Hello friends!

Trying out a new format today. I’m very keen to be more responsive, more frequent and have more fun writing it. Let me know what you think!

Keep an eye out Monday for a chat I had with Darathtey Din of the brilliant Campuccino newsletter, but in the meantime go subscribe here. Her dispatches from Phnom Penh are must-reads for me every fortnight and I’m so thrilled I got to ask her the burning questions her work produces.

As always: all Asean and Timorese readers under 30 are more than welcome to a fully subsidised subscription. Just hit that reply and let me know who you are where you’re from.

Stay safe!Erin Cook

🇵🇭🏳️‍🌈 Congrats!

‘The gays are winning,’ netizens say of Beatrice Gomez as she was crowned Miss Universe Philippines for 2021 — the first lesbian queen to top the court. The Philippines’ love of beauty pageants is a quirk of the country I’m not sure I’ll ever fully understand, but this is a win for everybody. 

🇵🇭 Will he or won’t he? Again.

Keeping in the Philippines for now and the big man has thrown it in. Or so he says. President Rodrigo Durterte announced his retirement from politics at the start of the week despite having previously promising to nominate for vice-president. The smarties of Manila weren’t as chattering about it as the rest of the world. He’s got form:

While the official nomination period ends tomorrow, candidates can switch with other would-be nominees between now until mid-November. Which is to say, he’s down but not quite out. 

🇲🇾 🇮🇩 🇵🇭 🇰🇭 🇹🇭 What is — and isn’t — in the Pandora Papers

The Pandora Papers, published earlier this week by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ), have included some of the region’s biggest and most infamous names. It’s also included some brilliant reporting!

Malaysiakini’s piece on former finance minister Daim Zainuddin has a show-stopper lede: When most boys boast ownership of gadgets and toys, Daim Zainuddin's youngest sons became owners of a British Virgin Islands (BVI) firm by the ages of nine and 12.

The coverage details the holdings of the family across the world, including properties in London and holding companies across Europe, but the starkest revelation is the extent Singapore was ‘used as a gateway to shift assets to tax havens’. 

For his part, Daim Zainuddin denies any wrongdoing and adds he is retired and a lot of the companies are his kids’, not his. Thanks, dad. 

Over in Indonesia, Coconuts Jakarta rightly points out that the Papers haven’t made the same kind of impact we’ve seen elsewhere in the world. Coordinating Economic Affairs Minister Airlangga Hartarto and Coordinating Maritime Affairs and Investment Minister Luhut Pandjaitan have both been named in the investigation for involvement in firms based in the BVI. 

A Golkar Party spokesperson representing the two cadres made a very odd qualification: “We don’t know the source; it’s unclear. If we look at English language media, [Luhut and Airlangga’s names] were not mentioned, but in Indonesian media they are mentioned. We are waiting for clarity there.”

Rappler’s investigation of the Papers is interesting because, unlike in Indonesia where the names are very high profile, the Filipino names involved are ‘mysterious’. Former Bureau of Internal Revenue Commissioner Kim Henares told Rappler that names which are easily identified are less likely to be an issue of impropriety as far as the law goes. But names which produce not even a Google result, another lawyer told the outlet, now that raises eyebrows. I’m excited to see if Rappler continues to dig here and what comes of it! 

A stunner from ICIJ follows up on Douglas Latchford, the Brit who got done in 2019 for stealing all sorts of treasures and antiques from Cambodia. This piece is more about the arts and antique trade than about Cambodia (which we’ll get into on Monday) but still a fascinating read. 

While counterparts across the region work on untangling the webs of this huge tranche of information, Thai journalists are left asking: would anyone even care if it included us?

🇸🇬 FICA law passes in Singapore

There we go, Singapore has passed the Foreign Interference Countermeasures Act. 

"This Bill is intended to address a serious threat that concerns our national security and sovereignty. And these are important to ensure that Singaporeans continue to make our own choices on how we should govern our country and live our lives,” Law and Home Affairs Minister K. Shanmugam said, as reported by BBC. 

Kirsten Han in Rest of World is worth reading in full about this. This par stood out to me:

🇻🇳 Manufacturing reduced to sprouts

That build-up of manufacturing concerns in Vietnam we’ve been talking about for the past few months? It’s been pushed into sheer terror this week as the pandemic rolls on in the country. Clothes retailer Everlane describes the rapid, continued mitigation attempts in Vietnamese factories as “Tetris,” while Nike confirms its production schedule is now 10 weeks behind.  

It’s made some of the biggest brands in the world rethink having moved all production to Vietnam in an “eggs in one basket” approach. Not that I can think of many places in the region which haven’t been impacted at all — hell, half the world was struggling for gloves when Malaysian manufacturing was locked down. I think the final comments in this piece from Peter Mumford are where I’m at. It’s Vietnam. Want to try to navigate the bureaucracy elsewhere in Southeast Asia? Good luck! 

Linh Trương Thuỳ writing for Asia Media Centre has a great piece looking at the timeline of what exactly the pandemic looks like. She ends with a beautiful proverb from the Bình Trị Thiên region: Don’t whine about life’s hardships. If there is still skin, there will be hair, if there are still sprouts, there will be trees.

🇮🇩 🇲🇾 🇲🇲 Asean showdown

Indonesia’s Foreign Minister Retno Marsudi and her Malaysian counterpart Saifuddin Abdullah are leading the charge in possibly excluding Myanmar junta representatives from the summit later this month, Reuters reported this week. "There's been no significant progress in Myanmar. The military has not given a positive response to what has been attempted by the special envoy," Retno said, while Saifuddin Abdullah tweeted bluntly that they shouldn’t be there.