Commentaries

2019/32, 22 March 2019

None of the three strongest parties contesting Sunday’s general elections in Thailand will be able to win a majority of the seats in the 500-member House of Representatives.  And yet, because the premiership is at stake, none of them wants to play second fiddle to either of its two principal rivals. As many as 81 parties fielding altogether 14,000 candidates — 2,900 of them on party lists— are vying for the 500 House seats. In such a competitive race, none of the top three parties is expected to win 200 seats in the House, let alone the 251 seats needed to achieve a majority.

After voting ends at 5:00 p.m. on Sunday, the Election Commission will have 60 days to certify all election results, including allocation of the 150 House seats among party-list candidates. A party will need about 80,000 votes, drawn from those cast for its constituency candidates, to secure one of these 150 seats.

2019/31, 20 March 2019

On 24 March 2019, Thailand will hold its first national elections in eight years. These polls come half a decade after the 2014 military coup that ushered in the longest period of Army rule in Bangkok since the 1970s. The elections are taking place against the backdrop of a country that remains deeply polarized politically and highly unequal socio-economically. The Thai elite seeks to consolidate its control over the country through the establishment of a semi-authoritarian regime, and the junta leader General Prayut Chan-o-cha seeks to transform himself into a civilian leader. Roughly 51 million people are eligible to vote, and of these 7 million are eligible to do so for the first time. Voters are enthusiastic to cast their ballot in these historic polls. Turnout is expected to be as high as 80 per cent, which will set a record in the country. Dozens of parties and thousands of candidates are running, along a broad ideological spectrum from progressive parties advocating for the creation of a welfare state to royalist parties.

2019/30, 20 March 2019

Taking on issues of education, health, workforce, and social and cultural affairs, the third round of the presidential debates on 17 March 2019 featured the two vice-presidential candidates, Ma’ruf Amin and Sandiaga Salahuddin Uno. Dubbed the “millennial politician”, Sandiaga has a strong presence on social media while Ma’ruf  does not even have a verified Twitter account. Sandiaga has been conducting dialogue sessions in more than 1,500 places across Indonesia, whereas Ma’ruf has been involved in various religious events as part of his campaign trail, mostly in Java.  The absence of heated debate may be due to Sandiaga’s promise not to attack Ma’ruf as a respected ulama (Muslim cleric) and Ma’ruf’s lackluster showing in the first presidential debate in January.

2019/29, 20 March 2019

An explosive device went off in Sibolga, North Sumatra, early on Wednesday, 13 March 2019, during a terror raid, injuring several, including a police officer. The perpetrator was the wife of a suspected militant who was apprehended by the “Densus 88” counterterrorism squad the day before. The police was engaged in a long negotiation with the woman following her husband’s arrest, intending to persuade her to surrender but to no avail. Eventually, she blew herself and her child up at the family’s residence.

2019/28, 19 March 2019

50 innocent lives were lost during the mass shooting on two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand,  last Friday. The victims were performing their Friday prayers when Brenton Harrison Tarrant, a 28 year-old Australian, carried out the attack. This is the first time a terrorist attack of such scale happened in New Zealand, a country known for respecting diversity and multiculturalism and adopting an open immigration policy.

2019/27, 18 March 2019

The end-of-year statistics for the Philippines in 2018 indicate two worrying trends for the Philippine economy under the Duterte administration. The most worrying was the sharp increase in the trade deficit from a concerning 8.7% of GDP in end-2017 to the much larger 12.5% of GDP at end-2018. At end-2015, the trade deficit was a manageable 4.2% of GDP. Exports last year fell by 1.8%, despite a healthy 15.2% increase in the largest export item, electronic products. Imports surged by 13.4% with imports from China growing by 22.5%. Trade figures for January 2019 saw a further decline in exports and sharp uptake in imports.

2019/26, 7 March 2019

At a seminar organised on 25 Feb 2019 by the ISEAS-Yusof Ishak Institute, Yenny Zannuba Wahid of the Wahid Foundation described a divide in Indonesia’s Islamic landscape in the context of the forthcoming 2019 presidential elections.

The divide is animated by two different ideological leanings supported by the Nahdlatul Ulama (NU) and certain Islamist groups, particularly the banned Indonesian Hizbut Tahrir (HTI), respectively. The former is against the establishment of a caliphate, the adoption of syariah as positive law in Indonesia, the implementation of religion-based by-laws, and staunchly supports the principles of NKRI (Negara Kesatuan Republik Indonesia, Unitary State of the Republic of Indonesia).   In contrast, the latter champions the implementation of syariah law in Indonesia, transforming it into “NKRI Bersyariah”, and some of them even support the Islamic caliphate.

2019/25, 7 March 2019

The by-election in Semenyih, Selangor, was a jarring wake-up call for Pakatan Harapan. Having lost to Barisan Nasional in a 4-cornered battle by 1,914 votes, coalition members now oscillate between conceding that they need to do more to alleviate costs of living and declaring that the ‘Malay agenda’ must be fulfilled. With UMNO and PAS now openly declaring a “marriage” to “unite the Malays and Bumiputeras”, it is very clear that racial and religious political discourse is even more entrenched than it was prior to GE14.

2019/24, 5 March 2019

Infrastructure agreements between the Duterte administration and Chinese contractors and Chinese state banks are an issue in the ongoing mid-term election campaign in the Philippines. The Philippine Senate is holding hearings into the Duterte administration’s “Build, Build, Build” infrastructure project focussing on the unreleased details of loan agreements with Chinese contractors and financiers. Leftist Senate candidate Neri Colmenares has gained much media coverage by releasing details of an alleged confidential China-Philippine loan agreement that he deems is “onerous” and “one-sided.” Colmenares claims that the agreement waives Philippine sovereign rights, and that any arbitration will be under Chinese rules. The government response has not denied these claims, simply their interpretation.