2023/18 “Forging Anwar’s Cabinet: Fervent Followers, Forbidden Friends, and Former Foes” by Francis E. Hutchinson
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
- Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim rolled out his cabinet quickly, naming 28 ministers from his sprawling coalition eight days after being sworn in. This was no mean feat. In today’s Malaysia, securing parliamentary majorities requires cobbling together amorphous multi-coalition groupings, with ‘equitable’ apportioning of cabinet positions as the glue.
- Pragmatism ruled the day, as key Pakatan Harapan reform pledges were sacrificed. Anwar simultaneously holds the positions of prime minister and finance minister. Ahmad Zahid Hamidi, the UMNO party president, is one of two deputy prime ministers – despite facing copious corruption charges.
- Within Pakatan Harapan (PH), Anwar’s Parti Keadilan Rakyat (PKR) did the best. Party members netted eight ministries, including six out of the ten with the largest budgets. Priority went to hard-core Anwar loyalists, who secured key positions such as education, health, and home affairs.
- PKR deputy president Rafizi Ramli was named to the high-profile but small-budget ministry of the economy. This nomination is the clearest indication that Anwar has no immediate plans to groom a successor.
- As for Barisan Nasional, the United Malays National Organization (UMNO) received six ministries. Those affiliated to Zahid – Anwar’s long-time forbidden friend – netted the influential defence, rural & regional development, and higher education portfolios.
- Pakatan Harapan’s new relationship with its former foe Gabungan Parti Sarawak (GPS) yielded its lead party, Parti Pesaka Bumiputera Bersatu (PBB), a deputy prime ministership, along with the works and plantation & commodities portfolios.
- Despite having the most MPs in PH, the Democratic Action Party only secured four ministerships, of which transport and local government are the most significant. This was partially compensated by the party also holding six strategic deputy ministerships.
- It is unlikely that tension within PH will be an issue in the near term. However, in so clearly tying his fortunes to Zahid Hamidi, Anwar raises questions about his commitment to reform and leaves himself vulnerable to the after-effects of UMNO’s internal factionalism.
* Francis E. Hutchinson is Senior Fellow and Coordinator of the Malaysia Studies Programme at ISEAS – Yusof Ishak Institute. The author would like to thank Dr Cassey Lee for the data on budgetary allocations per ministry. Comments from Cassey, Lee Hwok Aun, Kai Ostwald and Lee Poh Onn are much appreciated. Thanks are also due to Ooi Kee Beng for his “finely tuned” edits.
ISEAS Perspective 2023/18, 15 March 2023
INTRODUCTION
While Anwar Ibrahim is currently Malaysia’s most powerful politician, it has been a quarter century since he last held public office. His sacking as deputy prime minister and finance minister took place in 1998 – before many of Malaysia’s voters were born. Anwar’s subsequent career as an opposition leader, his formidable oratorical ability, and several near-misses at the top job have created a mystique about what sort of leader he will be.
Despite his considerable skill set, Anwar comes to power under new and more fluid circumstances than most of his predecessors. Gone are the days when the winner could secure a crushing parliamentary majority by itself. This period, spanning 1955-2008, still evokes fond memories among Barisan Nasional (BN) veterans, when that coalition had a two-thirds majority in parliament and could amend the Constitution at will. Nor is Malaysia still in the 2008-2020 period, when two national coalitions – Barisan Nasional and Pakatan Harapan[1] – battled it out at the polls. While they commanded ever-decreasing majorities in parliament, the victorious coalitions were nevertheless still able to attain power by themselves (Figure One).
Figure 1: Majorities in Parliament (1955-2022)
Now, following the 2020 Sheraton Move, which sundered PH and ushered in the Muhyiddin Yassin and subsequently the Ismail Sabri administrations, Malaysia’s political context is more fractious and fractured. Both Muhyiddin and Ismail Sabri struggled to garner enough MPs to form a majority, and their effectiveness to govern was consistently undercut by the threat of elections or parliamentary defections.
