Indonesia

In addition to regression on the issue of press freedom, Southeast Asia witnessed backsliding on rights and freedoms in many other areas in 2018, with Malaysia as a notable exception to this trend. Cambodia, the Philippines, Thailand, Myanmar, and even Indonesia exemplified a continued democratic regression. Cambodia became a clearly one-party state after a sham election in July, although at the end of the year Hun Sen and the CPP, under pressure from foreign governments, slightly relaxed their pressure on the opposition and civil society. However, this relaxation was probably just a means of convincing major foreign donors not to impose tougher sanctions against Cambodia, and not really a shift in how Hun Sen treats the opposition or civil society. Meanwhile, the Thai junta did everything it could to prevent real political opposition from coalescing. It banned political parties from organizing for most of the time before the February 2019 elections, putting most parties at a disadvantage before the election. The ban was only lifted in December. In the Philippines, President Rodrigo Duterte cracked down hard on press freedoms, as I noted in a previous blog, including trying to shut down the Rappler, one of the country’s best-known independent outlets. But he also appears to be trying to intimidate other journalism outlets, and has floated plans of launching more extrajudicial killing squads, in addition to those already tasked with wiping out drug suspects – these new squads would purportedly attack anyone linked to a communist insurgent group. Duterte also continued to weaken the independence of the judiciary and the power of the political opposition. In Laos, where the country’s new leadership has promised to take tough measures to root out graft, there are signs of progress on fighting corruption, including the firing of two provincial governors alleged to have been involved in corruption. But overall, the anti-corruption campaign has made modest inroads at best, and promises by the new leadership to bolster transparency and accountability have had no real effect on what remains a highly authoritarian and opaque government. And in Myanmar, the National League for Democracy/Aung San Suu Kyi government has proven a massive disappointment, overseeing stalled democratic reforms, regression on press freedoms, and a scorched earth policy toward the Rohingya in western Myanmar. However, 2019 might not be so grim for rights and freedoms in Southeast Asia. Although Thailand’s junta has tried to stage-manage elections called for February to ensure that the outcome is favorable to the military – and possibly even one resulting in a former general as prime minister – it cannot completely control the actual election. There is considerable reason to believe that, although the election will not be totally fair – the military is trying to slant the playing field against the long-ruling Puea Thai party – the actual Election Day will be free, marking some progress after nearly five years of military rule. In addition, an election brings some degree of uncertainty, and there is a chance that the vote will result in a parliament that has real authority and popular legitimacy and puts the country back on the path to democratic rule. There are other potentially hopeful signs in 2019 for rights and freedoms in the region. An election in Indonesia could showcase continued democratic consolidation there, even despite Jokowi’s increasingly authoritarian actions in the past year, and his selection of a cleric as running mate who has, in the past, made harsh statements about a range of minority groups in Indonesia. Malaysia’s government, which has made a strong start on democratic reforms, needs to move quickly to reform the country’s institutions, and set the stage, via legislation, for making lasting inroads against graft. In 2019, the Malaysian government has a chance to push through serious reforms designed to battle corruption, improve government transparency, and protect civil society, showcasing real democratic progress.

