Southeast Asia

Thomas Pepinsky is Tisch University Professor in the Department of Government at Cornell University, and a nonresident senior fellow at the Brookings Institution. He is the author, most recently, of “Migrants, Minorities, and Populism in Southeast Asia” (Pacific Affairs, 2020). Joko Widodo, Indonesia’s seventh president, captured international headlines when he was elected in 2014. This unassuming furniture-maker-turned-mayor from a regional city in Central Java had reached the highest political office in Indonesia, winding his way from mayor of Surakarta (Solo) to governor of Jakarta to president. It was—and still is—the unlikeliest of stories. Jokowi—as he is universally known—had seemingly bested the country’s seasoned political elites on a campaign of results-oriented and effective governance, pragmatism, and hard work. The new book Man of Contradictions: Joko Widodo and the Struggle to Remake Indonesia, by Ben Bland of the Lowy Institute, is the first book-length English biography of Jokowi. It is a “political biography,” in Bland’s own description. For those without any background in Indonesia, it is an accessible introduction to the country’s most well-known and powerful politician. For those well-versed in Indonesian politics, it offers a thorough overview of Jokowi’s rise to power and record (to date) as president, with an argument about how we foreign observers ought to think about both the man and the country that he rules. Bland brings to bear a wealth of personal experience covering Indonesian politics over the past decade. As a Financial Times correspondent, he first came to know Jokowi during the exciting 2012 gubernatorial election in Jakarta, a race that confirmed that Jokowi was a politician who had reached a national stage. Bland has interviewed Jokowi on numerous occasions, and sprinkles his text with personal anecdotes that colorfully illustrate important points. In the context of Jokowi’s popularity both in Indonesia and in among foreign commentators, and especially relative to the excitement surrounding the 2014 election, Bland’s biography stands out in its critical evaluation of Jokowi. He portrays Jokowi’s presidency as troubled, and his record in office as mixed, and devotes particular attention to the weaknesses of the infrastructure projects which Jokowi has always considered the centerpiece of his presidency. Compared even to most academic treatments of Jokowi’s first term in office, which highlighted the precarity of Indonesian liberalism and identified Jokowi’s actions in office as contributing to Indonesia’s democratic backsliding while mostly ignoring the problems with Jokowi’s pet infrastructure projects, this is a critical evaluation. As a political biography, the book must situate Jokowi the political figure within the broader contours of Indonesian politics. Bland keeps the primary focus on Jokowi the man, an effective choice, although one bound to disappoint readers who want this book to be first and foremost about Indonesian politics. He takes us on a journey through Jokowi’s early life in Solo, a mid-sized city in the Javanese heartland where Jokowi was born and raised and became a successful furniture maker. We learn of his modest background, which gives him a natural connection with “the people” that resonates widely in Indonesian politics, and which distinguishes him from other national politicians—Megawati Sukarnoputri, Prabowo Subianto, Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, and many others—who come from well-known political families, from the highest ranks of the military, or from elite business, religious, or media backgrounds. We learn as well of Jokowi’s record as mayor of Solo. He was elected in 2005, just as Indonesian democratization and decentralization reforms had first allowed for direct elections of local leaders. At the time, foreign observers of Indonesian politics (myself included) commonly remarked that Jokowi embodied the new type of politician who could emerge under a more decentralized form of Indonesian democracy. His hands-on style, introducing the concept of blusukan (impromptu visits to check on the efforts of local administrators or to see local conditions around the city first-hand), gave him a reputation for results-oriented management, and for working incrementally to improve governance. His soft-spoken Javanese manner further made him an endearing figure. This image of Jokowi as a modest but effective leader contrasted with the other establishment politicians who campaigned with flashier styles, or by drawing on their family names, military records, or business experiences. Governance, in this understanding, is a problem of administration and management. If you work hard to figure out what the problems are in local government, then you can discover efficiencies. If you make sure that everyone knows that their boss might show up and check their work, then they will act accordingly, working harder in their posts. If their boss truly understands what it’s like to live in an informal urban settlement, or to try to write a contract with a foreign buyer, then he will have a knack for understanding what sorts of solutions might work for these problems. Jokowi did not invent this hands-on and extremely local approach to politics, but he certainly embodied it as mayor of Solo and then governor of Jakarta. It resonated with many technocrats who tired of corruption and bureaucratic inefficiency, and also with liberal democrats and progressives who saw in Jokowi a refreshing and truly genuine alternative to generals, tycoons, and the offspring of former dictators. This approach also resonated well with Indonesian voters, giving Jokowi an electoral boost among many small business owners and others eager to see cleaner and more effective government. Jokowi had an impressive but brief run as Jakarta governor after his defeat of the (initially heavily-favored) incumbent Fauzi Bowo. The blusukan continued, and Jakartans saw tangible changes in how their city was governed, but Jokowi had his sights set on higher office. By 2014, he was running for president with the tentative support of the Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI-P), a party whose lineage includes the nationalist and social democratic currents in Indonesian politics but is centered around former President Sukarno’s daughter and grand-daughter, Megawati Sukarnoputri and Puan Maharani, each of whom harbored their own ambitions for the presidency (Megawati had held the office herself in the early 2000s). Jokowi outmaneuvered them, and went on in the presidential election to defeat Prabowo Subianto, Suharto’s former son-in-law, a disgraced former general with a stained human rights record and a demonstrated willingness to court political support from hardline Islamists. This was a landmark result. Prabowo’s authoritarian tendencies and embrace of Islamists frightened many Indonesians and distressed foreign commentators. He had the advantages of name recognition, an elite family, a record of military service, and a billionaire brother who helped bankroll the Prabowo campaign. Jokowi’s victory in 2014 showed that a different kind of politician could defeat all of those advantages by playing to the public’s interests in good and effective governance. The result was portrayed, by academics and in the local and international media, as a victory not just for Jokowi but for democracy itself against what seemed to be a plainly authoritarian challenge. Although Bland demurs on whether Jokowi should be considered a populist, the best analysts of Indonesian politics have identified the populist strain in Jokowi’s style and discourse. Jokowi utilizes a soft and managerial type of populism rather than the harsh penal populism of Rodrigo Duterte, the military bravado of Jair Bolsonaro, or the exclusionary anti-immigrant populism of Marine Le Pen. As newly elected president, Jokowi continued to push the line of what Marcus Mietzner has termed “technocratic populism.” More blusukan (now with an airplane), a presidential cabinet titled simply “Working Cabinet” (previous democratic cabinets had been given names evoking loftier ideals such as national unity and consensus), and an emphasis on infrastructure. But Jokowi’s record as president has been much more mixed than his records as mayor of Solo and governor of Jakarta. Explaining why this is, Bland focuses on Jokowi’s own governing style. In sharp contrast to Jokowi the modest and effective mayor, Bland describes Jokowi the president as self-assured and perhaps even blind to the limits of his own abilities: imperious within his cabinet, with a “cocksure confidence” that leads him to prioritize flashy infrastructure projects rather than well-planned ones. The results-oriented managerialism of Jokowi the mayor has been replaced by short-sightedness, with a marked lack of attention to the planning and detail that delivers sustainable improvements in the popular welfare, and which is critical in such a populous and geographically large country. This is a more critical interpretation of Jokowi’s development record in office than one usually encounters in coverage of the Indonesian president, because Bland focuses not just on successful outcomes, but also on the policy process itself, and the failed cases that tend to receive little attention in the English- or Indonesian-language media. This is a useful corrective to most journalistic treatments of Jokowi’s infrastructure record. Bland reserves his most serious critiques for his assessments of Jokowi’s management of two major policy problems: the chronic challenge of managing Jakarta’s massive urban growth, and the acute problem of responding to the COVID-19 pandemic. Jokowi’s plan to address urban growth by moving Indonesia’s capital to eastern Borneo (an old plan in Indonesian politics, but one usually taken not very seriously) is portrayed as ill-considered and unrealistic. And Indonesia’s response to COVID-19—which has proven a serious policy challenge across the world—was particularly ineffective under Jokowi. The administration’s response was slow, self-contradictory, and fundamentally unrealistic, with major administration figures issuing statements about the saving power of prayer and Jokowi himself seeming afraid to take decisive but unpopular steps to combat the pandemic. Although many forget this today, for a time in the crucial early days of the pandemic, Indonesian officials insisted that the country had precisely zero cases. Jokowi’s response to COVID-19 has taken some of the sheen off of his administration among foreign observers. Bland’s treatment of his COVID-19 response, however, implies that closer attention to the nature of governance and policymaking under Jokowi would have revealed all of these pathologies well in advance. Yes, Jokowi has always highlighted his record of pragmatism and results: those earned him national attention as the mayor of a medium-sized city, and were the bases of his campaign for Jakarta governor, the promise of his first presidential bid, and the foundation of his reelection. But in Bland’s telling, the further Jokowi got from Solo, the less pragmatic he became, and the more uneven his results. These critiques of Jokowi’s record as an administrator are a prelude to an even more serious indictment by Bland of Jokowi’s democratic record. There is no doubt that maintaining Indonesian democracy is tough. Jokowi became president of a consolidated but flawed democracy marked by rampant corruption, a hardening religious cleavage, and a lack of party politics organized around any ideology at all. Any well-meaning democrat would struggle to achieve effective reform under these conditions. Jokowi stepped into national politics with great promise as an outsider, unbeholden (in the common understanding) to the country’s elite establishment. Still, Bland writes, “he was revealed as a man with good political instincts and high electability, but no plan for how to manage the ranks of oleaginous politicos, tycoons, and generals that lined up around him.” There is a certain irony in the fact that the country’s most powerful politician is surrounded by elites who have proven impossible for him to manage. But there is a strategic logic to it: absent the deep-rooted familial, business, or military connections that a different president would have relied on, Jokowi needed a broad coalition in order to neutralize potential opponents. The problem is that in bringing together a broad coalition, by including such a wide range of elites in his cabinet and building such a large coalition in parliament, Jokowi sacrificed the ability to press for meaningful democratic reforms. His reliance on military figures in his cabinet and his willingness to use the arms of the state to suppress free expression reveal the fragility of Indonesian democracy. And this is disappointing, relative to the expectations of liberals and progressives. No one would be surprised if someone like Prabowo had used an information technology law against his critics, but it is dismaying that Jokowi has allowed his government to do the same. Bland provocatively brings the point home by drawing parallels between Jokowi—a results-oriented, pragmatic, culturally Javanese president—and Suharto, another pragmatic, developmentalist, culturally Javanese president who ruled Indonesia for thirty-two years. Near the end of the book, Bland turns to Indonesian foreign policy. And once again Jokowi’s inconsistent and instinctual style emerges. Writing from an Australian perspective, Bland briefly details Jokowi’s approach (such as it is) to Indonesian grand strategy. Jokowi can be personable and disarming, but he does not press very hard for a coherent foreign policy. Bland draws a distinction between Jokowi’s “free and active” approach to foreign policy and his predecessor, Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono’s “thousand friends and zero enemies” approach; yet, I find both of these to be mostly vacuous. Bland’s overall argument about Jokowi is contained in the book’s title: Jokowi is a man of contradictions. In the conclusion, Bland expands on this point, reflecting on why “we”—foreign observers—continue to “get Indonesia wrong.” Setting aside the broader point about how foreign observers fare in understanding Indonesia writ large—the book, really, isn’t about that—the book does highlight some notable contrasts. Jokowi can seem at times modest, and at other times supremely confident. He is an outsider, yet he bested the insiders and then became beholden to them in his policymaking. He speaks about infrastructure and getting things done, yet he completely whiffed on COVID-19. He is a democrat who allows his government to pursue illiberal, anti-democratic measures against opponents. In my read, though, Bland has given us all the material we need to draw a simpler conclusion, one that does not rely on Jokowi’s enigmatic character or on broader questions of whether or not foreigners need to have a “single, overarching theoretical framework” of Indonesia. Jokowi is a skilled electoral politician who cares about Indonesia and diagnoses—correctly—just how much infrastructural development the country needs. But being the president of Indonesia is not like being the mayor of Solo. What were good instincts based on first-hand experience with city politics could never be replicated across a country this large with governance problems this complex. So, his instincts now often fail him. What’s more, as mayor and governor, Jokowi’s task was to achieve results within the context of a democratic system that he was not able to control on a national level. There was no need for him to display any sort of meaningful commitment to democracy or liberalism because, on a national level, that was not up to him. As president, the very nature of Indonesian democracy depends in no small part on his choices. And we have learned over the past six years that pragmatic choices for Jokowi the man are not always the best choices for Indonesian democracy.

