Ramon H. Royandoyan

Fortunato Villanueva Jr is preparing to harvest unhusked rice this month from land he has worked for more than 30 years.

Tales of budget cuts, confusion and a warped sense of optimism colored the last days of employees who were axed by Shopee Philippines in a spate of layoffs in the country.

As the Philippines chose a COVID-19 pandemic stimulus with no emphasis whatsoever on environment and sustainability, the battle to stop the construction of DMCI’s coal plant in Narra, Palawan continues for Teofilo Tredez and his allies.

Teofilo Tredez, a 55-year-old environmentalist and forest ranger, has won an onslaught of cases defending the environment, including trespass to dwelling and grave oral defamation.

The sound of clinking coins fills a narrow alley in Metro Manila. In the backstreets of Pasig City, children stream in and out of a corner shop, noisily exchanging bills for pesos before stampeding next door to a row of mini-internet vending machines: pisonets. “Pisonets are necessities,” said Madeleine Casim from behind the counter of her corner shop. It’s especially true in areas like this, she added, where phone signal is sparse.

In the heart of Makati City, Metro Manila, the once-busy nightlife hub Poblacion is quiet. The past year has taken its toll: over the past months, businesses that lined their streets closed their doors. Some have reopened (through an admirable, sheer force of will) but Poblacion’s usual haunts remain haunted, and not in a fun way. Some might say it’s the same Poblacion, sans the chaos.

When another strict lockdown shut down her furniture shop in Quezon City, Ana Patricia Non sat inside and stewed. The Covid-19 pandemic has been brutal in the Philippines, leaving millions of Filipinos hungry and unemployed, including her own workers. Government aid has been too little and wasn’t reaching the people who needed it most, and the country’s already wide inequality gap was growing by the day. Non came up with a simple plan.

As immigration is not a major political issue in the Global South, populists there have had to adapt this strategy. They urge radical solutions to longstanding social ills, like crime and drug dealing, to appeal to a public fatigued by traditional politics that have failed to solve such problems. Arguing that the population is currently worse off than in the past, Bolsonaro praises the military regime by claiming that there was less corruption, more economic prosperity...

President-elect Jair Bolsonaro is often referred to as the “Trump of the Tropics,” a comparison Mr. Bolsonaro fuels himself, emulating the Trumpian style of politics. However, if we’re comparing Brazil’s next president to other populists around the world, we would be best served looking to the Philippines and President Rodrigo Duterte, with his macho law and order discourse and shoot-to-kill war on drugs policy.

MANILA, Philippines—Around 11 p.m. on July 25, Restituto Castro received an anonymous text message asking him to leave his house in northern Manila and go to the corner of the MacArthur Highway.