2018 was a brutal year, in many ways, for civil society activists, rights advocates, and democratic politicians throughout Southeast Asia. Cambodia’s government transformed from an autocratic regime where there was still some (minimal) space for opposition parties into a fully one-party regime. Thailand’s junta continued to repress the population, attempting to control the run-up to elections in February 2019 that the junta hopes will result in a victory for pro-military parties and their allies. The Myanmar government continued to stonewall a real investigation into the alleged crimes against humanity in Rakhine State, despite significant international pressure to allow an investigation. Meanwhile, in the Philippines, President Rodrigo Duterte appears to have moved on from using extrajudicial killings in his war on drugs to preparing to utilize extrajudicial killings in other ways. Last month, Duterte raised the idea of creating a new death squad to fight against communist rebels in the Philippines, for instance. And even in Indonesia, one of the freest states in the region, the Jokowi government has given off worrying signs of increasingly authoritarian tendencies. Jokowi has politicized top law enforcement posts, overseen criminal investigations of opponents, and shown other worrying signs, according to an analysis of his growing authoritarianism published in New Mandala by Tom Power, a PhD candidate at Australian National University. (Malaysia is a rare bright spot for rights and democracy in Southeast Asia this year—in fact one of the few global bright spots for democracy in 2018.) Perhaps nowhere has the increasing crackdown on rights and freedoms in Southeast Asia been more visible than in the area of press freedom. Of the journalists featured on Time magazine’s series of covers of people of the year, three are from Southeast Asia. Two of those featured are Wa Lone and Kyaw Soe Oo, journalists for Reuters who have been jailed in Myanmar, essentially for investigative reporting into aspects of a massacre against the Rohingya. (They are officially charged with breaking the Official Secrets Act.) The two men have already been in jail for a year—despite their trial being decried as a sham by rights organizations and prominent rights advocates—and they face in total seven-year prison sentences. Suu Kyi has defended their jailing, and the two reporters’ time in prison is emblematic of Myanmar’s worsening climate for independent journalism, even under Suu Kyi’s government. As the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has noted, three other Myanmar journalists were arrested in October, and overall the Official Secrets Act, defamation charges, and physical threats are chilling the climate for reporting in the country. The climate for press freedom is poor in Cambodia, Laos, Thailand, and Vietnam as well. For example, in Cambodia, one of the leading print outlets, the Cambodia Daily, closed in 2017, reportedly under pressure from the Hun Sen government. Another leading independent outlet, the Phnom Penh Post, was sold to a new owner in 2018, amid worries that the new management would curb critical and investigative reporting. Many Phnom Penh Post staff members quit. Meanwhile, in Vietnam the government continued to aggressively shut down independent bloggers and writers, and Thailand’s junta has continued to harshly repress reporters and editors, such as reportedly pushing for the sacking of the top editor of the Bangkok Post, a leading Thailand newspaper, for his critical coverage of the military regime. Maria Ressa, the head of Rappler, one of the Philippines’ toughest and most groundbreaking news sites, is probably the best-known case of press freedom under attack in Southeast Asia. Before becoming the CEO of Rappler, Ressa had amassed a broad range of experience, including working for two decades for CNN, for whom she covered everything from the rise of Islamist terror networks in Southeast Asia to the post-Marcos era in the Philippines. She has received a wide range of awards for her work, including an Emmy nomination and an Overseas Press Club award. Like many authoritarian-leaning populists, Duterte aggressively demonizes the media, and Rappler in particular seems to infuriate him, with its hard-hitting, deep-digging style. The Duterte administration seems determined to put Rappler out of business. In early 2018, the Philippine SEC announced that it was revoking Rappler’s license. The media organization fought, and continued operating, but it was then accused of libel by the Philippine national bureau of investigation, and then was hit with tax evasion charges by the Philippine tax agency. Ressa herself also was charged with tax evasion, only a few days after she got a press freedom award from CPJ. She and the media outlet deny the charges, and noted how quickly the Philippine government had moved to file charges, seemingly without considering all motions and evidence. The case is now proceeding—but the climate for press freedom in the Philippines, which long combined tough investigative reporting with one of the most dangerous environments for journalists in the world, looks like it will only get grimmer in 2019.

While populism is sweeping through Europe and parts of the Americas it is also making gains in Southeast Asia. The region’s autocrat-leaning populists—those who have already ruled and those who are attempting to win power—use similar strategies: positioning themselves as outsiders who can solve problems where elites have failed, offering brutal approaches to crime, targeting vulnerable groups within societies, and ultimately undermining democracy. Two of the region’s six biggest economies—the Philippines and Thailand—already have had autocratic-leaning populist leaders, and a third, Indonesia, could be run by a populist after presidential elections next year. The emergence of autocratic-leaning populism could further erode democracy and stability in a region that had, until the past decade, been growing freer. For more on how populism is expanding in Southeast Asia, and how Southeast Asian populism differs from its better-known peers in Europe and North America, see my new CFR Explainer.

