COVID-19 hit Southeast Asia earlier than most regions of the world, and today the region has over 90,000 cases, with more than 2,700 confirmed deaths. The low levels of testing in all states, bar Singapore, however, should give rise to skepticism. The virus is likely far more prevalent than what governments are admitting, and anecdotal evidence suggests that there are far more deaths than what has been officially reported.
The pandemic has wreaked havoc on the economies of Southeast Asia, which are dependent on tourism and exports. The IMF is predicting a global economic contraction of 3 percent, and all evidence suggests that the globalized economies of Southeast Asia will be deeply impacted, with recessions in Thailand, Indonesia, Singapore, Malaysia, and the Philippines.
How will COVID-19 impact politics in the region?
On the surface, we see little change. There are only three countries that have scheduled elections or routine political transitions coming months. With a new COVID-19 election bill passed earlier this month, Singapore is moving ahead with elections as soon as infections drop; Myanmar announced that elections will proceed as planned by year’s end, but is introducing a series of administrative changes due to limitations posed by the virus. Vietnam will hold its quinquennial Party Congress in January 2021 and will be sure to capitalize on its COVID-19 management success.
The pandemic response in Indonesia has exposed Indonesian President Joko Widodo’s weakness, but with elections just held in 2019 it’s not going to change the government. In Thailand, Cambodia, and the Philippines, the response to COVID-19 has simply accelerated the authoritarian trends of the leadership. In fact, COVID-19 has strengthened incumbents, giving them space to capitalize on fear and displace challengers.
This does not mean that all leaders are safe or the trend will last. Weak leaders are more exposed. COVID-19 has constrained patronage to appease challengers, resources have contracted as economies have shrunk ,and the costs of responding to the virus have increased.
Ultra-royalist elites in Thailand have questioned Prime Minister Prayut Chan-o-cha’s competence for a while, and there has been a growing push to replace him and key cabinet members, though leaving the military-backed coalition in place. Despite reopening the economy, the Emergency Decree remains in place.
Malaysian Prime Minister Muhyiddin Yassin’s attempt to dodge a vote of no confidence has done him no favors. Leaders who lack broad public mandates and face elite challengers are vulnerable and beholden to their allies. They have to spend time politicking rather than focusing on crisis response.
All that said, we’re not predicting any immediate political COVID casualties. The intensity of the economic crisis tied to COVID-19 will be more determinant than the public health challenges.
We see five distinct political trends that will impact politics in the medium term.
The first is an abject failure in governance in many countries. States have basic obligations to provide security, education, public health, and a legal system to their electorates. In country after country, public health systems were exposed to be underfunded and poorly staffed. Governments were caught flat-footed despite seeing the crisis unfold in China and experiencing other public health scares since the 2003 SARS outbreak.
With the exceptions of Singapore, Vietnam, and Malaysia, governments in the region were slow to respond to COVID-19, sent mixed and confusing messages, peddled quackery, were largely in denial, and proved unwilling to defer to medical and public health advice.
In a region that is based on notions of paternalistic leadership, including the region’s few democracies, where people are not supposed to question the state, there is now a growing realization that government does not know best. Revered politicians have fallen off their pedestals.
Demands for greater competence and embrace of science-based approaches, especially among the younger generations, is sowing the seeds of new political forces. Civic-mindedness has already sustained mobilization at local levels and it is only a matter of time until such sentiments translate into greater demands for accountability and political movements. In Indonesia, the hashtag “Whatever Indonesia” is trending; an expression of frustration with the government’s chaotic response.
It is telling that in Thailand, Cambodia, and the Philippines the governments immediately adopted emergency decrees. Indonesia’s president considered adopting one. Governments were unable to cope with the pandemic with existing institutions and authorities and aimed for extended power, but these emergency powers, in all cases, were used to go after dissent first.
Second, the weakness exposed by COVID-19 has caused militaries to gain more prominence.
In Indonesia and the Philippines, the weakness of the government response has forced the presidents to rely on militaries and security forces to backstop their flailing responses.