Hunter Marston is a PhD candidate at the Australian National University. His research focuses on great power competition in Southeast Asia. According to recent surveys of Southeast Asia, China is now the most influential strategic and political power in the region. Yet China’s rise has been so rapid and consequential that few book-length studies have captured the complexity of Beijing’s expanding regional influence. The new book by Murray Hiebert of the Center for Strategic and International Studies and Bower Group Asia, Under Beijing’s Shadow: Southeast Asia's China Challenge, fills this gap and shows in significant detail how Southeast Asian states are responding to China’s rise. Given his decades working in the region as a foreign correspondent and political analyst, Hiebert is well-suited for this challenge, and the result offers valuable insights on issues related to Southeast Asia, China, and broader rivalries in the region. The book portrays a region riven by a diversity of views toward China; this diversity prevents any unified response to China’s growing influence over Southeast Asia. As Hiebert shows, Southeast Asian states are of two minds regarding China: on the one hand, they are deeply dependent on China’s rise for their own economic growth and keen to continue trade with Beijing. On the other hand, they are increasingly nervous about China’s growing economic, diplomatic, and military power, its more assertive diplomacy, and its willingness to use its might unilaterally to get its way in the South China Sea—and potentially other parts of the region as well. Hiebert punctures several myths about the China-Southeast Asia relationship. For one, although media reports often portray mainland Southeast Asian states as close to China, or even as satellite states of Beijing, Hiebert offers a different view. He suggests, with considerably detailed country case studies, that mainland Southeast Asian states are not so easy to pigeonhole. China has constructed innumerable dams upstream on the Mekong, choking off much-needed water as countries down river face droughts as a result of climate change. At the same time, Chinese companies—in joint ventures with Southeast Asian corporations in Laos, Myanmar, and Cambodia—are building massive hydropower projects on the lower Mekong, leading to increased salt water flooding and environmental degradation. These dams have badly damaged the Mekong’s flow and often stopped the seasonal flow of rich nutrients essential to the cultivation of rice and other crops, and the fish which feed the populations of Southeast Asia. In so doing, they have angered many residents of mainland Southeast Asian states, even though governments like Cambodia and Laos and Myanmar remain highly dependent on Chinese aid, investment, and diplomatic support. Hiebert also gives ample coverage to the depth of nationalism within modern Myanmar, and how it is facile to say that Myanmar also has become some kind of satellite state of China. There is enormous resistance within Myanmar toward China’s proposed Myitsone Dam in Kachin State, which the previous government of President Thein Sein suspended in 2011 due to popular pressures. At the same time, China has covertly supported ethnic insurgents on Myanmar’s northern periphery, sometimes providing arms and munitions, a reality that has not gone unnoticed by Myanmar’s military, which views dependency on China as a “national emergency.” In addition, Hiebert shows that Southeast Asian hedging strategies, playing for time and keeping their options open, provides some grounds for believing that the region will not be totally dominated by Beijing. The ambiguity of Southeast Asian loyalties means that Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) states have not made up their minds to side with Beijing. Hiebert argues that many of these states—even Cambodia and Laos, which seem to have less leverage to resist China’s influence and cash—will continue to avoid making stark choices. Malaysia also likely will continue to hedge. It has generally failed to respond to China’s provocations in the South China Sea or has done so quietly, believing that its “special relationship” would protect it from the bullying tactics to which China has subjected Vietnam and the Philippines. However, Hiebert notes Kuala Lumpur’s missile tests in July 2019, after China deployed a Coast Guard vessel near Luconia Shoal on Malaysia’s continental shelf. Later that year, Kuala Lumpur submitted claims to an extended continental shelf in that area to the UN Commission on the Limits of the Continental Shelf. In fact, Hiebert’s account leaves open the possibility that Malaysia is standing up to China more often than it appears to outsiders. Indonesian President Joko Widodo, or Jokowi, visited China four times during his first five years in office and has solicited major Chinese investment, even as Jakarta has pushed back against Beijing’s increased assertiveness in the North Natuna Sea. Indonesia’s economic dependence on China imposes limits to Jokowi’s willingness to stand up to China, but even he has often pursued a hedging strategy. The book also provides an even-keeled examination of Washington’s regional treaty allies Thailand and the Philippines, frequently described as tilting toward Beijing. Hiebert makes a compelling case that Thailand is still hedging against China, despite prevailing counterarguments regarding Thai foreign policy. Of the Philippines, he notes, “It is far from certain that Duterte’s sharp pivot toward China marks a long-term Philippine trend.” Interestingly, Hiebert predicts that Manila will swing back to an anti-China foreign policy after Duterte’s term ends in 2022 and a future administration in Manila seeks to rebalance relations with the regional powers. Second, Hiebert makes a compelling case that ASEAN should stop competing amongst itself and enhance cooperation, especially by strengthening dialogue on how to deal with China. As Hiebert points out, the main obstacle to deeper cooperation is the fact that Southeast Asian states often have varying levels of threat perceptions toward China and also often have different needs from the United States, the other major regional power along with Japan. Vietnam, for instance, has in recent years deepened its security cooperation with the United States, allowing a U.S. aircraft carrier, the USS Carl Vinson, to dock at Danang for a week in 2018, for the first time since the end of the Vietnam War. There also has been speculation that Hanoi may file legal arbitration against Beijing’s maritime claims, and Hanoi has fostered military-to-military cooperation with Washington in other ways as well. Cambodia, on the other hand, has been all too willing to support Beijing’s interests. Under the increasingly authoritarian leadership of Prime Minister Hun Sen, Beijing has often facilitated China’s goals in Southeast Asia, dividing ASEAN. As Hiebert makes clear, Beijing knows how to cater its aid to Phnom Penh’s needs based on Western actions such as sanctions in response to unfair elections. Still, many Cambodians remain wary of China’s expanding influence in their country. Numerous Cambodians resent Hun Sen’s reliance on Chinese investment, which has transformed Sihanoukville into a Chinese outpost and may grant Beijing a naval base in the country. Sophal Ear, a political scientist at Occidental College, also warns about the risks of taking on unsustainable levels of Chinese debt: in 2018 roughly 48 percent of Cambodia’s $7.6 billion foreign debt was owed to China. Finally, Hiebert turns to the question of what all this regional complexity means for Washington, which has displayed a mixture of heavy-handed demands for regional fealty and ambivalence toward Southeast Asia. The Trump administration’s reduced interaction with the region has fed a perception in Southeast Asia of Washington’s declining influence. Hiebert provides a strong case for why and how the United States should restore its attention to the region and refocus its strategy toward Southeast Asia., including by regularly attending regional summits and increasing funding for much-needed physical infrastructure, including in the Mekong basin countries.