The region’s fast-growing but fragile democracies have been susceptible to strongmen and autocratic-leaning populists in recent years, propelled by concerns over inequality, crime, and dysfunctional governments.

The Donald J. Trump administration has pursued a foreign policy toward Southeast Asia that has simultaneously courted and alienated countries in the region. The White House has taken a tougher approach to regional security, including increasing freedom of navigation patrols in the South China Sea and developing a regional concept, the “Free and Open Indo-Pacific,” which draws clearer lines against coercive behavior in regional waters and trade practices, especially by Beijing. The U.S. president also has spent extensive time in Southeast Asia, a contrast to some of his predecessors. On the other hand, the Trump administration has angered many Southeast Asian states by ramping up trade wars, which could impact some of the region’s most trade-dependent economies. The White House often has placed an emphasis on relations with Vietnam, Singapore, the Philippines, and Malaysia, forsaking ties with Indonesia. To some extent, these decisions make sense. Vietnam and Singapore are close strategic partners that are generally aligned with U.S. concerns about China and have become increasingly worried about China’s regional assertiveness, especially in the South China Sea and regarding influencing other states’ political systems. The Philippines is a U.S. treaty ally, Trump seems to personally like Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte, and the Philippines is the first country in Southeast Asia to embrace the idea of negotiating a bilateral free trade deal with the Trump administration, which jibes with the White House’s preference for bilateral trade liberalization rather than multilateral deals. But the Trump administration should, for the rest of its term, devote greater attention to U.S.-Indonesia relations, which have largely taken a backseat for this White House. For more on how the White House could bolster U.S.-Indonesia relations, see my new article for Pinter Politik, which draws upon my Council Special Report, Keeping the U.S.-Indonesia Relationship Moving Forward.