In Indonesia, this has been welcome news for the Indonesian National Armed Forces (TNI), which has sought to claw back many of the civil-administrative powers that it lost following the collapse of the New Order regime in 1998. Jokowi’s entire COVID-19 response team is staffed by acting and retired generals who are responding with an insurgency-based approach, an abject failure as the pandemic continues to spiral out of control.
We have seen the same thing in the Philippines, where Duterte’s COVID-response team is comprised of retired and acting generals, not medical professionals. The result has been a militarized response not informed by public health. Meanwhile, Duterte has called security forces to shoot people who violate quarantine orders on sight.
In Myanmar, the military has assumed a role in crisis-management, pitting itself against Aung San Sui Kyi’s National League for Democracy during an election year and at the same time using the distraction of the crisis to ratchet up fighting in ethnic conflict areas.
While regional militaries are providing order and using the crisis to accumulate power (and money), they are also exposing their poor capacity to manage public health problems.
Third, the greater role that security forces are playing accentuates authoritarianism. Many governments are adopting securitization to address the crisis and simultaneously cracking down on critics of the crisis response. This is worryingly happening in the region’s more open regimes.
In Malaysia, we’ve seen a shocking attack on the free press, which for the past two years had seen the most notable improvements in the region. A journalist was summoned to police headquarters for her reporting on the roundup of migrant workers. While there is no evidence of an overall shift in government policy to reverse the positive trajectory on press freedoms, such incidents point to increased intolerance of alternative views.
In Indonesia, circumstances surrounding the charges against researcher Ravio Patra, who raised questions about Jokowi’s COVID-19 response, raise even further questions.
COVID-19 is being used to curb discussion and necessary criticism – often dismissed and framed as “disinformation.” Thailand, Singapore, and Cambodia have all wielded their “fake news” laws to that effect, while Duterte has increased his use of the cyber crime law to target dissenters. This comes at a time where governments are breaking down the boundaries of privacy via the centrally controlled use of applications to track and trace citizens.
Fourth, the pandemic has exposed the glaring inequities around the region. Singapore, which received accolades as being the “gold standard” of pandemic responses, has seen the largest number of cases in the region. An overwhelming majority of the more than 35,000 cases (as of June 1), have been in the crowded dormitories for the 324,000 migrant workers who make the country’s first world living standards possible.
Thailand, whose excellent public health and medical systems have responded well to the crisis, has been unable and unwilling to address the large numbers of poor that can ill-afford a prolonged shutdown. COVID-19 has seen a rise in other health problems, as well as hunger and helplessness. In Thailand the number of suicides has soared.
Thailand, according to a the 2018 Credit Suisse Global Wealth Databook, is the most inequitable society in the world, a trend that has been exacerbated since the 2006 coup d’etat. The military and ultra-royalist elites simply do not care about the underclass, and as such the government has done little to support them. Thai government official are now predicting that some 14 million workers could be unemployed in the second and third quarters of 2020.
But inequality is rife around the region, and all countries have rising Gini coefficients. A prolonged economic recession will further exacerbate existing inequalities. The region’s social safety nets have serious holes and do not provide broad cover for those who need them.
In the Philippines, Duterte has tried to direct COVID-19 relief funding to the poorest segments of society, but simply doesn’t have the resources to do so in a meaningful way. The Indonesian and Malaysian governments are in a similar predicament – although in Malaysia’s case the former Najib government decimated the country’s finances in the 1MDB scandal.
COVID-19 spread through globalization, but it is a stark reminder that what made the rapid economic growth in Southeast Asia possible has been distributed inequitably. Unless the poorest and most marginalized of a society have adequate protections, then no one does.
The final trend is the growth of polarizing, identity politics, exacerbated by a vociferous religious fringe and rising xenophobic nationalism. This is not new. We’ve seen extremists Buddhist monks in Myanmar fan the flames of a genocide, the sudden reassertion of chauvinist identity politics in Malaysia, and the wielding of Islamist politics in Indonesia.