Pavin Chachavalpongpun is associate professor at Kyoto University’s Center for Southeast Asian Studies. A coalition of Thai youths, students and political activists has launched a series of protests since mid-July 2020. Over the weekend, the demonstrations swelled to the largest street protests in the kingdom since a coup six years ago, with some ten thousand protestors gathered around the Democracy Monument in Bangkok. When protests first started, their requests appeared to target solely the government. They called for the dissolution of parliament (so that fresh elections would be organized), amendments to the constitution and an investigation into the cases of abduction and killing of Thai dissidents outside of the kingdom. Many chanted “down with dictatorship” and gave the Hunger Games three-finger salute. In recent years, at least nine Thai dissidents living outside the country have been disappeared, with several of them turning up dead in a gruesome fashion. The weekend protests went off mostly peacefully, even though protesting is technically illegal under a current state of emergency. But the kingdom’s long history of brutal crackdowns on protest leaves cause for concern about a potentially violent eventual response, if demonstrations continue and possibly grow in size and forcefulness.  The protests also have been driven by rising anger at the Thai military—the current government, though elected, is dominated by a pro-military party and led by former junta leader Prayuth Chan-ocha—and at the country’s febrile economy. In particular, although the government has had an effective record at containing COVID-19, with one of the lowest case counts and death tolls in Asia, political opponents have grown angry that the government has maintained a tough state of emergency, and some quarantines, while allowing the armed forces to disregard quarantine. (In fact, the kingdom’s success at battling COVID-19 has made it more feasible to hold street protests, with demonstrators having less fear that they will spread the virus by marching, chanting, and gathering.) And, even though the Thai government has handled COVID-19 well, the kingdom’s tourism and trade–dependent economy has been battered. The Thai economy shrank by 12.2 percent in the second quarter 0f the year, its worst downturn since the time of the Asian financial crisis. The severe downturn, combined with Thailand’s persistently high inequality and still-rigid economic and social hierarchies—it is one of the most unequal countries in the world—animates opposition, especially among younger people graduating from university, struggling to find work, and rebelling against traditional hierarchies.  But the protests also, increasingly, have come to focus on the monarchy, normally a taboo subject, in part because of harsh lèse-majesté laws the criminalize criticism of the king and other senior royals—laws that have been wielded repeatedly to jail and silence Thais. In this way, the protests are astounding—there has not been such a direct and public challenge to the Thai monarchy in decades. The demonstrators, as the New York Times reported, gathered and “raised their hands in defiance below a giant image of the king dressed in coronation regalia.” Demonstrators have held signs saying “No god, no kings, only man.” Some protestors have openly called for changes to the monarchy, while many student demonstrators have urged Thais to seriously address issues with the monarchy that have long affected their lives. On Twitter in Thailand, Thai hashtags that essentially mean “Why Do We Need a King” have circulated. One of the core leaders, Arnon Numpa, a young lawyer-turned-activist, repeatedly has called for an immediate reform of the monarchical institution, arguing that the king, Maha Vajiralongkorn, has bolstered his power through different channels. For several decades now, the supposedly constitutional monarchy of Thailand has often proven to extend its powers beyond constitutional norms and rules. Under the reign of King Bhumibol Adulyadej (1946-2016), the monarchy intervened in politics, playing a role in sanctioning the overthrow of several civilian governments, while also using a network of allies to regularly wield power behind the scenes in Thailand. But the former king enjoyed a significant degree of reverence among Thais; his son, current King Maha Vajiralongkorn does not. Since the ascendance to the throne of King Vajiralongkorn, it has been evident that he has sought to augment his power, politically and financially. King Vajiralongkorn also could be seen to have paid little heed to the effects of COVID-19; he travels back and forth to Thailand frequently from Germany.  To increase pressure for change, several of the protest groups have proposed multiple demands, mostly regarding the role and responsibility of the monarchy. Some of their demands are rather radical in the context of Thailand. They have called for:  Creating a division between the personal property of the king and the Crown Property Bureau (CPB). In 2018, King Vajiralongkorn took sole possession of the CPB, worth some U.S. $30 billion. An end to the palace intervening in politics. Thailand has had the most coups of any country in Southeast Asia—and by some measures of any country in the world. The current king has forged closed ties with the military. Nullifying the order that permitted the transfer of military units to the direct command of the royal palace.  Ending state propaganda related to the monarchy. Investigating the deaths in exile of anti-monarchy activists.  The government and the palace so far have offered no signs of listening to demonstrators’ requests. It is unlikely that the government, or indeed the king, will give in the demands. Despite the mostly peaceful nature of the standoff so far, a number of students and activists have been arrested, charged and released on bail, including Parit Chiwarak, a Thammasat University student. And ultimately, given Thailand’s history and the strong views of Thai monarchists and the power of the military, the prospect of violence in Bangkok is very real.