The past two weeks, both major contenders for the 2019 Indonesian presidential election took steps in advance of the contest next April, which almost surely will pit incumbent President Joko Widodo or Jokowi, against his rival from the last election, former lieutenant general and Gerindra party chief Prabowo Subianto. Jokowi picked his running mate, tapping Ma’ruf Amin, a cleric and head of Nahdlatul Ulama (NU), the mass movement that often claims it is the largest biggest Islamic organization in the world. Prabowo has chosen his running mate, the former deputy governor of Jakarta, Sandiaga Uno. Jokowi is a heavy favorite; currently, most polls give him the lead over Prabowo, who was beaten decisively in 2014. Although Jokowi may not have lived up to his many promises from 2014—to clean up corruption, dramatically improve Indonesia’s infrastructure, make government more “horizontal” and accountable to people, and promote rights and freedoms, among others—he retains a popular image as a down-to-earth politician. Jokowi also has fulfilled some of his promises to upgrade infrastructure and social welfare programs, and the economy has been growing by over 5 percent per year, though inequality remains stubbornly high. While democracy has regressed badly in recent years in much of Southeast Asia, from Cambodia’s collapse into complete autocracy to the Philippines’ turn toward illiberal populism, under Jokowi Indonesia has remained relatively free, despite some ominous political clouds that this presidential contest could exacerbate. Still, in June the country held peaceful—if relatively low-turnout—local and regional elections, with a wide range of offices up for grabs, a testimony to the massive decentralization process the country has undergone since the Suharto era. Prabowo cannot be counted out, though; he is a savvy campaigner whose populist appeals have similarities to the campaign strategies of leaders like Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte. In the run-up to the election, political maneuvering by both Jokowi and Prabowo illustrate still-deep flaws in Indonesian democracy, and hint at the dangers to further political reforms. Jokowi could have picked a more qualified vice president; the current vice president, Jusuf Kalla, is a very seasoned politician who, in slightly different circumstances, could have been president himself. Jokowi reportedly was considering for the vice presidential post the highly respected and experienced finance minister, Sri Mulyani Indrawati, as well as Mahfud MD, a former head of the Constitutional Court and senior lawmaker. (Jusuf Kalla could not serve another term.)  Instead, he picked a seventy-five-year old cleric who has relatively little legislative or executive experience, and who is less than a year younger than Jokowi’s current vice president. More worryingly for Indonesia’s democracy and history of secular government, although Jokowi’s running mate headed up NU, which has built a reputation as a mainstream and moderate organization, he had become famous—or infamous—long before running NU for views that are relatively hardline and controversial. He has fanned flames of anger and official discrimination against religious minorities like Ahmadiyas, as well as against gay and lesbian Indonesians and other minorities. Jokowi’s vice presidential pick, then, clearly looks like a move by the Indonesian president to co-opt or head off increasingly vocal, and politically powerful Islamist groups. These groups have thrived in recent years, in part, as I noted earlier this year in a Council Special Report on Indonesia and the U.S.-Indonesia relationship, because of the country’s political decentralization and growing social media landscape—decentralization has brought politics closer to people across the country, but Islamist groups also have proven capable organizers on local and regional levels. In the 2017 Jakarta gubernatorial elections, Islamist groups, reportedly linked with Prabowo and Prabowo allies, used massive rallies and disinformation campaigns to turn public opinion against the then-incumbent Jakarta governor, Ahok, largely because of his Christian and Chinese background. By selecting Ma’ruf Amin, the president seems to be trying to launch a pre-emptive strike against powerful hardline groups, some of whom may respect Jokowi’s vice presidential pick as one of them. (The cleric also notably can mobilize NU’s tens of millions of members.) Even if some Islamists still do not consider the cleric hard-line enough, it now will become tougher for Islamist groups to attack Jokowi as un-Islamic, or at least not concerned enough about religious issues. Prabowo’s campaign itself, in 2014, tried to cast doubt on Jokowi’s commitment to Islamic issues, and the former lieutenant general certainly could have taken that tack again in this race. But in picking the cleric, admittedly a move that could help Jokowi hold onto key blocks of religious and nationalist voters, Jokowi sets the stage for his own vice president to further inflame sentiments against minorities. Jokowi further suggests that his commitment to the liberal portion of liberal democracy—respect for the rule of law, equal protections, and the country’s secular foundations—is weak. Meanwhile, Prabowo has chosen as his vice president one of the richest politicians in the country, a man who also has little political experience—though his youth might be a winning contrast with Prabowo, who has been on the political scene for over two decades. Still, the fact that the former Jakarta deputy governor—he resigned the post this month to run as vice president—could potentially commit vast resources and fund-raising prowess to the presidential campaign likely was an enormous asset, in a country where campaign finance laws are ineffectual and vast sums are usually needed to run for higher office, to the detriment of democratic development.