Both governments and the people have already proven quick to scapegoat certain communities for the spread of the pandemic. Thai leaders blamed Western tourists, ignoring community transmission. In Singapore and Malaysia, the blame quickly fell on migrant workers. In Indonesia, Islamists immediately resorted to their default position: blaming the Chinese community.
In any crisis, there is an innate response to scapegoating, but what is so telling in COVID-19 is that governments are not stepping in to counter those destructive narratives, instead often using them to distract from their own responsibility and their lackluster responses.
Extremist religious groups are poised to take advantage of both the emotions of COVID-19 – fear and insecurity – and well as government weaknesses; they will capitalize on the inequities of society and to try to mobilize their constituents through scapegoating out-groups.
Despite these trends that should cause alarm for governments and the elites who back them, they have several things in their favor. First, the weakness of the political oppositions. While we have seen the Thai and Philippine presidents further consolidate their authoritarian grips and go to lengths to crush the free press, the reality is that they have sustained a long-term assault on the political opposition.
Duterte has jailed political opponents on trumped-up charges, marginalized his vice president (who hails from the opposition party), and trounced opposition figures in the midterm elections. With a stacked parliament and supreme court, Duterte has wielded the police as a hit squad in his war on drugs, without any due process, oversight, or accountability. COVID-19 has seen even greater attacks on the opposition and the shuttering of the largest media conglomerate.
In Thailand, the military-backed government has used the courts to dissolve political parties and bring legal cases against opposition figures, already having stolen an election in March 2019. The government wields enormous coercive legal powers through its arbitrarily applied Computer Crimes Act and lese majeste provisions of its criminal code.
In Indonesia, the opposition was largely co-opted by Jokowi when he brought his long-time political rival Prabowo Subianto into government as the minister of defense. The remainder of the opposition is a very loose coalition of parties that have little ideological or policy affinity for one another.
In Malaysia, the recently ousted Pakatan Harapan faces divisions over leadership and grapples with winning a new national base, especially among Malays, and among its own base who are dissatisfied with their slow record of implementing reforms while in office from 2018 until February of this year.
In Singapore, an expanded opposition has yet to resolve internal differences. While people may cast votes for the opposition, it is usually only a way to signal displeasure with the ruling People’s Action Party rather than voting for an alternative.
In short, political oppositions across the region are weak, divided, and largely unable to work together. In several cases, they are simply not up to the task of governing at all.
The second thing in favor of governments is the ability to distract. Governments can manufacture security incidents and political crises. As no country in Southeast Asia has a truly free press, governments can use mainstream media to push certain narratives. They have more resources at their disposal to rent a mob or an army of cyber trolls to shape opinions on social media. While there may be opposition and dissent, the government has greater coercive power as well as the ability to mobilize. COVID-19 at least in the short term limits the ability for mass protests, forcing criticism to be localized or online.
The third tool at their disposal is patronage. While traditional patronage has shrunk in COVID-19, we will likely see the fire sale of government assets to cronies or potential political rivals as governments face soaring budget deficits amidst recession. Increasingly, as has happened in earlier crises, regimes will shore up oligarchs as policies move toward protecting elites over ordinary citizens.
While no government is likely to fall in the short term as a result of its COVID-19 response, the impact on politics is significant. The pandemic has exposed weaknesses in governance capacity, weak leadership, and rising inequalities, to which governments have responded with an overreliance on security forces and onslaughts on critics. At the same time, they have tried to buy off challengers through patronage, keeping the political opposition weak and allowed distracting scapegoating narratives to take root — exposing their own fragility. In the short term COVID-19 has been a political opportunity for many governments, but as the crisis deepens with contracting economies the pathogens within these regimes may also spread.
Zachary Abuza is a professor at the National War College, Washington, DC and an adjunct at Georgetown University’s Security Studies Program. The views are his personal opinions and do not reflect the opinions of the National War College or the U.S. Department of Defense.
Bridget Welsh is Honorary Research Associate, UNoARI, University of Nottingham Malaysia and a lead author of the Asia Barometer Surveys.
