🇮🇩 Failed prez candidates face Constitutional Court

Hello friends!

I totally forgot that tomorrow is Good Friday! So my promised Myanmar update will be delayed because it’s time to eat some fish burgers. Australia really goes for it this time of year, so I shall be off Monday as well for our Easter Monday holiday (didn’t see that one in the bible? Don’t worry about it!) 

We’re going to fly through Indonesia today because these election challenge stories are giving me what Google says is probably a migraine but possibly a tumour. In the Philippines, a chunky update on the South China Sea spat is turning into another Marcos-Duterte clan flashpoint. 

See you next week,Erin Cook

🇮🇩 Military reprimands own over shocking torture

An extremely rare rebuke of the Indonesian military this week after a video purportedly showing 13 members of an elite squad torturing an Indigenous Papuan man while he sat in a barrel of water went viral and truly stunned. At least five military members are seen in the video, hurling racist slurs and slicing the man’s back with a machete. The military typically does not acknowledge accusations of abuses like this, so it is a testament to how stunning and scary this video is that it’s being spoken about so openly. I personally have avoided seeing it though it has spread far and wide on Indonesian social media. 

“This is a violation of the law and we will act according to the applicable laws and regulations. This is what we regret, that the Indonesian military or Indonesian army never taught, never approved any violence in asking for information,” army spokesperson Brig. Gen. Kristomei Sianturi told a news conference, as reported by the Associated Press. He confirmed the video was filmed Feb. 3 in Puncak, in Papua province. All 13 involved officers have been detained in a military prison in West Java, he added. 

Former governors and failed presidential candidates Anies Baswedan and Ganjar Pranowo laid out their cases for challenging the election yesterday in the Constitutional Court, Stanley Widianto at Reuters reports in this extensive piece. They flagged the involvement of President Joko Widodo, pressures on regional officials and the roll-out of social aid in the lead-up to the vote. “This practice will be perceived as normal, a habit,” Anies told the court. “Was the 2024 election held freely, honestly, and justly? Allow us to answer: No. What happened was the opposite,” he added. 

Camp Ganjar wants a full-on re-run. He’s asked the court to order another election in June, citing the addition of Jokowi’s son, Gibran Rakabuming Raka, on the Prabowo ticket only after the intervention of uh this very court as evidence of Jokowi’s “nepotism and abuse of power.” “Violations in the election are surprising to us because they destroyed our morals, which is an abuse of power,” Ganjar told the court. 

They’re wilding, former law minister Yusril Ihza Mahendra said over the weekend (in not so many words). Yusril is leading Prabowo Subianto’s legal team and is not concerned at all. These challenges should’ve gone first to the election bodies KPU and Bawasalu but they did not, he said. “However, after losing the election, they are demanding the Constitutional Court to disqualify Mr. Gibran. This is absurd and inconsistent. We believe that the Constitutional Court is fully aware of its task, namely to try election disputes, not administrative procedures that fall under the purview of a different court,” he said, as reported by the Jakarta Globe. 

Of course, none of this is slowing down the politicking in Jakarta. A floated meeting between Prabowo Subianto and PDI-P queen bee Megawati Sukarnoputri — themselves a former joint ticket for prez and VP — is looking more and more likely, the Jakarta Post reports. PDI-P won the House again and has been fairly strong in their messaging that they will be an opposition force (at least initially) and they’re stressing any meeting does not mean a coalition. I think this is very fair, but Indonesia has had a bad case of ‘a coalition of everyone’ over the last decade so I understand why some may be skeptical. 

Nah, don’t worry about it says sec-gen Hasto Kristiyanto: “We find no problem with these meetings being held, but the very fundamental things that we have mentioned will continue to be scrutinized by the PDI-P” he said, referring to the court challenges. 

