🇸🇬 PAP returned with extended mandate

Hello friends!

It is very cruel to be in Australia for an Australian election, while also a little obsessed with Singapore’s domestic politics. Polls in Singapore close late — 8pm! I think that might be the latest in the region — and with the time zone difference and the romping down here, I daresay we’d already cracked the Dickson-result sparkling white before Lawrence Wong even had his dinner. 

Which is to say, I woke up in a panic Sunday morning to check the Straits Times push notifications and was perplexed. The gap between the vibes and the results — that’s where quieter PAP voters live. Take some time this week to listen to Reformasi with Kirsten Han. It’s less about this race and more about the much wider state of Singapore and I think it sets us up well to think about the years ahead:

See premium readers on Wednesday for a Mekong update and then on Friday, the time has come. We’ve got to talk about Indonesia’s VP, Gibran Rakabuming Raka. 

Erin Cook

🇸🇬 PAP riding high, WP feeling gracious

Oh, okay. After all that there was an enormous surprise in store in Singapore’s elections — the size of the People’s Action Party’s win! It’s a ‘landslide,’ hums Channel News Asia, and a sure relief for Prime Minister Lawrence Wong, less than a year into the job.

‘The party secured 65.57 per cent of the national vote, improving on its 2020 performance by 4 percentage points,’ reports Channel News Asia. It’s a far cry from the 2011 result when the PAP booked just over 60 percent and sent the ever-governing party into a decade-long anxiety attack. 

The Pritam-Singh led Workers’ Party has taken it on the chin. “I am very proud of the results in Hougang, Aljunied and Sengkang, where we have consolidated the position of the party,” Singh said Sunday as results shook out. “I couldn’t be prouder of the team. I think they did a very, very good job. They fought very hard, they tried very hard for each vote, and I think they should be proud of themselves, and I am very proud of them.” 

WP does have handy margins now in the three electorates, but gains were expected. Singh credits the PAP win to what just about everyone else is crediting — the people of Singapore chose old-reliable in a time of global upset. 

Wong knows it too. He campaigned hard on PAP’s legacy and reputation, and thanked Singaporeans for their support. “The results will put Singapore in a better position to face this turbulent world … It’s a clear signal of trust, stability and confidence in your government,” he told a 3am Sunday press conference, as per Bloomberg.  

🇹🇭 Charges dropped in Thailand

Relief in Thailand and among Southeast Asia’s academic freedoms community after prosecutors announced last week it would not pursue lese-majeste charges against American academic Paul Chambers. 

Chambers, who focuses on military and civilian relations at Naresuan University, was briefly detained last month on the charges stemming back to an online webinar hosted in Singapore. The military said the notice and posts related to the event jeopardised national security and defamed the royal family. Chambers, of course, didn’t write the promotion material and much of the allegations come from the translation provided on a Facebook post by a royalist, BBC reports. 

Over at World Politics Review, Joshua Kurlantzick notes these sorts of charges are deployed against foreigners very rarely (and locals, a whole lot). 

🇲🇲 Quake ceasefire expires, if it ever really worked anyway

Peace talks in Shan State between the junta and the Ta’ang National Liberation Army (TNLA), brokered by China, have fallen apart in Yunnan Province. TNLA has refused to give up control of five townships and has warned residents in Shan and around Mandalay to be alert to an increase in junta aerial bombing. Talks are planned to continue in August. (The Irrawaddy)

The post-earthquake ceasefire between the junta and the country’s armed ethnic groups expired May 1.  While there’s plenty of evidence showing the junta never really stuck with it anyway, it’s not interested in extending it. According to the AFP, calls to junta representatives to check the status have gone unanswered. (AFP)

A doctor running a ‘jungle hospital’ in Kachin State’s Mohnyin Township has said the military bombed the facility three times in late April. Dr. Soe Min took to Facebook to share the news, noting that the hospital itself had been struck by the aerial attacks but all patients and workers were safe. It treats around 1,000 malaria patients a week as well as “four or five people who come to get TB medication every month, and patients who receive cancer treatments. Now all of those patients are in trouble,” the good doctor wrote. (Myanmar Now) 

j.jaikishan

27K followers

View more on Instagram

Singapore has quietly become one of the region’s best politics-posters. I have some theories for this, about media regulation and a degree of resignation, but the larger reason is plain old simple: Singaporeans are funny as hell. Beloved Kishan J might have an explanation for these results.

Reading list

Myanmar earthquake: Why the junta has turned away aid — Su Mon Thant, The Interpreter

Politically, the junta’s selective aid acceptance serves multiple ends. By embracing aid from allies such as China, India and Russia, the regime bolsters its international legitimacy, strained since the coup. Junta leader Min Aung Hlaing’s meetings with Indian and Thai leaders at the BIMSTEC summit in Bangkok in April leveraged the disaster to rekindle diplomacy. This mirrors the junta’s post-Nargis playbook, where it eventually accepted ASEAN and UN aid to deflect criticism but held a constitutional referendum amid the crisis, prioritising power over relief. Today, with a planned December 2025 election looming, the junta may be using aid to shore up support in urban centres such as Mandalay to weaken opponents.

Philippine bishops defend papal front runner over clerical sex abuse — AFP (via Straits Times)

Ms Anne Barrett Doyle, co-director of BishopAccountability.org, said on May 2 that guidelines dealing with sexual abuse cases have not been published on the webpages of the Manila archdiocese or the bishops’ conference of the Philippines.

“If Cardinal Tagle cannot even get his brother bishops from his home country to publish guidelines, what on earth can we expect for him to achieve as pope of a global church?” she asked.

The Vietnam war is over: Saigon gives in with a sigh of relief – archive, 1975 — The Guardian

To mark the anniversary of the end of the war in Vietnam, the Guardian has dug into its archives. It makes for fascinating reading decades on.

The 30 years old Vietnam war is over. The Saigon government today unconditionally surrendered to communist forces, ordering its soldiers to hand over their weapons to Liberation troops. It was a scene some had never expected to see and others had tried to imagine but never succeeded in envisaging. The North Vietnamese and the Vietcong rolled into Saigon just after noon.