With the exception of Thailand, the five countries of mainland Southeast Asia are some of the poorest in the Asia-Pacific region. According to the World Bank, Cambodia has a per capita GDP of around $1,600, while Myanmar’s is roughly $1,400. Laos and Vietnam fare only marginally better, each at around $2,500. Their political systems run the gamut from semi-democracies to authoritarian one-party states. Yet despite some initial missteps, they have all largely suppressed COVID-19, proving far more effective in addressing the pandemic than most developed countries, including the United States. Vietnam, a country of roughly 95 million people, has reported a handful of deaths and only 784 total cases, as of Sunday. It has seen a recent surge, centered on the coastal city of Da Nang, but even that outbreak remains small by global comparison. Its neighbors have done nearly as well. Thailand, which has a population of just under 70 million, has not had locally transmitted cases in weeks, and only around 3,300 cases in total. Many aspects of life are returning to normal in the capital, Bangkok, and in other parts of the kingdom. By comparison, Florida, with a population of around 21 million people, has recently been averaging about 6,600 new cases per day. Cambodia, meanwhile, has had only around 200 confirmed cases, and is even allowing in Americans, a risk few countries are willing to take right now. Laos and Myanmar have had only 20 and 358 confirmed cases, respectively. While the real number of cases is likely higher in all of these countries, their performance still stands out as a bright spot in the global fight against the coronavirus. Many of their maritime Southeast Asian neighbors, particularly the Philippines and Indonesia, are struggling with high caseloads. Few observers predicted mainland Southeast Asia’s success against COVID-19. Back in February, I criticized the region’s initial response to the pandemic; even several months later, I did not imagine how effective these countries would be in containing the virus. While Vietnam quickly responded to COVID-19 with border closures, lockdowns and a major public health campaign, Myanmar, Thailand and Cambodia were slow to stop all travel to and from China, the initial source of the epidemic, and some of their officials shared misinformation about the virus. Thailand, however, soon righted its approach. It imposed a state of emergency in late March, and launched a national task force to combat COVID-19. While the Thai government has used the state of emergency to suppress dissent—authorities arrested multiple opposition activists last week—it also appears to have helped slow the virus’s spread. Moreover, early lockdowns in Vietnam and Thailand probably helped smaller countries in the region like Cambodia, which did not impose restrictions quickly but may have benefited from having fewer travelers from its neighbors. More recently, mainland Southeast Asian countries have been world leaders in getting near-universal compliance with mask wearing, in many cases very early in the pandemic. At least 95 percent of Thais and 94 percent of Vietnamese wear masks in public. In some cases, like Vietnam, this is because the government imposes tough fines on anyone not wearing a mask in public. Other states have relied more on longstanding social norms promoting the use of face masks when sick. Countries in the region, even the repressive ones, have also displayed impressive levels of transparency about COVID-19 and the government response—even while they stifle dissent and limit the flow of information about topics other than the virus. In Vietnam, where the ruling Communist Party controls all aspects of political life, the Ministry of Health is putting case information online. Laos has embarked on a national public information campaign that is extremely transparent by the standards of one of the most autocratic one-party states in the world. To be sure, Vietnam’s response has built on years of “efforts to improve governance and central-local government policy coordination,” as Edmund Malesky and Trang Nguyen note in a recent report for the Brookings Institution. Many governments in mainland Southeast Asia have also worked to ensure that their coronavirus response measures impose minimal financial costs on their populations—critical moves to getting broad public buy-in. As Nguyen and Malesky note, Vietnam’s policy is to cover most costs for citizens related to the response to COVID-19, including quarantines, coronavirus tests and hospitalizations. Cambodia, in turn, has relied on aid from the World Bank and other overseas entities to help ensure that people are not opting out of COVID-19 restrictions due to an inability to bear the cost. Some of these strategies should be replicable in other developing countries, given enough political will. Masks are cheap and effective, and many other states could copy the combination of pressure and skillful public campaigns to get as many people to wear masks. Other hybrid or authoritarian states would do well to heed Vietnam’s example, which has shown that transparency about COVID-19 doesn’t necessarily endanger the state’s dominance over politics. In other words, if they come clean with their publics about the spread of COVID-19 and their responses to it, they are not necessarily setting themselves up for a broader political backlash. Likewise, other developing countries may be able to copy efforts from mainland Southeast Asia to ensure that COVID-19 quarantines and treatment remain free or highly inexpensive, which is the best way to get people to take tests, isolate and go for treatment. Beyond these clear strategies, some residents of the region, including several medical researchers, have suggested that mainland Southeast Asia may have benefited from unique cultural practices that make contagion less likely. For instance, many people in mainland Southeast Asia do not greet each other with handshakes or hugs, but instead with a palms-pressed-together gesture, while standing apart from the other person. Taweesin Visanuyothin, the COVID-19 spokesperson for Thailand’s Ministry of Public Health, told the New York Times that Thailand’s success “has to do with culture. Thai people do not have body contact when we greet each other.” However, in large, packed cities like Bangkok, Yangon and Ho Chi Minh City, people walk close together, jam into buses and other public transportation, and generally come quite close to each other. They may greet each other without body contact, but the sheer size of these places makes it hard to practice real social distancing. Thus, the true reasons for these countries’ success in containing the virus likely have more to do with their policy responses. Other researchers speculate that some people in mainland Southeast Asia may have some natural immunity to COVID-19. In one study from southern Thailand, more than 90 percent of people who tested positive for COVID-19 remained asymptomatic, a much higher share than normal. The reasons for this finding, however, remain unclear. One thing that is certain is that Thailand and its neighbors, which have had experience fighting other infectious diseases like SARS and dengue fever, have collectively emerged as a rare pocket of resilience in the face of the coronavirus pandemic. As similarly low-to-middle-income countries in Latin America are hit hard by the coronavirus, and nations across Africa brace for a surge in cases, their governments could benefit from looking eastward and taking lessons from mainland Southeast Asia’s response.

With the exception of Thailand, the five countries of mainland Southeast Asia are some of the poorest in the Asia-Pacific region. According to the World Bank, Cambodia has a per capita GDP of around $1,500, while Myanmar’s is roughly $1,300. Laos and Vietnam fare only marginally better, each at just over $2,500. Their political systems run the gamut from semi-democracies to authoritarian one-party states. Yet they effectively suppressed COVID-19, proving far more effective in addressing the pandemic than most developed countries, including the United States. For more on why mainland Southeast Asia has had such success, see my new World Politics Review article.

