Indonesian arrest blast from the past

Hello friends,

This is a bit late this week because I have been crackers busy, but it’s mad long so does that make up for it?

It’s a freebie this weekend to remind everyone about the brand new Indonesia Dan Lain-Lain podcast! Second episode out Tuesday.

If you’re trying out your trial and would like to sign up for real, here for $6 a month/$60 a year:

Cheers,Erin Cook

🇮🇩🇮🇩🇮🇩Off the bat in Indonesia, let’s start off with the conversation about the country’s literary tradition. Not really, I was a spectator of this and I’m reminded again that all my friends are much smarter than I am. So let’s just listen to Intan Paramaditha.

All election stuff is over here at Ayolah and if you didn’t see last week’s newsletter here is some big news!! Myself and my pal/former boss Hayat Indriyatno have teamed up with Gentle Media to launch our podcast Indonesia Dan Lain-Lain. Until the election we’ll be looking at all things Pilpres, but after that morph into wider Indonesian and regional news. Listen to our first ep here on SoundCloud and soon every new ep will arrive every Tuesday on your fave podcast app.

Oof, the rupiah just copped its biggest slide in eight months. Bad timing, rupiah! It’s not too big of a deal, one analyst tells Bloomberg, but be cautious just in case. Indonesia and the Philippines (as well as India, but not our purview) are among the least safe countries from women in all of APAC. Poor access to healthcare and legal recourse for women have been pointed to as the cause.  

What happened to Robertus Robet? The activist/academic was arrested Wednesday night after he reportedly sang a song which was a popular protest song back in 1998. The song got on the nerves of the military and Robet has since apologised “if my oration offended or degraded some institutions.” I’m not going to do this credit so please refer to friend of the letter Stanley Widianto and his piece at VOA which does a phenomenal job of contextualising Robet and the role of the military in post-Reformasi Indonesia. Leopold Sudaryono for Indonesia at Melbourne also a great read.

🇸🇬🇸🇬🇸🇬 Swedish metal band Watain was barred from playing in Singapore. The band says it was the first time after decades of touring the world this has happened. The Ministry of Home Affairs suggested the band’s anti-religion content could “cause enmity and disrupt Singapore’s social harmony.” Which, of course, prompts some obvious questions. Is Singapore’s social harmony notably less robust than anywhere else in the world? Is the country just one Swedish metal show away from unrest and anarchy?

“We view Watain’s sacrilegious attacks on the Christian faith through their songs as particularly disruptive and hurtful to the cause of religious harmony, and we are concerned that Watain’s open endorsement of satanic violence could have deleterious effects on impressionable and restless youths,” the National Council of Churches of Singapore said in a statement yesterday morning.

I just want to linger on this for a moment because this could seem like a quirky-but-who-really-cares story. It’s not! Singapore has somehow dodged much of the assumptions made about other countries in the region (Thailand, too, but we’ll get to that another time). The restrictions and paternalistic overreach from the government are engulfing. This is a lighter version of that control that keeps executed prisoners out of the press and activists under police watch.

🇹🇱🇹🇱🇹🇱In Timor-Leste, I feel like this is the read I’ve been waiting for. In the Diplomat, Joao da Cruz Cardoso lays out the case for diversification of the economy beyond oil and has some background on how we even got to this point. He argues that while other sectors may not immediately remedy budget gaps, work needs to begin right now.

🇧🇳🇧🇳🇧🇳Brunei’s Sultan Hassanal Bolkiah used the opening of the Legislative Council session this week to call on lawmakers to address low employment rates and shockingly low growth. I didn’t know this, but Brunei has the highest youth unemployment rate in Asean at 28.3 percent. More broadly the country is sitting at a rough 9.3 percent unemployment.

🇰🇭🇰🇭🇰🇭Another rough few days for the Cambodian opposition. Six more CNRP-linked activists have fled the country, joining an estimated 75 abroad. While they haven’t said where they’ll attempt to claim asylum a photo of the half dozen shows them in Bangkok. And who could blame them.

