The Week Two Men Posed for History

The impeachment of Sara Duterte — the first Philippine official to be charged twice, accused of having commissioned the assassination of President Marcos — is a major constitutional crisis in a democracy of more than a hundred million people. Yet it was followed closely mainly from the Asia-Pacific, with European capitals largely leaving it in the blind spot, absorbed by Beijing and Iran. The simultaneous overturning of the Senate leadership by a Duterte ally, which conditions the entire coming trial, remained almost unexplored outside the region.

Thaksin Shinawatra's release after eight months in detention reopens the debate on the future of a political dynasty in a Thailand where his Pheu Thai party suffered its worst electoral defeat. It is a test of the patrimonial power model in Southeast Asia, but the subject was treated as an isolated regional item rather than as a signal about the fragility of political inheritances shared by several countries. Most European capitals did not dig into it.

Beyond the ship's drama — a French woman on ECMO, three deaths, a 42-day quarantine imposed on the Filipino crew — the real blind spot is the total absence of a shared protocol: each state arbitrated alone the quarantine length and repatriation by nationality. The major powers that otherwise steer global health governance did not comment on this fragmentation, even though it foreshadows the response to a more contagious threat. The subject stayed confined to the countries directly hit by the evacuation.