NEW YORK (AP) — In a new video posted early Election Day, Beyoncé channels Pamela Anderson in the television program “Baywatch” – red one-piece swimsuit and all – and asks viewers to vote.
In the two-and-a-half-minute clip, set to most of “Bodyguard,” a four-minute cut from her 2024 country album “Cowboy Carter,” Beyoncé cosplays as Anderson’s character before concluding with a simple message, written in white text: “Happy Beylloween,” followed by “Vote.”
At a rally for Donald Trump in Pittsburgh on Monday night, the former president spoke dismissively about Beyoncé’s appearance at a Kamala Harris rally in Houston in October, drawing boos for the megastar from his supporters.
“Beyoncé would come in. Everyone’s expecting a couple of songs. There were no songs. There was no happiness,” Trump said.
She did not perform — unlike in 2016, when she performed at a presidential campaign rally for Hillary Clinton in Cleveland – but she endorsed Harris and gave a moving speech, initially joined onstage by her Destiny’s Child bandmate Kelly Rowland.
“I’m not here as a celebrity, I’m not here as a politician. I’m here as a mother,” Beyoncé said.
“A mother who cares deeply about the world my children and all of our children live in, a world where we have the freedom to control our bodies, a world where we’re not divided,” she said at the rally in Houston, her hometown.
“Imagine our daughters growing up seeing what’s possible with no ceilings, no limitations,” she continued. “We must vote, and we need you.”
Harris used the song in July during her first official public appearance as a presidential candidate at her campaign headquarters in Delaware. That same month, Beyoncé’s mother, Tina Knowles, publicly endorsed Harris for president.
Beyoncé gave permission to Harris to use the song, a campaign official who was granted anonymity to discuss private campaign operations confirmed to The Associated Press.
Outside of sports and a “Cold front coming down from Canada,” American news media only report on Canadian events that they believe are, or will be, influential to the US. Therefore, when Justin Trudeau’s announcement, having finally read the room, that Canada will be reducing the number of permanent residents admitted by more than 20 percent and temporary residents like skilled workers and college students will be cut by more than half made news south of the border, I knew the American media felt Trudeau’s about-face on immigration was newsworthy because many Americans would relate to Trudeau realizing Canada was accepting more immigrants than it could manage and are hoping their next POTUS will follow Trudeau’s playbook.
Canada, with lots of space and lacking convenient geographical ways for illegal immigrants to enter the country, though still many do, has a global reputation for being incredibly accepting of immigrants. On the surface, Montreal, Toronto, and Vancouver appear to be multicultural havens. However, as the saying goes, “Too much of a good thing is never good,” resulting in a sharp rise in anti-immigrant sentiment, which you can almost taste in the air. A growing number of Canadians, regardless of their political affiliation, are blaming recent immigrants for causing the housing affordability crises, inflation, rise in crime and unemployment/stagnant wages.
Throughout history, populations have engulfed themselves in a tribal frenzy, a psychological state where people identify strongly with their own group, often leading to a ‘us versus them’ mentality. This has led to quick shifts from complacency to panic and finger-pointing at groups outside their tribe, a phenomenon that is not unique to any particular culture or time period.
My take on why the American news media found Trudeau’s blatantly obvious attempt to save his political career, balancing appeasement between the pitchfork crowd, who want a halt to immigration until Canada gets its house in order, and immigrant voters, who traditionally vote Liberal, newsworthy; the American news media, as do I, believe immigration fatigue is why Kamala Harris is going to lose on November 5th.
Because they frequently get the outcome wrong, I don’t take polls seriously. According to polls in 2014, Tim Hudak’s Progressive Conservatives and Kathleen Wynne’s Liberals were in a dead heat in Ontario, yet Wynne won with more than twice as many seats. In the 2018 Quebec election, most polls had the Coalition Avenir Québec with a 1-to-5-point lead over the governing Liberals. The result: The Coalition Avenir Québec enjoyed a landslide victory, winning 74 of 125 seats. Then there’s how the 2016 US election polls showing Donald Trump didn’t have a chance of winning against Hillary Clinton were ridiculously way off, highlighting the importance of the election day poll and, applicable in this election as it was in 2016, not to discount ‘shy Trump supporters;’ voters who support Trump but are hesitant to express their views publicly due to social or political pressure.