Yea Thong, who was released from prison early last August, died in February following complications from osteoporosis. He had been given a seven year sentence after taking part in a 2014 CNRP demonstration. His family says while he had been sick, he would not have died if the prison had provided better healthcare. “In the prison, those with money can stay one or two nights at the hospital and receive quick treatment. For us, we could not and Ya Thong was not allowed. This is injustice in prison,” said Om Sam An, a former CNRP activist who shared a cell with Ya Thong.

🇻🇳🇻🇳🇻🇳Back to business as usual in Vietnam. Academic Tran Duc Anh Son was expelled from the communist party after “writing Facebook posts that were untrue and went against the party’s views and state policies and laws.” Reuters reports that he has been critical of the government’s softly-softly approach in the South China Sea. It also notes that Facebook is usually the go-to outlet for dissidents, reiterating how damaging the cyber law introduced earlier this year can be. The EU and Vietnam are brokering a deal for sustainable lumber. This stuff is really important but I don’t understand a thing about it so here’s Bloomberg.

🇲🇲🇲🇲🇲🇲A complicated one coming out of Myanmar. Benar News is reporting a Chinese delegation has taken to offering Rohingya refugees in Cox’s Bazar up to USD$6,000 to return to Rakhine state. “We rejected their proposal and asserted that we will in no way return if we are not given citizenship with Rohingya identity and our other demands are not met,” Syed Ullah, secretary-general of the Arakan Rohingya Society for Peace and Human Rights, told Benar. The Chinese embassy did not reply to requests for comment from the outlet but I really want to see a follow up on this. It’s an insane plan.

I feel like this one from Bloomberg is one we’ve all been waiting for. A renewed push this year from the Myanmar government to entice foreign investors to the country has been met with criticisms and bafflement — in the west. But in Myanmar, Asian backed investment far outstrips that of the West.

“To the West, Rakhine equals Myanmar and Myanmar equals Rakhine, and there doesn’t seem to be anything else. Whereas the East has another lens, and that is Rakhine is a problem. But Rakhine is a small part of Myanmar, and there is still Myanmar left, and we should engage and not isolate. We should help and not punish,” Serge Pun, ‘a local tycoon who is chairman of Serge Pun & Associates,’ told Bloomberg.

🇱🇦🇱🇦🇱🇦A quiet end to the week in Laos!

🇲🇾🇲🇾🇲🇾In Malaysia, let’s focus on two stories this week. First: the marriage of UMNO and PAS. Remember the glory days of GE14 and UMNO were desperate to keep the two names apart :’) While this is an important development, I have to get the cringe out of the way first. “We 'exchanged rings' in Sungai Kandis, were 'engaged' in Seri Setia and then we decided we wanted to get 'married' — this is the official ceremony. And now we are sitting on the dais," UMNO’s deputy president Mohamad Hasan said. Ew, why! That’s a weird way to put it, be serious. The SCMP piece does a decent enough job of the background and the comparison to post-Suharto reforms in Indonesia is very interesting.

And then there’s Sabah. UMNO’s Sabah arms is quick to acknowledge the strength of the alliance during the two by-elections, but is putting itself first. “With autonomy, we have the freedom to choose our own partners. We will not be bound by the choices made at the national level,” Sabah UMNO liaison deputy chief Yakub Khan said yesterday. He also makes some perhaps telling comments about the Sabah chapter’s ability to work closely with the other Barisan Nasional local wings.

Still, should Pakatan Harapan be concerned? We can defeat this, prime minister-to-be Anwar Ibrahim says, but we must do better first. He’s been saying a lot of the right things lately and I’m starting to fall for it!! "What is needed is a strong and united (Pakatan) Harapan. Its leadership must be sensitive to the problems faced by the rakyat and (fulfil) economic programmes that will help all regardless of race and religion,” he said, as reported by Malaysiakini.

I am very lucky to be seeing Bridget Welsh in a talk tomorrow at the Habibie Centre here in Jakarta so I expect to have a lot more to say on this come Tuesday. I’ll also be keeping a close eye on analysis looking at the ‘Malay first’ angle.

Second story! Pakatan Harapan might insist it’s a playing a new game in Malaysia, but abandoning the LGBT community is still very much on the table. This is now infamous but I’m so gobsmacked let’s go over it. Tourism Minister Mohamaddin Ketapi, who hails from the Warisan Sabah party in the coalition, has sparked a fresh furore over the community’s place in Malaysia after telling German media LGBT people don’t exist in Malaysia.