Beginning tomorrow, U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo is in Asia for a trip to Indonesia, Malaysia, and Singapore, three important U.S. partners in Southeast Asia. In addition to bilateral meetings in these states, he will attend the ASEAN foreign ministers meeting in Singapore this coming weekend. Two of the countries he is visiting are going through dramatic political upheaval; Malaysia’s former governing coalition lost power in May for the first time in history, and in Indonesia politicians are gearing up for next year’s national elections, which could give President Joko Widodo a second term, or possibly lead to a government run by an alignment of populist, military, and Islamist forces. In addition, Southeast Asian states have generally been skeptical of several strands of the Trump administration’s regional policy. Even Singapore, a close U.S. partner, has worried that the White House’s “Free and Open Indo-Pacific” concept, which Pompeo will discuss in detail on the trip, is too binary an idea. Several have worried that the Trump administration could force countries in the region to choose openly between Washington and Beijing, a move that they say would backfire. (Pompeo spoke in detail about the Free and Open Indo-Pacific idea at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce on July 30.) Meanwhile, countries in Southeast Asia are worried about escalating U.S.-China trade disputes, and about the White House’s tough trade policies rebounding against them, too, as the administration harangues Southeast Asian states with trade deficits with the United States. The secretary of state surely will spend considerable time, at the ASEAN foreign ministers meeting this weekend, discussing North Korea, and U.S.-North Korea relations, and possibly about other White House priorities like U.S. relations with Iran. (North Korea’s foreign minister will attend the ASEAN meeting.) Regarding U.S.-Southeast Asia relations, however, several aspects of the trip will be important to watch for. (For an excellent overview of the Trump administration’s response to China’s Belt and Road Initiative, which Pompeo rolled out before the trip, see Alyssa Ayres’s piece on CNN.com.) How Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad responds. Mahathir, who led the surprising May victory over Malaysia’s former ruling coalition, has announced that Kuala Lumpur intends to scrutinize Chinese state-backed projects in Malaysia, and has expressed skepticism about Beijing’s landmark Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) infrastructure project. (The Wall Street Journal has reported that the Malaysian government is investigating whether funds from BRI were involved in paying off debts in the massive 1MDB scandal.) He also has announced that Malaysia, which had been relatively quiet on South China Sea issues under former Prime Minister Najib tun Razak, will take a more assertive posture to protect freedom of navigation and its interests in the South China Sea. But Mahathir also historically has had frosty relations with senior U.S. leaders, and at times has been vocally anti-American. Will he be willing to push Malaysia toward closer strategic ties with the United States, and will he really embrace the White House’s nascent Free and Open Indo-Pacific concept? China, after all, remains Malaysia’s most important economic partner. Whether any Southeast Asian states publicly endorse the Free and Open Indo-Pacific idea. Not only Singapore but also other Southeast Asian states generally do not want to be pushed into choosing between Washington and Beijing, but many countries in the region also privately share the White House’s concerns about China’s dramatic militarization of the South China Sea, and also about unfair Chinese trade practices. Vietnam, among Southeast Asian states, has taken the most assertive approach to Beijing’s South China Sea claims, and Vietnamese leaders have recently echoed the White House’s framing of the Free and Open Indo-Pacific concept, as Derek Grossman of the RAND Corporation has noted. Will Vietnamese leaders support the Free and Open Indo-Pacific idea, solidifying Vietnam’s closer embrace of the United States, as part of Hanoi’s multi-faceted strategy of deterrence in the South China Sea? How will Pompeo address issues of rights and democracy? In Malaysia, Mahathir has made restoring the rule of law, cleaning up corruption, and (at least somewhat) curtailing the repression of previous Malaysian administrations, a priority of his. In addition, Anwar Ibrahim, Mahathir’s probable successor, is a longtime democracy activist, and senior leaders of the Malaysian ruling coalition also are prominent rights and democracy activists. Will Pompeo use the Free and Open Indo-Pacific concept to focus on rights and democracy regionally, or is a real focus on rights and democracy impossible given the White House’s own focus on sovereignty and general de-emphasis of rights issues in U.S. policy? Similarly, in Indonesia, Pompeo will have an opportunity to address not only the regional democracy regression but also growing challenges to democracy within Indonesia, including from Islamist groups that have become increasingly active in local and national politics.