Huong Le Thu is a senior analyst at the Australian Strategic Policy Institute. July 2020 marked a significant shift in developments regarding the South China Sea. The Trump administration announced a series of high-level statements that explicitly reject China’s maritime claims in the South China Sea as inconsistent with the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS). The U.S. statements further reaffirm the 2016 tribunal ruling, from The Hague, against China’s claims. The U.S. shift from being officially neutral and not taking the side of claimant states in the South China Sea to rejecting Beijing’s claims as unlawful and excessive are advantageous to the Southeast Asian claimant states. Yet, across Southeast Asian capitals, views on the United States’ new statements are divided. A few have publicly and directly referred to the statements, but many are worried that the United States’ seeming position change is less related to upholding international law and has more to do with Washington trying to escalate tensions with China. Marking the fourth anniversary of the 2016 tribunal ruling in the South China Sea case between the Philippines and China, on July 13 U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo declared the “U.S. Position on Maritime Claims in the South China Sea.” The statement issued by Pompeo reiterated support for the 2016 ruling and for the 1982 UNCLOS but stood out from previous U.S. statements by explicitly saying, “[China] has no legal grounds to unilaterally impose its will on the region” and that the “PRC’s maritime claims…have no basis in international law.” (Notably, the United States has never ratified UNCLOS.) The following day, the Assistant Secretary of State for the Bureau of East Asian and Pacific Affairs, David Stillwell, opened the tenth annual South China Sea conference at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), where he doubled-down on the newly forceful U.S. approach to the South China Sea. He named instances in which Beijing reportedly has denied Southeast Asian neighbors’ access to resources in the Southeast Asian states’ claimed exclusive economic zones. A week later, Secretary of Defense Mark Esper spoke to an International Institute for Strategic Studies audience, in lieu of the annual Shangri-La Dialogue, where he reaffirmed the United States’ intention to keep sending naval assets to the South China Sea to counter China’s increasingly assertive behavior. Australia also has become more assertive in pushing back regarding the South China Sea. Canberra issued a Note Verbale to the United Nations on July 23, the wording of which was very similar to the U.S. State Department’s statement. The timing of Australia’s note attracted attention; it preceded the 2020 Australia-United States Ministerial Consultation—the bilateral 2+2 meetings in Washington that included Pompeo, Esper, Australian Minister for Foreign Affairs Marise Payne and Australian Minister for Defense Linda Reynolds. The note also was publicized soon after Canberra launched a new Strategic Update 2020 and Force Structure Plan, which articulated Australia’s growing concerns about China and Australia’s planned stronger defense posture. The recent shifts in Washington and Canberra are neither novel nor surprising. They reiterate in a more decisive language the positions that both the United States and Australia have held regarding the 2016 ruling. Given the deteriorating trajectories of both countries’ relations with China, the statements are not sudden either. Nevertheless, they mark an important milestone regarding the South China Sea. They are clearer in their rejection of China’s claims and explicit support for the role international law. These developments have been welcomed by the Vietnamese government, even though Vietnam’s foreign affairs spokesperson has remained restrained in responding to the U.S. and Australian moves. There are many reasons for Vietnam to be enthusiastic about this shift in U.S. and Australian rhetoric regarding the South China Sea. With other Southeast Asian claimant states like the Philippines and Malaysia limiting their public critiques of China’s actions, Vietnam increasingly felt isolated regionally. Given global attention to COVID-19, and China’s influence over Southeast Asian states, Vietnam’s recent efforts to attract greater international attention to what it perceives as Chinese abuses and coercion in the South China Sea seemed futile to Hanoi, at least until recently. And without any limits on Beijing’s actions, Vietnam has suffered both strategically and economically. Meanwhile, the repercussions of Beijing’s continued economic pressure and the limits to Vietnam’s exploration of oil and gas within its claimed exclusive economic zones have cost the country, according to one estimate, roughly $1 billion. However, just because Hanoi welcomes tougher U.S. and Australian rhetorical approaches to the South China Sea does not necessarily mean Vietnam will use this moment to launch long-considered litigation against China or even fast-track a U.S.-Vietnam strategic partnership that would build on the existing U.S.-Vietnam comprehensive partnership. Hanoi will refrain from major decisions until the U.S. presidential election is decided, and still worries that Washington is taking this approach to the South China Sea to escalate tensions with Beijing. It hopes, however, that the new U.S. and Australian statements will mean a clear commitment by these two powers to a more forceful approach to the South China Sea. What follows now becomes a test for Vietnam’s diplomatic and strategic skills. Hanoi needs to embrace this potential shift in external actors’ approach to the South China Sea, but also avoid the pitfalls created by warring giants.

On Tuesday (Malaysia time), a Malaysian court found former Prime Minister Najib tun Razak guilty on seven counts of corruption, and sentenced him to twelve years in jail and a nearly $50 million fine. Najib remains out on bail, pending an appeal of his conviction, but he also faces multiple other outstanding charges that could lead to an even longer jail sentence. Although Najib’s case had been widely documented, both in court and in many in-depth investigative articles, the verdict still came as something of a surprise. The political winds in Malaysia had, in recent weeks, appeared to favor Najib. Najib had long dominated Malaysian politics, prior to the 2018 election that ousted his coalition, and in recent months the Mahathir Mohamad/Anwar Ibrahim-led coalition that defeated Najib in 2018 had lost power again. Amidst in-fighting in the Mahathir/Anwar coalition and the onset of COVID-19, they gave way to a government under the control of an old Najib ally, and dominated by members of Najib’s party, UMNO, which has ruled Malaysia since independence, except for 2018 to 2020. Najib had continued to play a significant political role behind the scenes, even as he awaited trial and UMNO was in opposition, and remained influential as his allies retook the reins of government. He also became more active on social media in the run-up to the trial, and used social media to position himself more in the populist and more accessible vein of other Southeast Asian populists, trying to shed his image as a stiff and corrupt politician. Under the new UNNO-dominated government, which has a very shaky hold on parliament, Malaysian prosecutors had dropped corruption charges against an important Najib ally, Musa Aman, giving no real reason for suddenly dropping the charges. The sudden reversal in the Musa Aman case, and the decision by the new government to settle with Riza Aziz, Najib’s stepson, seemed to suggest that, with UMNO back in control of the government, Najib might be spared as well. In recent weeks, the new Malaysian government also reached a deal with Goldman Sachs over the bank’s links to Malaysia’s 1MDB state fund, which was at the center of the charges against Najib. Goldman agreed to pay $2.5 billion to Malaysia, less than the Malaysian government originally had demanded, and Malaysia also dropped criminal charges against the bank.  Ultimately, however, Najib’s case may have been so large, and the allegations of graft so enormous and polarizing in Malaysia that a court had to convict him. It did so, too, in a clearly-stated and thorough judicial opinion. And the verdict may reduce Najib’s power significantly; he cannot run for parliament now if a snap election is called, and the ruling may deprive him of his ability to wield influence behind the scenes within the governing coalition. But still, this initial step in Najib’s case may not signal that much has changed in Malaysia. If Najib’s allies remain in control of parliament—a big if, given their narrow majority in parliament—he might still be spared. James Chin, a leading Malaysia expert, told the New York Times that he expected Najib’s case would be overturned on appeal, as long as UNMO held the government. And even if Najib is not ultimately acquitted, the verdict against him may allow UMNO and its allies to remain in power, purging themselves of the taint of Najib and seeming somewhat impartial in the court decision—and thus keeping UMNO in control. 

