🇸🇬 S Iswaran pleads guilty to lesser charges

Hello friends!

Three updates today on long-running stories and I have to admit, two out of three have been enormous shocks to me. I did not see this coming in either Singapore or Phnom Penh. Jakarta, however, has had this one on the books for a while. 

I’m a little sick still (so is the Pope! Everyone got sick!) so please forgive any and all typos.

Let’s crack in,

Erin Cook

🇸🇬 No trial for Iswaran

Singapore’s former transport minister S Iswaran is down for the count. He pled guilty yesterday to four counts of violating Section 165 barring civil servants from accepting valuable gifts and a fifth for obstructing justice.

Well, that was a bit of a dud. Iswaran had vowed to clear his name and a big showy trial was expected for Singapore’s first ministerial corruption charges. Instead, prosecutors agreed to amend the charges down from corruption to ‘obtaining valuable items as a public servant.’ Those valuable times, you may remember, run up to SGD$400,000 in trips abroad and tickets to terrible musicals via Singapore GP’s chairman Ong Beng Seng and Lum Chang Holdings managing director David Lum Kok Seng. The Straits Times reports he’s so far paid back $380,000 to the state. 

He’ll be back for sentencing on Oct. 3 and prosecutors want six to seven months jail, arguing that Iswaran has done serious damage to Singapore’s reputation as a squeaky-clean government. “Not punishing such acts would send a signal that such acts are tolerated,” Deputy Attorney-General Tai Wei Shyong said.

Relax, rebutted Iswaran’s legal team. Senior Counsel Davinder Singh says he should serve a maximum of two months citing his client was at no stage apparently ‘compromised’ by the high-rolling. 

Why ditch the corruption charges? It’s tricky, the Attorney-General's Chambers told media yesterday, as per Channel News Asia. With Ong also named a party to the charges, getting a conviction would be hard: “In deciding whether to amend the charges, AGC considered the litigation risks involved in proving the PCA (Prevention of Corruption Act) charges beyond a reasonable doubt at trial, given that there are two primary parties to the transactions, and both would have an interest in denying corruption in the transactions,” a spokesperson said. 

Prosecutors have long noted that Ong would be pursued after the completion of Iswaran’s trial, so expect movement there in the coming months. 

As I often say for Singapore, what I wouldn’t give for a free-wheeling press! The major mastheads have done a great job in reporting this straight down the line, for sure. But I want to know what the punters are thinking. Is this compromise an acceptable one for Singaporeans? 

🇰🇭 Citing ‘extremists’ Cambodia drops out of CLV

Last month, we touched on a curious story in Cambodia where a string of activists were arrested for protesting the Cambodia-Laos-Vietnam Triangle Development Area, or CLV. In a terrific explainer at the time, Radio Free Asia stated that protests in Cambodia and among the diaspora had cropped up over the agreement due to perceptions that it had given up sovereignty of parts of the country. 

The CLV itself had come into effect decades ago and allows for the free flow of people across border provinces in the three countries. Not a bad idea at all! But with the Cambodian government not to be trusted by its own people, activists said it was ripe for corruption and sovereign ceding with Vietnamese or Lao investors eyeing off ‘multi-decade agricultural land concessions.’ 

The crackdown on critics and the push for investment at all costs had me very surprised to see Prime Minister Hun Manet announce Cambodia would pull out of the agreement last week. In a Facebook post, he wrote that while the CLV had brought many opportunities to Cambodia over the decades, his government was “taking into account people’s concern on territory and the need to withdraw weapons out of the hands of extremists to prevent them from using CLV-DTA to further cheat people,” the Associated Press reported.

Things are moving in the Cambodia-Vietnam relationship, Sebastian Strangio wrote over at the Diplomat. The about-face from Hun Manet has more to do with beef with Hanoi than a shift towards listening to the people (my words, not Strangio’s). Writes Strangio: “The fact that the government would now take the rare step of acceding to its opponents’ demands to withdraw from the CLV agreement reflects not just its perennial concern about being seen as a puppet of Hanoi. It also points to a possible reversion to the historical mean in terms of Cambodian relations with Vietnam, as China has come to eclipse Vietnam’s historically prominent position in the country.”  

The less-than-independent Phnom Penh Post has an intriguing piece about the announcement that leans heavily on the ‘extremists,’ that is, Cambodian nationals who protested the agreement last month. “Although the extremists’ August 18 plan has been completely dissolved, Hun Sen's way of working is to ‘not sit and stop the smoke, but to put out the fire completely,” Hun Sen said in a post to Facebook after the announcement. 

A thread in this piece is that the call to dissolve seems to have come largely from Hun Sen, former prime minister and current Cambodian People’s Party head and Senate president, rather than Prime Minister Hun Manet. I am a tiny bit obsessed with how little Phnom Penh cares to even give the impression Hun Manet is steering the boat. 

🇮🇩 Regional elections are officially a go in Indonesia

Yesterday saw the launch of Indonesia’s two-month-long regional election campaigning period. It never ends! ‘These ballots will be for governors of the 37 provinces, and heads of the 508 municipalities and regencies,’ Nikkei Asia reports in its primer. But it’s the governor races — and even then, only a handful of them! — that will take up the energy here. 

After mass protests last month headed off plans to ditch a Constitutional Court ruling that would lower the minimum seat requirement for parties to nominate, things are a bit more exciting now. Ridwan Kamil, a former governor of West Java, is the hot favourite for Jakarta where he has the backing of Prabowo Subianto’s ever widening coalition. He’ll face off with independent candidate Dharma Pongrekun, a former high-ranking police general, and PDI-P’s pick Pramono Anung, a former cabinet secretary to President Joko Widodo. 

West Java, Central Java and East Java are also to be closely watched. As will North Sumatra, where Jokowi’s son-in-law, Bobby Nasution is running for governor under Prabowo’s Gerindra. He has previously served as mayor of the provincial capital Medan and is probably best known as the ‘oh yeah, him too’ addendum to every piece on Jokowi’s dynasty building.