In early May, Malaysia was stunned by the victory, in national elections, of the opposition coalition, led by Mahathir Mohamad and essentially (from jail), longtime opposition leader Anwar Ibrahim. Although some journalists had, in the run-up to the election, noted that the opposition’s support appeared to be cresting, in the wake of years of massive corruption allegations against former Prime Minister Najib tun Razak and his allies, the win still came largely as a shock. Najib had governed increasingly autocratically, including by detaining many prominent opponents, and his coalition—which had ruled Malaysia since independence—also benefitted from control of state media, massive gerrymandering, and the ability to hand out large amounts of cash in the run-up to election day, a strategy it had used repeatedly in the past to ensure victory. Yet despite these obstacles, the Malaysia opposition won—and Najib and his coalition (eventually) conceded, marking the country’s first democratic transfer of power. Yet democrats throughout the rest of Southeast Asia, where many elections are due this year and next, should not take too much heart from Malaysia’s example. For more on why they should not, see my new piece in the Globalist.

Earlier this month, former Lieutenant General Prabowo Subianto, who ran for president against Joko Widodo, or Jokowi, in 2014, announced that he will be a candidate again in 2019, setting up a possible presidential rematch. Prabowo had seemed to waffle, until recently, on running again, and he still faces obstacles to actually getting into the race. He heads up the Gerindra party, but Gerindra only holds 13 percent of the seats in the national legislature. Under Indonesian law, any party that wants to nominate a candidate for president must show that the party, or the coalition of parties backing the nominee, currently hold at least 20 percent of legislative seats, or got at least a quarter of the popular vote in the last election. Still, Prabowo and Gerindra probably will find coalition partners to push them over the threshold and get Prabowo into the race. In a head to head matchup against Prabowo, the incumbent, Jokowi, starts with a lead in polls. In fact, a number of recent polls taken about a Jokowi-Prabowo matchup have given the incumbent a sizable lead. Jokowi’s reputation for being personally clean, his down-to-earth speaking style, and his (relatively modest) achievements in office probably account for some of the gap in the polls, while Prabowo’s often-bombastic, even demagogic style may also turn off some voters. Indeed, in the previous presidential race Prabowo repeatedly seemed to suggest that he wanted to roll back elements of Indonesian democracy, and to recentralize power, presumably in his own hands. Yet the race could still be tightly contested. Some studies show Jokowi’s electability rating below 50 percent. And Jokowi has not, to be sure, brought about as thorough a transformation of Indonesian political culture and institutions as some of his supporters had hoped when he was elected in 2014, becoming the first person to attain the Indonesian presidency in the democratic era who did not hail from Indonesia’s political elite. Jokowi has presided over decent growth and some initial upgrades of Indonesia’s decaying infrastructure, and he has boosted funding for health care and education. Yet he has made minimal headway in battling corruption, in politics or business, which remains a major drain on the economy and a hurdle for investors. Though Jokowi appears personally committed to Indonesian democracy, he has often been hesitant to push for improving the human rights climate, and in the past year he has increasingly relied on a group of former army generals as top advisors, worrying rights activists concerned about the military’s ongoing power in Indonesian politics. Some of his highly touted infrastructure projects are still just in the planning phases, and a string of accidents in the past year during construction on several new projects also has harmed Jokowi’s infrastructure vision. Still, Jokowi remains personally popular, and he also has proven a skillful builder of political alliances, despite the fact that he had not held a national level position before being elected president. When he was elected president, his party controlled a minority of seats in the legislature. Now, through effective coalition-building and consolidation of parties, Jokowi and his allies have a majority of seats in the national legislature. In the next presidential election, notes Tempo magazine, parties are scrambling to back Jokowi: “At least five parties have once again adopted him as their presidential candidate.” Prabowo, however, knows how to run a skillful campaign. In 2014, he and his team produced an effective communications strategy, one that paired positive, almost hagiographic portrayals of Prabowo with some of the dark arts of negative—and often false—attacks on Jokowi. In addition, as I noted in a recent CFR Expert Brief, Prabowo appears to be increasingly allying with one of the most powerful, rising forces in Indonesian politics—Islamist groups that have increasingly galvanized public opinion, at least in local races, and begun to develop strong get-out-the-vote operations. These Islamist groups could be major factors in the presidential election, but they will probably have more trouble rallying opinion against Jokowi than they did in the Jakarta governor’s race last year, when they held massive public rallies against—and demonized—the then-Christian and Chinese governor, Basuki Tjahaja Purnama. In addition, Jokowi could potentially pick a vice president who could neutralize some of the Islamist groups, boosting Jokowi’s chances of another five-year term.