My distrust in polls aside, polls indicate Harris is leading by a few points. One would think that Trump’s many over-the-top shenanigans, which would be entertaining were he not the POTUS or again seeking the Oval Office, would have him far down in the polls. Trump is toe-to-toe with Harris in the polls because his approach to the economy—middle-class Americans are nostalgic for the relatively strong economic performance during Trump’s first three years in office—and immigration, which Americans are hyper-focused on right now, appeals to many Americans. In his quest to win votes, Trump is doing what anyone seeking political office needs to do: telling the people what they want to hear, strategically using populism—populism that serves your best interests is good populism—to evoke emotional responses. Harris isn’t doing herself any favours, nor moving voters, by going the “But, but… the orange man is bad!” route, while Trump cultivates support from “weird” marginal voting groups.
To Harris’s credit, things could have fallen apart when Biden abruptly stepped aside. Instead, Harris quickly clinched the nomination and had a strong first few weeks, erasing the deficit Biden had given her. The Democratic convention was a success, as was her acceptance speech. Her performance at the September 10th debate with Donald Trump was first-rate.
Harris’ Achilles heel is she’s now making promises she could have made and implemented while VP, making immigration and the economy Harris’ liabilities, especially since she’s been sitting next to Biden, watching the US turn into the circus it has become. These liabilities, basically her only liabilities, negate her stance on abortion, democracy, healthcare, a long-winning issue for Democrats, and Trump’s character. All Harris has offered voters is “feel-good vibes” over substance. In contrast, Trump offers the tangible political tornado (read: steamroll the problems Americans are facing) many Americans seek. With Trump, there’s no doubt that change, admittedly in a messy fashion, will happen. If enough Americans believe the changes he’ll implement will benefit them and their country…
The case against Harris on immigration, at a time when there’s a huge global backlash to immigration, even as the American news media are pointing out, in famously immigrant-friendly Canada, is relatively straightforward: During the first three years of the Biden-Harris administration, illegal Southern border crossings increased significantly.
The words illegal immigration, to put it mildly, irks most Americans. On the legal immigration front, according to Forbes, most billion-dollar startups were founded by immigrants. Google, Microsoft, and Oracle, to name three, have immigrants as CEOs. Immigrants, with tech skills and an entrepreneurial thirst, have kept America leading the world. I like to think that Americans and Canadians understand the best immigration policy is to strategically let enough of these immigrants in who’ll increase GDP and tax base and not rely on social programs. In other words, Americans and Canadians, and arguably citizens of European countries, expect their governments to be more strategic about immigration.
The days of the words on a bronze plaque mounted inside the Statue of Liberty pedestal’s lower level, “Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free…” are no longer tolerated. Americans only want immigrants who’ll benefit America.
Does Trump demagogue the immigration issue with xenophobic and racist tropes, many of which are outright lies, such as claiming Haitian immigrants in Ohio are abducting and eating pets? Absolutely. However, such unhinged talk signals to Americans who are worried about the steady influx of illegal immigrants into their country that Trump can handle immigration so that it’s beneficial to the country as opposed to being an issue of economic stress.
In many ways, if polls are to be believed, Harris is paying the price for Biden and her lax policies early in their term. Yes, stimulus spending quickly rebuilt the job market, but at the cost of higher inflation. Loosen border policies at a time when anti-immigrant sentiment was increasing was a gross miscalculation, much like Trudeau’s immigration quota increase, and Biden indulging himself in running for re-election should never have happened.
If Trump wins, Democrats will proclaim that everyone is sexist, racist and misogynous, not to mention a likely White Supremacist, and for good measure, they’ll beat the “voter suppression” button. If Harris wins, Trump supporters will repeat voter fraud—since July, Elon Musk has tweeted on Twitter at least 22 times about voters being “imported” from abroad—being widespread.
