I grew up in South Louisiana, where the legacy of Huey Long populism still casts a shadow.  So perhaps I’m not as surprised at the connections between corruption and a certain type  of populism.  Reform is always possible but it never seems to happen in these situations.  The promise to take down the corrupt establishment seems to usually just result in a replacement of the old corrupt with the new corrupt.  A good article from Nikkei Asian Review on the state of things in Duterte’s Philippines.

Crony capital: How Duterte embraced the oligarchs

President Rodrigo Duterte promised to destroy the Philippines’ elite. Instead, he chose his own