A sobering epiphany?

Cannot help to join the ranks of online thrust-and-parry debate for the Taiwan-Philippines contention.  To my surprise, not every Filipino is obstinate and self-willed.  Part of my post on the bloomberg.com was "It is a sobering epiphany to see PH has devolved from the 2nd richest country in Asia in the 1960s to a Blanche Dubois economy with 10% of GDP coming from the remittances from expatriate workers.  I respect the hard-working and tender-hearted Filipinos but denigrate their kleptocratic government."   And the response from a Filipino was "It really is sad that the Philippines has gone so far down. It had really been left behind by its neighbors. I cannot deny that there were several administrations that were corrupt and unjust, but what I can tell you is that the government is slowly but surely trying to recover."