Meredith Weiss is professor and chair of political science in the Rockefeller College of Public Affairs and Policy of the University at Albany, SUNY. As anticipated, the incumbent People’s Action Party (PAP) won Singapore’s July 10 general election, held amidst the COVID-19 pandemic. Even Singapore’s leading opposition party, the Workers’ Party (WP), which boosted its share of seats in parliament from seven to ten, had denied seeking to deny the PAP a “mandate”—it vowed merely not to allow the long-ruling party a “blank check.” And so the WP, one of multiple opposition parties that contested the election, but the only one to win seats, did. (The Progress Singapore Party will send another two opposition politicians to parliament, but without having won any constituencies, a uniquely Singaporean consolation prize for the “best losers” nationally.) Following the July 10 election, the PAP still holds 89.2 percent of parliamentary seats (eighty-three of ninety-three), a fairly marginal decrease from the 93.3 percent share of seats (eighty-three of eighty-nine) it secured in 2015. Yet at 61.2 percent, the PAP’s share of the popular vote fell below the 65 percent for which it had hoped—a level that would be on par with its usual results, though less impressive than the 69.9 percent it garnered in 2015, in the wake of Lee Kuan Yew’s passing and Singapore’s fiftieth anniversary bonanza. The general election result is really a win for both sides: the opposition parties, and especially the WP, can rest assured that a decent share of voters finds them credible, even in times that call for especially competent leadership, whereas the PAP still knows the electorate loves it best. At the same time, the election has obliged introspection on the part of the PAP, and does suggest ways in which the PAP, or governance broadly in Singapore, will likely recalibrate. First, there is the question of leadership. Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong announced in 2018 that he would retire by age seventy (he is sixty-eight now), but his designated successor, Deputy Prime Minister Heng Swee Keat, failed to thrive in the general election. The group representation constituency (GRC) team Heng led won its district, but barely. Granted, the PAP faced a stiff WP challenge in that GRC, and the party “parachuted” Heng in to lead the team at the last minute—invariably a liability—but his standing as prime-minister-in-waiting seems more tenuous now. Lee has suggested that, in light of the pandemic, he might delay his departure as prime minister, but Heng’s colleagues insist they remain united in favor of his succeeding Lee, whenever the transition happens. Indeed, the PAP chose not Heng or another fellow PAP fourth-generation, or “4G,” leader to represent the party in the one English-language televised debate of the campaign but the more seasoned foreign minister Vivian Balakrishnan (who later insisted he’s the same age as Heng, even if not generally considered to be in the same 4G political cohort). Lee’s new cabinet, which he announced July 25, rotates its 4G members but leaves Heng seemingly secure as heir-apparent, retains several seasoned “3G” ministers among a handful of new faces, and maintains “a greater degree of continuity” than usual, as Lee explained, given the pandemic. Meanwhile, the WP successfully navigated its own first election under new leadership: former Secretary-General Low Thia Khiang passed the reins to successor (and now Singapore’s first recognized Leader of the Opposition) Pritam Singh in 2018. Low, as well as party veterans Chen Show Mao and Png Eng Huat, then stood down from contesting this general election in favor of younger party members. That the party still maintained and expanded its foothold—with a team of younger members’ securing a first-ever second GRC—suggests the transition was a success. Moreover, the strong strides made by newcomer opposition party Progress Singapore Party (PSP) suggests a life-after-PAP path for defectors from Singapore’s dominant party. Eighty year old ex-PAP MP Tan Cheng Bock launched PSP only in January 2019, together with other former PAP members and, as elections approached, PM Lee’s estranged brother Lee Hsien Yang. PSP benefited the most from voters defecting from the PAP. The role of younger voters in Singapore is the second key dimension to watch going forward. The electoral impact of young voters is easily overstated, but their interests did help to set the tone in this election. Voters aged twenty-five to thirty-five were the biggest population “bulge” in 2020, and they were inclined, per Ambassador-at-Large Chan Heng Chee, toward “personal narratives and ‘I feel your pain’ connectivity, approachability and authenticity.” She finds the WP well attuned to these “Zoomers.” Even so, first-time voters (aged twenty-one to twenty-four) comprised less than 10 percent of the electorate; only one-third of the electorate was people in their twenties and thirties. While concrete data are unfortunately scarce, a Blackbox Research survey found the highest support for the WP among that twenty-one to twenty-four year old segment—but that share of voters alone could not turn the tide. Rather, economically pinched voters in their forties through early sixties who switched from the PAP to opposition parties, suggests the PAP’s Lawrence Wong, incumbent minister for national development, likely had more impact in reducing the PAP’s share of the popular vote this time around. That said, PAP and opposition postmortems, and what messages seemed to stick during the campaign itself, indicate there will now likely be a change in the PAP’s tone and focus, our third factor. Wong notes the need for the PAP to step up its game with young voters. He suggests that while the party “tried [its] best” to reach younger voters with online content, including on Instagram and Telegram, “not all of this connected with netizens.” Pundits emphasized that younger voters in particular seemed to prefer a less paternalistic tone, more open discussion of sensitive issues of race and religion (a flashpoint especially in light of police investigation of first-time WP candidate Raeesah Khan’s previous social media posts alleging racial and religious discrimination in Singapore), and new voices in parliament. As popular PAP Senior Minister Tharman Shanmugaratnam put it post-election, the party’s smaller popular vote share “is leading the party to review its own game so as to win the hearts, and not just the minds, of a changing electorate.” The parties emphasized different themes, too: the PAP aimed to keep the focus on jobs, whereas opposition parties hammered home the call for new voices in Parliament. Blackbox Research found the electorate nearly evenly split on these themes, with 53 percent favoring the PAP’s economic focus over the opposition’s diverse-voices narrative. But the PAP did a sometimes-ham-fisted job of delivering its message. PAP activists, for instance, noted that when the Singapore Democratic Party’s (SDP) Chee Soon Juan claimed the PAP had once supported a highly unpopular population target of ten million—resistance to an onslaught of foreigners, taking good jobs from Singaporeans, was a prominent opposition-campaign theme—the PAP spent more effort working to impugn his credibility and integrity than in addressing the immigration issue. Or as one PAP activist said, the party has “to do more to convince (people of) why PAP is good, and not why the opposition is bad.” Fourth and finally, that change in tone might translate to shifts in the policy process and in policy outcomes. For one thing, there will be more opposition MPs than in the previous parliament: ten from the WP, supplemented by two non-constituency MPs from the PSP who intend to work as part of a WP-led “alternative front.” The PAP has signaled that it expects the WP to contribute ideas to policymaking in parliament; the WP’s Pritam Singh has countered that PAP must be more forthcoming with information if it seeks “realistic policy alternatives.” But it seems conceivable that some of the WP’s policies, which tend slightly to the left of the PAP’s, could make it onto the parliamentary agenda. Ian Chong, a political scientist, explains that the leading opposition parties (WP, PSP, and SDP) all campaigned on a “more systematically [economically] redistributive approach” than the PAP, which “kept to its traditional emphasis on the efforts of individuals and families, with minimalist state support supplemented by one-off transfers.” On the table now could be strengthened social safety nets in particular: for instance, a minimum wage (Singapore currently has no minimum wage), unemployment insurance, and measures to support the value of the Housing Development Board flats in which over 80 percent of Singaporeans live, overwhelmingly as homeowners, but with ninety-nine-year leases. Probably less likely to change are those features of the system that protect incumbents in Singapore. Among them are the much-critiqued Protection from Online Falsehoods and Manipulation Act (POFMA), the PAP’s monopolization of the parastatal “grassroots” People’s Association, and the mix of GRCs and single-member constituencies (SMC)—though now that the PAP has lost two of the former, each wiping out a full slate of candidates, perhaps a return to full-SMC could be in the cards. These elections are not earth-shattering in their ramifications for Singapore governance or policy directions. Yet they are meaningful nonetheless, in the short term and in signaling possible longer-term trends.  

Last weekend in Thailand, protestors demanding changes in the Thai constitution, new elections, an end to harassment of activists and other government critics, the reduction of the role of the army in politics, and other major changes rallied in Bangkok. Around 2,500 people gathered in the Thai capital, and smaller groups gathered in other cities in Thailand, in the first major public protest since COVID-19 hit the country. Some of the demonstrators followed up, earlier this week, with smaller protests at army headquarters and other sites, to criticize the government’s harsh approach to dissent and opposition political voices. The protests may signal the return of some degree of the angry and contested street politics that had erupted in Thailand late last year, after Thailand’s pro-military party, relying on a constitution midwifed by the armed forces, put together a coalition to control parliament after last year’s elections. Despite the elections, opponents of the government continued to insist—with a fair amount of credibility—that the election had not been fair, and they turned out sizable numbers for demonstrations in Bangkok late last year. The opposition’s anger only grew when, in February and before Thailand really had to grapple with COVID-19, the country’s top court dissolved a leading opposition party, Future Forward. The decision banned Future Forward’s top leaders from politics for ten years. COVID-19, however, slammed a door on street actions, and the Thai government—like many governments in Southeast Asia—also utilized the pandemic to restrict Thais’ freedoms and amass more power. To be sure, after initial missteps in addressing the virus, the Thai government’s public health response has been exemplary. The government has overseen near-universal adoption of face masks, has bolstered the country’s already-strong public health system, and has instituted relatively tough lockdown measures months back, and in a more organized way than neighboring states like Indonesia. Thailand, a country of roughly 70 million, has had only around 3,200 total confirmed COVID-19 cases and 58 deaths, and it has not had locally-transmitted cases of COVID-19 in weeks. (Florida, with a population of around 21.5 million people, had 9,440 new cases in one day earlier this week.) At the same time, though, the Thai government has utilized the pandemic to declare a state of emergency. The emergency may have been medically necessary, but Bangkok also has banned public assembly, cracked down on the news media, arrested activists who criticize the government, and prosecuted social media users who criticize the government as well. With Thailand returning to a kind of normality, the demonstrators are testing whether they can push the country to its pre-pandemic political status—and challenge whether the government can claim to be so successful in fighting COVID-19 while also needing the state of emergency and to maintain total control over demonstrations and other types of dissent. Last year, before Future Forward was banned, popular anger had been building against the Thai government, which seemed relatively shaky. What’s more, the Thai protestors may be setting an example for other opposition movements in Southeast Asia, where in countries like Cambodia and Malaysia governments also have used the pandemic to amass more powers—yet at the same time have largely contained COVID-19. But if the Thai government, which recently extended the state of emergency, cracks down hard on the demonstrators, filing charges against leaders and possibly taking even tougher measures, it may show that Thailand has moved into an even more repressive phase of politics than it inhabited last year.

