Funny but serious is how cartoons have been in the political conversations in the Philippines, which votes for a new president in May. Visual artist Kapitan Tambay talks to Reporting ASEAN about visual storytelling.

A 21-year-old university student shares his story of trauma, loss, anger and frustration, from experiencing what it means to have a health system that is flailing amid COVID-19. The Philippines has reported 17,800 deaths and has fully vaccinated just 0.23% of its over 110 million people, as of 6 May.

The Duterte Administration may have stirred controversies in foreign policy, but it is not expected to rock the boat as chair of the Association of the Southeast Asian Nations in 2017. The Philippines’ chairmanship won’t be as controversial as Cambodia’s was in 2012, asserts Walden Bello in this commentary for the Reporting ASEAN series.

Like Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte’e high-octane politics or hate it, but his brand of leadership has not been seen in ASEAN in decades, Kavi Chongkittavorn says in this piece for Reporting ASEAN. And whatever one thinks of Duterte’s China move, his overtures to Beijing have gone a long way in defusing the South China Sea tensions.

Anger and frustration – the feeling of being totally fed up – has been consistent through the recent presidential campaign in the Philippines, leading to the victory of a guy viewed as an outsider to the political culture, a rebel, a political heretic. Johanna Son looks at why voters chose Rodrigo Duterte as their next president in this ‘Bangkok Post’ commentary.