Commentaries

2019/12, 30 January 2019

January 23 brought publication of the long-awaited royal decree making it possible for Thailand’s Election Commission to set a date for parliamentary polls. The following day, wasting no time in launching their campaign, supporters of the Democrat Party appeared in a market in the major Southern Thai centre of Hat Yai to distribute leaflets to traders and shoppers. One trader welcomed them by shouting loudly, “Now that there will be an election, you come to see us. Once we have voted, you disappear completely!” He was not alone among those present in feeling such disdain for the Democrats.

2019/11, 28 January 2019

President Trump’s decision to withdraw US troops from Syria and General Mattis’s resignation as Defence Secretary were greeted with dismay and unease by America’s allies and friends in the Middle East.  The President’s stated rationale for the withdrawal — that the Islamic State (IS)  had been defeated — had disconcerting echoes of President George W Bush’s 2003 declaration of ‘’Mission Accomplished’’ in the Iraq war on board an American aircraft carrier  when soon afterwards a vicious  insurgency would engulf the US army.

2019/10, 28 January 2019

The Philippines is in campaign mode for the May mid-term elections. Campaign periods bring into sharper relief points of perceived vulnerability for the incumbent government. In the past week, three points of vulnerability related to the President Duterte’s close embrace of China have come to the fore:

(1) The Senate version of the delayed 2019 budget blocks government payments for a major China-funded public surveillance program on the basis that the awarding of this contract was incorrect. Leading senators not aligned with the president have also called for a Senate inquiry into the national security implications of this project.

2019/9, 28 January 2019

Malaysia joined the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP) in the third round of negotiations in October 2010 and signed the agreement in February 2016 with 11 other founding members. The exit of the US from the TPP-12 is a big loss for Malaysia as it is the main source for Malaysia’s potential export gains in terms of market access since there is no bilateral agreement between the two countries. The new Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP) (or TPP-11) that replaced the TPP-12 is therefore considerably less attractive to Malaysia. Nevertheless, Malaysia did become a signatory to the CPTPP on 8 March 2018 in Santiago due to the changes made in the new agreement while the administration at that point in time was also keen to continue engagement with the other TPP-11 countries. While the negotiated content of the original agreement is basically maintained, 20 articles of the TPP-12 have been temporarily postponed, including the strong commitments on intellectual property that the US had raised before. Specifically, 11 of the 20 articles are on intellectual property. For the dispute solution mechanism between governments and investors (ISDS), the CPTPP has narrowed the mechanisms available for foreign investors to sue the host member state.

2019/8, 25 January 2019

The Communist Party of Vietnam (CPV), into the second half of its 12th Congress term, has started to plan a new leadership for its next term from 2021-26. Since the three-day-long Ninth Plenum in early December 2018, the Politburo has held a few meetings to review a shortlist of 205 potential candidates for the 13th Congress Central Committee to obtain an early sensing of which members of the current Politburo could be named as potential forerunners for the top four positions – General Secretary, Chairperson of National Assembly, President and Prime Minister.

2019/7, 25 January 2019

Buddhist monks are known as world renouncers. In Thailand, the ideal monk has nothing to do with worldly matters, including impure activities like the lust for power or with materialistic concerns like politics. But throughout the past two decades, Thai monks are getting more involved in national politics and in the politics of Buddhism itself. The Thai public usually frowns upon clerics who interfere in such matters. However, political monks enjoy an increasing number of supporters.

The Thai constitution denies to monks the right to vote and thus strips them of the other political rights enjoyed by Thai citizens in general. The Thai state has decided to deny monks these rights with the ideological goal of protecting the purity of Buddhism – a pillar of the national identity and of the society’s moral consciousness. Some monks however have discovered a backdoor through which to play a role in politics.

2019/7, 22 January 2019

Since the partial lifting of the ban on political gatherings in mid-December 2018, and despite uncertainty over whether polls will actually take place this year, Thailand’s Northeast has begun readying itself for long-awaited elections to choose a new government. Most of my interviews with voters about the upcoming elections in recent weeks have ended up with respondents asking me whether they would really take place. People do not seem at all convinced that the ruling National Council for Peace and Order junta will finally release its tight grip on political power.

2019/6, 21 January 2019

The first in a series of presidential debates between Joko Widodo-Ma’ruf Amin and Prabowo Subianto-Sandiaga Uno kicked off on 17 January 2019. The session focused on law, human rights, democracy and terrorism issues. It was broadcasted by major television stations in Indonesia. Prior to the debate, there was public criticism of the General Elections Commission’s (KPU) decision to give sample questions to the candidates in advance. KPU argued that they do not want to shame the presidential candidates if they are caught unprepared during the debate. Some activists criticized this as denying the public an opportunity to hear spontaneous and genuine responses from the candidates regarding hot-button issues facing the nation.

2019/5, 16 January 2019

On 7 January 2019, the USS McCampbell conducted a freedom of navigation operation (FONOP) in the disputed Paracel Islands, the tenth publicized US Navy mission in the South China Sea since President Trump took office in January 2017, and the first of 2019.