In last Friday’s election, Singapore’s long-ruling People’s Action Party (PAP), as usual, won a large share of the seats in parliament. With roughly 61 percent of the total vote, the PAP took eighty-three out of ninety-three seats in parliament, 89 percent of the total contested seats, the result of an electoral system that is built to create large majorities for the PAP. Still, the various opposition parties made major strides. They came just short of holding the PAP to its lowest share of the popular vote ever—the PAP took about 60 percent in the 2011 general election—but they came close to that 2011 figure. The opposition also won two group representation constituencies for the first time, and seriously challenged the PAP in others, coming much closer than before in several constituencies. The opposition now has a firmer ground in parliament to scrutinize PAP policies, and propose real alternatives. And the poor showing in the election by the presumptive next prime minister, Heng Swee Keat, who led a slate that barely won its group representation constituency, raises doubts about whether Singaporeans are ready to embrace the leadership of the next generation of PAP politicians, in the same way they embrace Lee Kuan Yew, Goh Chok Tong, and Lee Hsien Loong. As a result, Prime Minister Lee might wind up staying in the job longer than previously assumed, and delaying any handover to the next generation of PAP leaders. And the decision to call a snap election, during the pandemic, clearly angered some Singaporeans. The election in Singapore might well lead Malaysia’s ruling coalition, which has a bare majority in parliament and appears to be deciding whether to call a snap election, to reconsider. Reflecting on the results of the general election, Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong admitted that the PAP faced a tough battle. "This was not a feel-good election," Prime Minister Lee told reporters. He also said: "The results show a clear desire for a diversity of voices in parliament." The overall trend in Singaporean politics, then, seems to suggest that, while the PAP remains powerful, it is no longer as dominant as in the past. Opposition parties are putting together deeper benches of politicians—the PAP historically has attracted the city-state’s best political talent and derided the opposition for its lack of quality recruits—and have made excellent use of social media and other tools to appeal to younger Singaporeans. In addition, the PAP’s inability to confront some of the biggest issues in Singapore society made it vulnerable in this election, and could allow the opposition to make further gains going forward. Besides the PAP’s struggle to control COVID-19, which (might) be a shorter-term issue, the persistently high cost of living, the hard-hit Singaporean white-collar workforce, the challenges with Singapore’s existing housing model, and other deeply entrenched socioeconomic problems will continue to challenge the PAP government. In the longer-term, the stage may be set for more contested politics.

By the normally staid, unchanging standards of Singapore politics, Friday’s election appears to be delivering significant changes. Though official results are not yet out as I write this, initial counts suggest that opposition parties are going to make real gains, and the ruling People’s Action Party (PAP) is going to have one of its worst showings since it first came to office in 1959. The opposition apparently has won two group representation constituencies—constituencies where a slate of candidates all run for office together—and even in areas where the PAP seems likely to win, its margin has been cut significantly from the previous general election. (The opposition has not won two group representation constituencies in any prior election, so this could be a landmark.) In addition, even in many areas the PAP won, its margin of victory was shaved significantly over previous elections. Overall, initial counts suggest, the opposition apparently has gained at least 5 percent more of the popular vote than in the last election, and perhaps an even greater swing has occurred. Even in the group representation constituency where the PAP’s slate was led by Deputy Prime Minister Heng Swee Keat, the presumed successor as prime minister to Lee Hsieng Loong, the PAP only won with 54 percent of the vote. It is possible that the weak result in the constituency led by Heng Swee Keat might even lead the PAP to rethink whether he should be the presumptive next prime minister. To be sure, the PAP is not in danger of losing its fearsome majority. It seems likely to take eighty-three out of ninety-three seats in parliament, and the structure of Singapore’s electoral system, with group representation constituencies that are also winner-take-all, makes it harder for the opposition to make massive gains in any election. But the PAP’s mandate will be weakened, with more opposition members in parliament and, probably, a far lower PAP share of the overall vote than in the last general election. The government’s inconsistent, stumbling handling of COVID-19—after an effective initial approach, it allowed the virus to spread widely in dorms for foreign workers, and wound up with one of the worst COVID-19 outbreaks in Southeast Asia—the deep economic downturn, and the growing mobilization of opposition parties online all appear to have helped the PAP’s opposition. The opposition also was able to recruit several dynamic and impressive candidates, which it often had lacked in the past, and they helped the opposition hold its own in debates with the PAP during the short campaign period. And the government’s decision to call a new election, even though it was not legally obligated to do so until next year, might have backfired, making some Singaporeans angry that they had to vote in the midst of the pandemic. In the wake of this election, the PAP will need to regroup. It did so successfully after it took a hit in the 2011 general election, and it is nothing if not durable.

Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong declared in a televised address last week that Singapore would hold its next general election on July 10. Lee and other members of the long-ruling People’s Action Party, or PAP, have expressed confidence in being able to hold an election safely and effectively, even though Singapore has had more than 43,000 confirmed cases of COVID-19, the most in Southeast Asia on a per capita basis. In his address, Lee noted the difficulty of determining how long it would take to wait out the pandemic, stating there was no guarantee that Singapore could hold a coronavirus-free election by April 2021, when the current government’s mandate officially expires. Lee may have also calculated that it would be more advantageous to call the election now, before the full weight of COVID-19’s economic impact has hit Singapore, and potentially damaged the ruling party’s image. The PAP has dominated Singapore’s politics since the city-state became an independent republic in 1965; it currently holds 83 of the 89 contested seats in Parliament. This month’s campaign, however, could be its most challenging one since at least the 2011 election, when the PAP’s share of the popular vote fell to 60 percent, its lowest mark ever. “I think this is going to be a very tough election,” Foreign Minister Vivian Balakrishnan told CNBC this week. Lee is probably correct that, at least technically, Singapore has the requisite public health expertise to pull off a vote during the pandemic. It is an extremely wealthy country, and its small geographic size will allow it to create safe polling places and establish mechanisms for those in quarantine to participate, much like South Korea did for its parliamentary elections in April. While mail-in voting will not be allowed, the government has announced there will be temperature checks and enforced social distancing at polling stations. It will assign each voter a recommended two-hour slot in which to vote, to prevent overcrowding. But will the pandemic also make it harder for the opposition, which always struggles in Singapore, to win a significant number of seats in Parliament or a sizable share of the popular vote? Some opposition figures believe that COVID-19 offers an opportunity to dent the PAP’s standing. After initially handling the pandemic effectively with an impressive public health campaign that included the rapid rollout of testing and contract tracing, as well as travel restrictions, Singapore experienced a massive outbreak in April in its overcrowded dormitories for foreign workers, many of whom come from South Asia. The country hosts more than 1.4 million foreign workers, roughly a quarter of the total population, yet many of them, especially the hundreds of thousands who work in low- or semi-skilled industries like construction, often exist on the margins of Singaporean society. Their dormitories can house up to 20 people per room, making social distancing essentially impossible. While the government is now working to reduce crowding in the dormitories, the outbreak exposed a serious blind spot in Singapore’s COVID-19 response, undermining the narrative that the PAP had handled the virus well. In addition, Singapore’s tech-savvy population is becoming more willing to push back against often heavy-handed government policies and criticize politicians and elected officials. Many Singaporeans are increasingly turning to social media for information, blunting the impact of mainstream news outlets, which tend to offer coverage that is highly favorable to the PAP. For example, one PAP candidate for a seat in Parliament, Ivan Lim, was forced to withdraw his bid for office after an outcry on social media over allegations of poor behavior during his time in military service, among other issues. “Ivan Lim’s pressured withdrawal shows the power of ordinary Singaporeans on social media,” Bridget Welsh, an honorary research associate with the University of Nottingham Asia Research Institute in Malaysia, commented on Twitter. “The days of unquestioned acquiescence to decisions are over,” she added, referring to decisions made by the government and the PAP. Opposition parties also recently recruited several prominent figures to join their ranks, which might help them galvanize support. Lee Hsien Yang, the prime minister’s estranged younger brother, has formally joined the Progress Singapore Party, founded last year by a former PAP presidential candidate, Tan Cheng Bock. However, Lee Hsien Yang will not run for a seat in Parliament. The Singapore Democratic Party, another opposition party, has gotten Paul Tambyah, a prominent infectious disease specialist and leading expert on the coronavirus, to run in one constituency. The younger Lee is a prominent critic of the PAP, taking it to task for its response to COVID-19, among other issues. His family lineage gives his attacks more weight than many other Singaporean politicians. “The PAP has lost its way,” Lee said last month in a video posted to the Progress Singapore Party’s Facebook page, arguing that his brother’s government was “distinctly different” from that of their father, Lee Kuan Yew, who ruled Singapore from independence until 1990 and is still widely beloved in the country. The Progress Singapore Party claims that it already has seen increases in public support and donations due to Lee Hsien Yang’s decision to formally join it. Meanwhile, the Workers’ Party, the only opposition grouping with elected MPs in Parliament, plans to campaign primarily on socioeconomic issues. Many Singaporeans have 99-year leases on government-constructed apartments, some of which are deteriorating in value, hurting their owners’ nest eggs. That, along with other issues like persistent inequality and the high cost of living, all point to a long-term need to make Singapore’s economic model more inclusive. All of this means the PAP might receive a lower share of the popular vote than it did in the last election in 2015, when it got nearly 70 percent. That would be a dent in the PAP’s image and perhaps a sign that younger Singaporeans will eventually push for greater political change. But ultimately, there is little likelihood that the PAP’s long winning streak will be broken this month. The party is stocked with political talent, and always oversees an effective campaign. Despite some public anger over how the government has handled COVID-19, the PAP has actively addressed the massive economic damage the pandemic will cause to Singapore’s open, trade-dependent economy, passing huge economic relief measures equal to some 20 percent of GDP. Meanwhile, the numerous opposition parties have not united behind a single candidate in some constituencies, and could split the opposition vote as a result. That would make things even easier for the PAP. Singapore’s electoral system also imposes a high barrier to entry for opposition parties. Most parliamentarians are elected from multimember districts, known as group representation constituencies, in which voters choose one slate of candidates from a party to represent their district. This puts opposition parties, especially new ones, at a disadvantage, as they often have more trouble fielding a large slate of candidates. Moreover, the lines demarcating those districts are drawn by a government-controlled agency. Last year, the government also implemented a “fake news” law that, while potentially useful to limit disinformation and foreign influence efforts, could also have a chilling effect on public debate in the run-up to the vote. Because of COVID-19, the government has also imposed curbs on campaigning in what is already a very short election cycle, including banning rallies. This may be a prudent public health measure, but it will hurt opposition parties that depend on mass gatherings to bolster their name recognition—a problem the PAP certainly does not have. Given these limitations, even if the opposition makes a major dent in the PAP’s share of the popular vote, it will still struggle to win even one of the multimember constituencies that would give it a real voice in Parliament. And local polls still show high levels of satisfaction for the PAP government, despite public concerns about inequality and the high cost of living. Opposition parties may feel emboldened, but they remain a long way from toppling the PAP.

