Walden Bello, 76, has been an activist, social worker, academic and political analyst since the mid-70s. He ran for senator in the 2016 elections as an independent but failed to secure a seat, placing 36th with just 2.41% of the total votes.

Prior to that, he served as a representative of the Akbayan Citizens’ Action Party from 2009 to 2015. His second term was cut short when he resigned on Mar. 19, 2015, due to “irreconcilable differences" over the party’s support for the Aquino administration, citing President Benigno Aquino’s refusal to accept command responsibility for the Mamasapano clash.

Bello is a doctor of sociology which he teaches along with public administration at the University of the Philippines Diliman. He is also an international adjunct professor of sociology at Binghamton University, a top public school in New York State, US.

As an active member of the anti-Marcos movement, Bello was arrested multiple times during protests at the height of the Martial Law era in 1978. He was credited for breaking into the World Bank headquarters and stealing 3,000 pages of confidential documents that he said would show the connection between the International Monetary Fund and World Bank to the late ousted dictator Ferdinand Marcos. He later wrote an account of the documents entitled Development Debacle: the World Bank in the Philippines in 1982. He went on to campaign for and write extensively on the alternative models of development, environmentalism and demilitarization.

After the Laban ng Masa coalition launched a 300,000 signature campaign to urge Bello to run for president in 2022, he eventually agreed to be Leody de Guzman’s running mate. As a tandem, De Guzman and Bello propose to “demilitarize society, uphold human rights and punish mass-murderers and plunderers." Bello claims that their platform offers the kinds of reforms capable of stopping what he calls the “Marcos-Duterte axis of evil”.