2019/41, 9 May 2019
The Phalang Pracharat Party’s bandwagon to reinstall 2014 coup leader and incumbent Prime Minister General Prayut Chan-ocha as Thailand’s premier is gaining momentum.
On 7 May, 15 ministers in the Prayut Cabinet resigned in an apparent preparation for their appointment to the Senate.
Similarly, about 60 members of the National Assembly, including National Assembly President Pornpetch Wichitcholchai, will soon follow suit so that that they, too, can enter the Senate. Pornpetch has headed the legislature since August 2014. He is one of the front-runners to be president of the Senate.
2019/40, 8 May 2019
Recent developments in Myanmar continue to attract international attention. The latest is the release of two Reuters journalists – Wa Lone and Kyaw Soe Oo – who had been arrested in December 2017 and sentenced to seven years in prison under the 1923 Official Secrets Act. The two journalists had been undertaking investigative reporting on the situation in Rakhine State, where the military crackdown in response to attacks by the Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army in 2016 and 2017 had caused the largest ever exodus of Rohingya communities.
2019/39, 3 May 2019
Current Philippine-China relations have a strong sense of deja vu. The trajectory of Philippine-China relations to the mid-point of the Duterte administration is similar to that from 2000 to the 2007 mid-term elections under the Macapagal Arroyo administration. If the trajectory of Philippine-China relations in the second half of the Duterte administration continues to track that of the Macapagal-Arroyo administration then the high-water mark of bilateral relations under the Duterte administration has past already. Domestic political problems emanating from President Duterte’s close embrace and favouritism towards China will only mount.
2019/38, 2 May 2019
On 25 April 2019, Viettel – Vietnam’s largest mobile carrier – announced that it had successfully completed the trial of a fifth-generation (5G) broadcast station in Hanoi with the speed of 600 – 700Mbps, reportedly on par with the speed of Verizon’s 5G network in the United States. Viettel will also conduct a 5G network test in May 2019. If successful, the company may start to offer 5G services soon afterwards, turning Vietnam into one of the first countries in the region to run 5G networks.
2019/37, 29 April 2019
Vietnam’s Secretary General and President Nguyen Phu Trong did not meet visiting US Senator Patrick Leahy in Hanoi in April 2019 (which he had met on previous occasions) and skipped his participation at the 2019 Belt and Road Forum in Beijing (instead Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc went on his behalf). Trong has been absent from the public eye for more than two weeks. His absence sparked rumours and speculation in Vietnam’s social media about the state of his health after he reportedly suffered a stroke while on a field trip to Kien Giang province in South Vietnam on 14 April 2019. There is still uncertainty about the state of Trong’s well-being despite the foreign ministry attempting to give some form of reassurance on 25 April 2019 by saying that his health was affected by a “heavy workload” and “changeable weather conditions”.
2019/36, 15 April 2019
On Saturday, 13 April 2019, the Indonesian presidential and vice-presidential candidates, Joko “Jokowi” Widodo-Ma’ruf Amin and Prabowo Subianto-Sandiaga Uno, engaged in a final televised debate on the themes of economics and social welfare, finance and investment, and trade and industry.
2019/35, 3 April 2019
The incumbent president Joko ‘Jokowi’ Widodo and challenger Prabowo Subianto re-matched in the fourth televised presidential debate on 30 March 2019. Tackling the highly political issues of ideology, governance, national defence and security, and foreign affairs, the televised debate was expected to show the candidates’ vision and their proposed policies in navigating uncertain socio-political circumstances at the regional and global levels.
2019/34, 3 April 2019
Religion as a potent identity marker is increasingly prone to use, misuse or abuse in elections in Southeast Asia — as witnessed in the legislative elections in predominantly Buddhist Myanmar in November 2015 and now in the campaign for the presidential elections in predominantly Muslim Indonesia later this month. The question, “Who is a better Buddhist, or a better Muslim?”, has been at the centre of religious outbidding in these elections. By portraying themselves or being portrayed as champions of Buddhism or Islam, elites try to outbid or outperform their electoral rivals.
2019/33, 29 March 2019
The Phuea Thai Party’s 27 March announcement that it will form a seven-party coalition with at least 255 seats in the lower house of the Thai parliament, the House of Representatives, is at best a small moral victory for the so-called “democratic alliance” that the party seeks to lead.
While the bold move immediately captured attention and media headlines, it may in fact be the last hurrah of the party set up by fugitive former Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra.
“Game of Power: When Mathematics Matters in Thai Elections” by Punchada Sirivunnabood