Regardless of who wins tomorrow, Americans need to cool down; and give the divisive rhetoric a long overdue break. The right to an opinion belongs to everyone. Someone whose opinion differs from yours is not by default sexist, racist, a fascist or anything else; they simply disagree with you. Americans adopting the respectful mindset to agree to disagree would be the best thing they could do for the United States of America.
PHOENIX (AP) — Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a prominent proponent of debunked public health claims whom Donald Trump has promised to put in charge of health initiatives, said Saturday that Trump would push to remove fluoride from drinking water on his first day in office if elected president.
Fluoride strengthens teeth and reduces cavities by replacing minerals lost during normal wear and tear, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The addition of low levels of fluoride to drinking water has long been considered one of the greatest public health achievements of the last century.
Kennedy made the declaration Saturday on the social media platform X alongside a variety of claims about the heath effects of fluoride.
“On January 20, the Trump White House will advise all U.S. water systems to remove fluoride from public water,” Kennedy wrote. Trump and his wife, Melania Trump, “want to Make America Healthy Again,” he added, repeating a phrase Trump often uses and links to Kennedy.
Trump told NBC News on Sunday that he had not spoken to Kennedy about fluoride yet, “but it sounds OK to me. You know it’s possible.”
The former president declined to say whether he would seek a Cabinet role for Kennedy, a job that would require Senate confirmation, but added, “He’s going to have a big role in the administration.”
Asked whether banning certain vaccines would be on the table, Trump said he would talk to Kennedy and others about that. Trump described Kennedy as “a very talented guy and has strong views.”
The sudden and unexpected weekend social media post evoked the chaotic policymaking that defined Trump’s White House tenure, when he would issue policy declarations on Twitter at virtually all hours. It also underscored the concerns many experts have about Kennedy, who has long promoted debunked theories about vaccine safety, having influence over U.S. public health.
In 1950, federal officials endorsed water fluoridation to prevent tooth decay, and continued to promote it even after fluoride toothpaste brands hit the market several years later. Though fluoride can come from a number of sources, drinking water is the main source for Americans, researchers say.
Officials lowered their recommendation for drinking water fluoride levels in 2015 to address a tooth condition called fluorosis, that can cause splotches on teeth and was becoming more common in U.S. kids.
In August, a federal agency determined “with moderate confidence” that there is a link between higher levels of fluoride exposure and lower IQ in kids. The National Toxicology Program based its conclusion on studies involving fluoride levels at about twice the recommended limit for drinking water.
A federal judge later cited that study in ordering the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to further regulate fluoride in drinking water. U.S. District Judge Edward Chen cautioned that it’s not certain that the amount of fluoride typically added to water is causing lower IQ in kids, but he concluded that mounting research points to an unreasonable risk that it could be. He ordered the EPA to take steps to lower that risk, but didn’t say what those measures should be.
In his X post Saturday, Kennedy tagged Michael Connett, the lead attorney representing the plaintiff in that lawsuit, the environmental advocacy group Food & Water Watch.
Kennedy’s anti-vaccine organization has a lawsuit pending against news organizations including The Associated Press, accusing them of violating antitrust laws by taking action to identify misinformation, including about COVID-19 and COVID-19 vaccines. Kennedy is on leave from the group but is listed as one of its attorneys in the lawsuit.
What role Kennedy might hold if Trump wins on Tuesday remains unclear. Kennedy recently told NewsNation that Trump asked him to “reorganize” agencies including the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the National Institutes of Health, the Food and Drug Administration and some agencies under the Department of Agriculture.
But for now, the former independent presidential candidate has become one of Trump’s top surrogates. Trump frequently mentions having the support of Kennedy, a scion of a Democratic dynasty and the son of former Attorney General Robert Kennedy and nephew of President John F. Kennedy.
Kennedy traveled with Trump Friday and spoke at his rallies in Michigan and Wisconsin.
Trump said Saturday that he told Kennedy: “You can work on food, you can work on anything you want” except oil policy.
“He wants health, he wants women’s health, he wants men’s health, he wants kids, he wants everything,” Trump added.