Last week, the Singaporean prime minister, Lee Hsien Loong, of the long-dominant People’s Action Party (PAP), declared that the city-state would hold its general election on July 10. The prime minister, and other PAP leaders, expressed confidence that Singapore could hold an election effectively during the COVID-19 pandemic, even though Singapore has the second highest number of confirmed COVID-19 cases in Southeast Asia. He noted that it might be impossible to determine how long the country would need to wait out the pandemic and there was no guarantee that Singaporeans could hold a COVID-19 free election by April 2021, when the government’s mandate officially expires. Despite its reputation for staid politics and decades of effective PAP governance, this general election could prove the toughest for the ruling party since 2011’s election. Then, the PAP’s share of the popular vote fell to “only” 60 percent, its lowest mark since independence. On July 10, the ruling party could face a similar—though hardly catastrophic—result. For more on the prospects for the election, see my new World Politics Review article.

Yesterday (U.S. time), editor Maria Ressa, one of the most prominent journalists in the Philippines, and indeed in the world—she was selected as one of Time’s people of the year in 2018 and featured on its cover—was found guilty by a Philippine court on charges of cyber libel. The charges related to a story about the former chief justice of the Philippines’ top court. Reynaldo Santos Jr., who wrote the story, also was found guilty of cyber libel. Though the two were released on bail, they face up to six years in jail on the charges. The charges are extremely controversial. The story Santos Jr. wrote actually was published before the Philippines even had a cyber-libel law, and Santos Jr. and editor Ressa were charged after Rappler, their publication, updated the article online to fix a typo after the law came in effect. The cyber-libel law is also easily used to try to silence independent journalists. And Ressa faces a load of other charges too, which seem designed to silence her and Rappler. The Guardian notes: Ressa also faces another libel prosecution, two criminal cases alleging illegal foreign ownership in her companies, and investigations into her old tax returns. The various allegations made against Ressa could lead to about 100 years in prison. After a career at CNN, Ressa, a dual citizen of the Philippines and the United States, now runs Rappler, one of the toughest, most groundbreaking, and independent reporting outlets in the Philippines, a country with a tradition of a vibrant press—and also of brutal crackdowns on journalists. Reporters Without Borders regularly ranks the Philippines as one of the most dangerous places in Asia to work as a journalist, and in 2009 the country witnessed what the Committee to Project Journalists has called the worst single massacre of journalists in history, when 34 journalists (and 58 people total) were slain in Maguindanao province. Journalists throughout the country are regularly threatened by local politicians and businesspeople, and often attacked. Even given this history, since Rodrigo Duterte’s election as president in 2016, the situation for the press has worsened. Under Duterte, the Philippine government has worked to suffocate the free press more than under any Philippine president since dictator Ferdinand Marcos. For years Duterte has been targeting Rappler, which has aggressively reported on the massive number of extrajudicial killings and other abuses in Duterte’s drug “war.” And for years he has singled out journalists for verbal abuse, and suggested that journalists could be assassinated.  But overall, this effort against the press seems to have been ramped up in recent months, as the coronavirus pandemic has allowed Duterte—like many other illiberal leaders—to amass greater powers and crack down on all sorts of opposition. The legislature, controlled by Duterte allies, has passed an anti-terror law so broad it could be used to potentially detain a vast array of people without charges, including journalists. Last month, the Duterte administration effectively shut down ABS-CBN, one of the most important broadcast networks in the country, and one that also had reported independently about the president. Now, a guilty verdict against Maria Ressa, probably the most famous journalist in the Philippines and someone with a high-profile international legal team and extensive networks of allies around the world, must surely suggest to lower-profile journalists, and anyone in civil society in the Philippines, that no one in the country is safe. Ressa’s case also illustrates the rapidly deteriorating climate for press freedom across Southeast Asia, where governments are backsliding from democracy, and cracking down on reporters in numerous ways—trends that have increased since the outbreak of COVID-19. In Myanmar, the National League for Democracy-led government has aggressively tried to curtail independent journalism, while autocratic governments like Vietnam have aggressively pursued writers and bloggers, and Cambodia’s government has destroyed most of the country’s independent press. Overall, in the past two years, Reporters Without Borders has reported declines in press freedom in many Asian states, including the Philippines, Myanmar, and Singapore. Since the COVID-19 outbreak, as The Economist reports, Indonesia and Malaysia, two of the freer countries in Southeast Asia, have been arresting people for supposedly spreading false stories about COVID-19, and the Malaysian government is investigating a reporter for the South China Morning Post for reporting on COVID-19.    Now, an emboldened Duterte, empowered by the COVID-19 emergency, is likely to take further steps to crush press freedom in the Philippines.

After initiating large scale social restrictions in early April, in some parts of the country, areas of Indonesia are slowly reopening. Throughout June, authorities will gradually loosen restrictions on establishments like restaurants and shopping areas in parts of Indonesia where the reproduction rate of COVID-19—the average number of infections stemming from a single case—is judged to be less than one. But Indonesia is opening up without a clear handle on the scope of its COVID-19 crisis, which is the worst in Southeast Asia, with nearly 30,000 confirmed cases and 1,770 deaths as of this writing. Government efforts to ramp up testing have been hampered by persistent delays, and parts of the country are still seeing spikes in new infections. But even if the reopening goes smoothly, the pandemic has already done significant damage to the reputation of President Joko Widodo, who has been widely criticized for an ineffectual response. Instead of learning from his mistakes and making a course correction, Jokowi, as he is widely known in Indonesia, has stifled criticism of his government and empowered the military, threatening Indonesia’s democracy. The country’s economy and its people, meanwhile, are bearing the costs. For more on Indonesia’s struggles, see my new World Politics Review article.