under Marcos Sr.
Like the Philippines, such limited progress was insufficient to ensure any real economic take-off. Legions of mostly young Bangladeshis have had to look abroad for better employment, as Filipinos do to this day.
While some may argue that Sheikh Hasina's iron grip allowed cronyism and corruption to set in, it must be noted that her main political opponent Khaleda Zia who ruled in between the former's two decades in power did no better.
Similarly, a superficially vibrant Philippine democracy hid a rather sordid underbellyof control by an incestuous political-economic establishment.
What happens in Bangladesh today and in the Philippines in recent decades leave me in an overwhelmingly pessimistic mood. I am not convinced that a vibrant democracy is the pre-condition for economic take-off in the developing world simply because there is hardly any concrete model of that happening.
At the same time, why was possible for Sheikh Hasina or the elder Marcos to replicate the East Asian model of economic take-off under autocratic rulers before political liberalisation eventually follows?
Nobel laureate Muhammad Yunus has his job cut out filling Bangladesh's current political vacuum as its interim leader. He must resist the easy path that Aquino thought she had in giving their respective countries the mere semblance of political normalcy.
On the other hand, he must also appease ordinary Bangladeshis hungry for quick deliverance from whatever ails their country.
Filipinos are understandably grateful to Aquino for restoring their democracy but nearly four decades later, they are still largely waiting for it to bear economic fruit. Like Bangladesh, the Philippines enjoy an economy growing at a healthy clip.
But ordinary citizens hardly feel any appreciably noticeable improvements in their economic lot. Yunus is now confronted with the same strategic crossroad that Aquino faced before.
Does the 84-year-old have what it takes to set his country's political and economic underpinnings right?
He certainly has his people's and the world's goodwill going for him at the moment.
Whatever Bangladesh's interim leader decides will be pivotal not only to restore temporary political calm but, most importantly, to stand the test of time.
The writer views developments in the nation, region and wider world from his vantage point in Kuching