🇮🇩 When Jokowi met Elon

Hello friends!

A short and sweet one today — I’m heading off to Tonle Sap for the afternoon with my pals, but there are two stories I wanted to flag quickly. 

Welcome to everyone who has availed of the 25 percent discount which is still available here:

Next time we chat I’ll be in Phnom Penh, see you then!Erin Cook

🇮🇩 Indonesia moves closer to Tesla deal

Tesla and the Jokowi government have begun their dance again — or picked it up after a short break, maybe more accurate? Indonesia has been speaking with CEO Elon Musk on and off for awhile now about ambitious infrastructure plans, but nothing seems to go anywhere. With President Jokowi in the country for the US-Asean Summit he called in to visit Musk and the pair chatted ideas and created some deeply memeable photos. 

Musk has been eyeing the nickel trade in Indonesia for years but has raised concerns about governance issues, which friend of the letter Resty Woro Yuniar explores here for SCMP. Musk has floated a visit to Indonesia in November, which will coincide with Bali’s hosting of the G20. It is good news for the nascent electric vehicle manufacturing Jokowi is pushing in an effort to offset overreliance on Chinese production. 

Still, the chummy meeting is a big turn from just a few months ago when Coordinating Minister for Maritime Affairs and Investment Luhut Binsar Pandjaitan laid down the law for Tesla’s investment proposals. “I said, ‘two years ago you called me, wanting to produce a lithium battery.’ You... all want to dictate [Indonesia], and I said, ‘You cannot do this. Today is different. We have to be equal.’ I said you can't do that anymore. This country is not a banana republic! This country is a great country!” he told local media, as reported by Tempo. 

 🇵🇭 Marcos Jr takes a Melbourne holiday

The Philippines’ presumptive president Bongbong Marcos isn’t doing the victory rounds in the provinces which threw their weight behind him. Instead, he has slipped quietly into Melbourne (sharp shock to the system, weather-wise) to help his youngest son settle into university. A fair enough excuse for anyone to travel, surely, but I’m not entirely clear on why it is this week. Which university is starting a semester shortly?! It’s the tail end of semester one now so Marcos Jr Jr shouldn’t be at a tute until at least August. 

Rappler notes that by this stage in 2016, then-presumptive president Rodrigo Duterte was down in Davao City holding press conferences and building his team. 

Anywho. It wasn’t quite the celebration I spotted at the campaign headquarters in Manila last week, with protestors gathering in the city centre. By and large, overseas Filipinos voted overwhelmingly for the Marcos-Duterte team but there are pockets of those virulently opposed to his leadership.

"I'm a martial law survivor. I was there and many of my friends were killed and tortured. There are many of us here in Australia. So it's devastating for us that [we lost] the prime of our years. We were fighting against the regime … and now we see the continuation of the networks of these dictators,” Melbournian-Filipina Melba Marginson told the ABC.

Senator Bong Revilla, who is serving as co-chairman of Lakas-CMD which backed the Marcos-Duterte ticket, isn’t impressed. “Thirty-one million Filipinos in the Philippines and in the whole world cast their vote of trust and confidence in BBM (Bongbong Marcos). It seems their sense of patriotism, if their actions indeed spawned from it, is misguided,” he said, as reported by the Inquirer. “They ended up embarrassing only themselves.” 

Failed challenger Leni Robredo also left town, heading to New York for her daughter’s graduation. “I felt her sincerity and honesty in her tenure as Vice President and I know that she would have been capable of being President,” supporter Maria Jennifer Calvo told ABS-CBN. Robredo won the overseas absentee vote for a 10 state area of the US which includes New York.