Hold on, they got me, he told Twitter. He says he meant to say there were no LGBT-targeted tourism campaigns not that LGBT Malaysians don’t exist. "Tourists coming to Malaysia like any other country are welcome regardless of their creed, sexuality, religion or color,” an aide said. I’m sure they’ll feel more than welcome!

🇲🇾🇵🇭🇲🇾🇵🇭Close readers have probably picked up that outside of Asean, I don’t really care about bilateral meetings within the region. Oh everyone is going to work towards more economic engagement? How thrilling! But the combo of Malaysia’s Mahathir Mohamad and the Philippines’ Rodrigo Duterte is different. Mahathir took his ‘chill out on China’ show on the road and Duterte makes for an interesting host. Duterte has been reamed out repeatedly by constituents for an apparent inability — and lack of a desire — to ‘stand up to China.’ Mahathir, meanwhile, is ready to throw it all out.

Be careful, Mahathir warned his Filipino counterpart. "If you borrow huge sums of money from China and you cannot pay, you know when a person is a borrower he is under the control of the lender, so we have to be very careful with that," he said before the meet. This wouldn’t be quite so interesting had Manila not spent most of this month debating if Chinese investment (what little of it has actually come to fruition) is worth the strings. And then there’s the in-coming workers, but we’ll get to that next week.

🇵🇭🇵🇭🇵🇭Over in the Philippines, we’ve got a new central bank governor. Benjamin Diokno was appointed earlier this week by Duterte and, uh, the smarties aren’t thrilled. This from William Pesek at the NAR does the best job of laying out exactly what the concerns here are. Diokno comes from the president’s budget secretary role and replaces Nestor Espenilla who died last month of cancer. He’s skipped the usual succession plans and Pesek calls it “ominous.” Bloomberg takes a look at the four key areas in which Diokno needs to get straight to work.

Shock me, Duterte won’t back the legalisation of marijuana. He mouthed off about this awhile back, as we all remember, but I think it was clear even then it wasn’t really going to happen just yet. Here’s some science from him though: “You must remember that heroin, cocaine and the derivatives are products of opium poppy plant. So matagal masyado magtama if at all talagang mabuang (So the effect is not instant if at all it can drive abusers mad).” That cannot be right, surely?

Davao City Mayor and possible 2022 challenger Sara Duterte-Carpio has laid into Vice President Leni Robredo. “If she insists on saying that you have to be honest to run for public office, then she must say goodbye to her dreams of becoming president,” she said, before invoking her dead husband. Good Lord!

Just as an aside the Philippine style of electing presidents and VPs separately not on a unity ticket was a huge weird learning curve for me. Can I make a special request of the smarties? Why has the Philippines ended up with this system? And does anywhere else do it this way? Hit that reply pls!

🇹🇭🇹🇭🇹🇭Thailand, what are we going to do with you! This is probably the last email Thailand won’t dominate until the vote so let’s just go easy here today. And today is, of course, the Thai Raksa Chart show. No one was surprised to see the Election Commission disband the party last week after the princess debacle. “The action also made Thai people feel that the monarchy, which is the heart of the Thai people, was brought down and used in a political game,” Taweekiet Meenakanit, one of nine judges, said in the ruling.

It’s just a speed bump, cadres say. A pretty big one, sure. But onwards and upwards. “We’ll continue to walk with people to support pro-democracy parties and will not launch a vote-no campaign. We believe voters will support pro-democracy [candidates] and overcome the obstacles laid by the dictatorial side,” Nuttawut Saikuar, a member of the party’s inner-core, said.

Khaosod English columnist Pravit Rojanaphruk worries the move will turn upstart Future Forward into a target. Pheu Thai Party, the Thaksin-linked opposition pals of Thai Raksa Chart, aren’t running candidates in each and every race, putting more pressure on FF to get it done. But is it ready? It’s a very new party and the politicking is getting it down. With the junta so desperate to cling to power, can we even trust the elections to be free and fair? At least we’ll always have the memes.