After months of speculation, many signs indicate that Malaysia will hold its national elections in late April or early May. According to reports in the Malaysian press, the country’s election commission has booked most of the private helicopters in Malaysia for that time period, suggesting that it will be using them to monitor the election. Although Prime Minister Najib tun Razak does not legally have to call an election until late August, he may want to hold an election in April or May, since the vote would come before opposition leader Anwar Ibrahim is released from jail. In the last national elections, held in 2013, the Anwar-led opposition coalition actually won the popular vote, but extreme gerrymandering gave Najib’s ruling coalition control of parliament, which it has enjoyed since Malaysia gained its independence. The election likely will be close, but, without Anwar, the opposition has turned to an unlikely figure of unity—former Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad, who has now turned against the ruling coalition, but during his own terms in office harshly repressed dissent and oversaw Anwar’s first jail term.  And, even with the 1MDB scandal still swirling around him and the ruling coalition, Najib has a strong chance to win the election. If he does so, it will be in part because he, and the ruling coalition, have aggressively courted conservative, even Islamist voters, in part by splitting the Pan-Malaysian Islamic Party (PAS), part of the opposition alliance in the last national elections in 2013, away from the opposition. But to woo these voters, which the ruling coalition needs as urban Malay, Chinese, and Indian voters favor the opposition, Najib and the party have increasingly framed Malaysia as a state that should be dominated by Muslim, ethnic Malays. In addition, the ruling coalition has, among other steps, allowed PAS and its supporters to push forward legislation that could undermine Malaysia’s civil laws. The shift in Malaysia, in which conservative, even Islamist groups are wielding greater power in politics, is mirrored in Indonesia as well. There, the Jokowi government has not wooed Islamist organizations, but it was slow to recognize their growing power, which grew over the past decade but now has fully bloomed. Indeed, Jokowi’s administration only began to push back after Islamist organizations helped swing the vital Jakarta governor’s election last year. In a new CFR expert brief, I examine why Islamist groups are growing more powerful in Malaysia and Indonesia, the potential impact of their rise on the countries’ political systems, and the implications for U.S.-Malaysia and U.S.-Indonesia relations.  The full expert brief can be read here.

The rise of Islamism in Malaysia and Indonesia could have severe consequences for the two states’ societies, political systems, and overall stability.

The U.S.-Indonesia relationship has often disappointed. It’s time to rethink U.S.-Indonesia ties and try to achieve real security goals, rather than make bold plans for cooperation that never come to fruition.

Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis traveled to Southeast Asia this past week, and during his first stop in Indonesia signaled a desire to improve strategic aspects of the U.S.-Indonesia relationship including on the South China Sea, training, and defense modernization.

One year ago, Basuki Tjahaja Purnama, known by his nickname, Ahok, was riding high. The governor of Jakarta, the capital of Indonesia and largest city, was widely popular, both for policies like crackdowns on graft and his no-nonsense style, uncommon in a country where high-handed, indirect politicians long had been the norm. Although he had been deputy governor and had inherited the job after the former Jakarta governor, Joko Widodo, ran for president, in early 2017 Ahok had an approval rating of roughly 70 percent, an enviable figure. He was indeed the overwhelming favorite to win the 2017 gubernatorial election, and was often mentioned as a future presidential candidate. After all, his predecessor as governor of the capital region, Widodo, had used his platform and his own practical style to position himself for the presidency. Few have fallen so far in such a short period of time. For more on my analysis of Ahok’s fall and the potentially worrying implications for Indonesia’s secular democracy, see my new piece in The National.