Hello friends!

I have spent the last week thinking about where to next for this newsletter. It’s terrible to write at the moment, terrible to read and terrible, I have no doubt, to live. It feels like there are many different versions of our planet, and the Southeast Asia planet is faring much worse than others. So rather than burn ourselves out and make sure we don’t miss stories for the forest, I will mix things up. 

Instead of one very long look at the region once a week, I’d like to do two or three shorter looks at specific stories or trends from either specific countries or the region broadly. I don’t want to commit to how many emails a week or which countries will be covered when etc. because I think this is a time in which we need to be very flexible. 

Below is an idea of what I’m aiming for, although I’ll be tweaking it and I’m very interested in feedback from readers and supporters. Hit that reply button if you’ve got a view, particularly about frequency (I don’t want to be spamming you), or if you think there’s something I’ve been missing lately that we need to cover!

Otherwise, I’ll be seeing you in the coming days as we work this all out. 

Stay safe out there everyone,Erin Cook

🇵🇭 Duterte’s final SONA marathon

And there it goes. President Rodrigo Duterte’s final ever (constitutionally) State of the Nation Address was his longest yet at nearly three hours. For us foreigners, these speeches — both the annual SONAs and his 1 am press conferences — invariably raise comparisons to his former US equivalent, Donald Trump, for both style and substance. I’ve always argued Duterte is in a class of his own, one which Trump could only aspire to. This is why I never read the screeds from US-based journalists on covering their man, but tweets from Filipino journalists on Duterte always make me laugh. It must be an impossibly difficult job to sort through his words and I’m in awe of how expertly (many in) the Filipino press pack has covered his official talks through the years. 

But what did he actually say! CNN Philippines has the full transcript here showing the President playing his greatest hits on the way out the door. He leans heavily on the war on drugs and pits himself against the country's elites — as always, forgetting his own CV — in a battle between the haves and have nots. 

He, rightly, applauds the community and healthcare workers in responding to the COVID-19 pandemic. He also blames the pandemic for derailing the country’s fantastic economic growth in recent years. Which I think certainly underplays the official muddled response, but hey, it’s his speech! 

It’s certainly his speech when Duterte reflects on the communist insurgency:

Rappler has a very interesting piece here comparing Duterte’s comments on key issues at his first SONA versus this week. I think the South China Sea and corruption comments are the most fascinating. Two deeply important issues have proved simply too big for Duterte to tackle. Interestingly, rather than threaten martial law, as he has done multiple times since 2016, he has threatened martial law on the behalf of whoever succeeds him. Is that allowed? 

The protests which go alongside the SONA are always stunning (The Philippines does the best-looking protests in the world, prove me wrong) and this year was no different, even with strict social distancing measures in place. 

I feel like in another world SONA 2021 would’ve given the world a strong idea of what the Duterte administration will be spending its last year working towards. Now, of course, that final year will be dominated by the pandemic. This is why it’s so fascinating the President’s usual obsessions — drugs, communists, fighting his critics — dominates so decidedly. Meanwhile, police sent to secure the event have tested positive for COVID-19. 

🇹🇭 The vaccine race

For the last couple of weeks, Thailand has reported record new cases and deaths day in, day out. Tighter restrictions are in place and vaccinations are now widely seen as the only path out for the country.

It was hoped the local manufacturing of the AstraZeneca vaccine, produced by monarchy-owned Siam Bioscience, would change the course of the pandemic not just in Thailand but elsewhere in the region. Production has, however, been slow. Officials previously projected the production of 10 million doses a month, but that has been revised down to nearly half as AstraZeneca explains the beginning stages of production are complicated. 

“A global supply crunch for Covid-19 vaccines and shortages of the materials and components required to produce the vaccine make it difficult to provide certainty today, but we are hopeful of importing additional doses in the months ahead,” AstraZeneca’s managing director in Thailand, James Teague, said in a statement as reported by the Financial Times.

If it’s bad news for Thailand, it’s having shockwaves elsewhere. Promised exports, particularly to other hard-hit countries like Malaysia and the Philippines, are unlikely to hit targets expected just a few months ago. 

Chalida Ekvittayavechnukul reports the National Vaccine Institute has pledged to join COVAX, the international programme which matches donated vaccines to countries in need, alongside much of the region. Procuring directly from manufacturers had been the policy of choice for the government until recently. 

“I apologize to the people that the National Vaccine Institute has not managed to procure a sufficient amount of vaccines appropriate for the situation, although we have tried our best. The mutations (of the virus) were something that could not be predicted, which have caused a more rapid spread than last year. The vaccine procurement effort did not match the current situation,” says institute director Nakorn Premsri. 

But, it’s not quite the solution the desperate Thais need. The COVAX programme has fallen well short of expectations and the first COVAX vaccines won’t arrive in the country until the new year. 

Separately, the US has donated 1.5 million doses of the Pfizer vaccine expected to arrive in Thailand this week. 

Around the region

• Now what? Malaysian artist Fahmi Reza is in trouble again by police, this time for a satirical poster. Fahmi, who made international headlines earlier this year after facing an investigation for a Spotify playlist, doesn’t appear too spooked. 

https://www.instagram.com/p/CR3hekNDgXG/

• Vietnam is preparing for even tighter restrictions as the pandemic rages. New cases have pushed past 6,000 a day for the last week, Reuters reports, forcing local officials to consider other restrictions including the extension of measures in Ho Chi Minh City past the August 1 end date.

• Two commanders from the Indonesian air force have been dismissed after shocking footage of the pair assaulting a deaf Papuan man went viral. It is a rare rebuke in the long-running tension between authorities and the Papuan community in Indonesia, drawing comparisons to the Black Lives Matter movement and similar assaults on Black men and women in the US by police and other authorities.