🇵🇭 Not even the South China Sea is safe from the Marcos-Duterte split

What kind of deal did former president Rodrigo Duterte hatch with China over the South China Sea? Comments from Duterte’s former presidential spokesman Harry Roque have me curious. He told media that during his tenure, Beijing and Manila hatched a deal to keep the status quo during the length of his presidency, the Inquirer reported. 

That agreement ‘called for the Philippines to refrain from constructing and repairing installations in the area,’ the Inquirer reported. It must be reiterated here that Duterte came to power just weeks before the UNCLOS ruling was massively in the Philippines’ favour and would have had far more leverage to work with than Marcos does now. Duterte was hounded with criticism that he was never hard enough on China — criticism that he did not care about at all — and is one of the starkest differences between himself and his successor Bongbong Marcos. That ‘handshake agreement’ was only to last the length of the Duterte presidency and ‘expired’ when Marcos took the reins. 

It’s also threatening to drag in daughter, Vice President Sara Duterte. Akbayan Party wants to know why the second in command has “turned a blind eye” when it comes to China’s incursions on the waters. Give it a rest, brother Rep. Paolo Duterte said in a statement yesterday (that appears to compare Sara to Jesus, but we’ll leave that one for someone else to tackle). “It is not the job of the Vice President or the Secretary of the Department of Education to demonise China or any country for that matter,” Paolo said in a statement, as per Philstar. I think this ‘demonise’ rather than ‘criticise’ or ‘defend against’ is really telling about where the family stands, but must read more about that before making any definitive statements! 

Roque stressed that this agreement had nothing to do with the Sierra Madre, the naval ship run aground in the Second Thomas Shoal back in the '90s to shore up the Philippines’ claim. It’s a persistent rumour in recent weeks as the Duterte and Marcos factions continue to degrade into spats. Duterte never said he’d even think about removing it, Roque said. The Inquirer notes that this is a long-running charge for presidents: both Joseph Estrada and Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo also denied agreeing to remove it while in Malacañang.

Well, whatever happened, Beijing is doing a shocking job of seeming rational and sane on the whole thing this week. The Foreign Correspondents Association of the Philippines “takes deep offence at the insinuation that the press is a ‘troublemaker’ and in cahoots with the government to forward a political agenda,” a statement issued by the organisation yesterday said, as reported by Reuters. It comes after China's Assistant Minister of Foreign Affairs Hua Chunying accused the press of manipulating “the videos they recorded to make sensational news and project the Philippines is a victim.”

Video obtained by GMA News might be what he’s on about. Joseph Morong on Monday posted a stunning video to Twitter (can’t make me say it!) that shows a water canon turning on a Filipino vessel and the amazing force of the water. I don’t think I really understood what the Coast Guard would mean when they said water canons were involved, this is far more dangerous than I had thought. 

“Their actions are illegal, coercive, aggressive and even deceptive. This is just an ordinary rotation and resupply or provision operation but look at how the Chinese are reacting, it’s as if it’s already the end of the world. So it’s really humiliating themselves in front of the world,” Philippine National Security Adviser Eduardo Año said in response to the run-in, as per Rappler. The outlet notes that this specific incident happened just days after US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken visited Marcos in Manila and ahead of a planned US-Philippines-Japan summit in Washington DC next month. Both the US and Japanese representatives in Manila issued statements in support of the Philippines and condemning China’s actions.

Elsewhere, the Maharlika fund will not die! The sovereign wealth fund is reportedly set to launch in the third quarter of this year but the ‘we swear this isn’t going to be a Pinoy 1MDB’ pledges persist. Ramon Royandoyan has an excellent long update here for Nikkei Asia that goes into both why civil society groups and economists are worried that it could go 1MDB and why the government and supporters insist it won’t. 

‘The law behind the wealth fund mandates the establishment of two committees on the board for audit and risk management. But management will go beyond that legal requirement to make a half dozen committees instead, including groups to monitor corporate governance and ethics,’ Maharlika Investment Corp. CEO Rafael Consing Jr. told Royandoyan.