Following Malaysia’s general election in November 2022, intense negotiations and the long-standing personal friendship between Anwar Ibrahim and UMNO party president Zahid Hamidi enabled PH and BN – formerly the bitterest of rivals – to jointly secure 112 out of a total 222 MPs. This razor-thin majority, bolstered by lots of cajoling, as well as backing by the Monarch resulted in a total of 148 parliamentarians supporting Anwar’s self-styled Unity Government.
While this is, in theory, a two-thirds majority, it is a qualitatively different political alliance from those that Barisan Nasional used to enjoy in its heyday. At present, the country is not led by a single coalition but, rather, a coalition of coalitions, namely Pakatan Harapan, Barisan Nasional, Gabungan Parti Sarawak (GPS), and Gabungan Rakyat Sabah (GRS), as well as smaller parties and independents (Appendix One). In this sense, Anwar’s coalition has more in common with the Muhyiddin Yassin and Ismail Sabri administrations, which also relied on multiple coalitions to achieve a majority. Furthermore, all three groupings were reliant upon backing by the Monarch to secure power.
This, then, makes things difficult for aspiring national leaders. Instead of a two-level game, where leaders needed to keep their party intact and then deal with their allies, they now need to operate on three levels. At present, they need to: satisfy their parties; attend to coalition partners; and then reach out and secure partner coalitions. This means that, more than most of his predecessors, Anwar must make alliances and policies in circumstances not of his choosing.
As to his leadership, the new prime minister gave some insight into his thinking in a Bloomberg interview in February. There, he likened himself to Cordelia, King Lear’s third daughter.[2] Despite being last in succession to the throne, Cordelia gained valuable experience observing how her two elder siblings fared when tested by their father. Similarly, Anwar has watched Muhyiddin Yassin abdicate and Ismail Sabri accept premature polls – largely caused by their questioned legitimacy and disputed majorities.
Anwar thus begins his administration keenly aware of the need to establish a firm grasp on power and has therefore moved rapidly to cement his position in his first 100 days. Key steps include: signing the Memorandum of Understanding with coalition partners to lock in their support; calling for a motion of confidence in parliament to establish his majority; and unveiling a new policy framework ‘Malaysia Madani’ to control the narrative. However, while these measures secured his grip on power, they don’t shed much light on Anwar’s thinking or priorities. To date, the best insight into these issues remains the composition of his cabinet.
THE ‘BARGAIN’
Anwar was sworn in as Malaysia’s tenth prime minister on the 24th of November. A mere eight days later, he announced his ministerial line-up, which was then followed by deputy ministers a week later.[3] The full line-up comprising 28 ministers and 27 deputy ministers was a tad smaller than Ismail Sabri’s complement of 31 ministers and 37 deputies.[4] The rationale for a leaner cabinet was to save costs, which was further bolstered by a temporary 20 percent reduction in salaries and allowances.[5]
The complexity inherent in satisfying the nineteen parties and two independents in the Unity Government was belied by its rapidity. The new line-up contained many relatively unknown people, some high-profile policymakers were skipped over, and there are tales of MPs being informed of their appointment mere minutes before the public was. However, when seen in aggregate, there was clear method to the madness. Indeed, these decisions may well have been facilitated by regular communication between Anwar and UMNO party president Zahid Hamidi over the past months.[6]
There are important structural differences between Anwar’s cabinet and that of his two immediate predecessors, Muhyiddin and Ismail Sabri. Both studiously avoided naming a deputy prime minister to lower the risks of being toppled by an ambitious rival. In contrast, Anwar named not one deputy, but two. The first, Parti Pesaka Bumiputera Bersatu’s (PBB) Fadillah Yusof was uncontroversial, as this nomination cemented that party’s coalition Gabungan Parti Sarawak in the Unity Government. It also fulfilled a PH’s campaign pledge to name a deputy prime minister from East Malaysia.
However, the second deputy was much more controversial. Zahid Hamidi, the UMNO party president has long been the bête noire of urban voters. He faces charges of corruption, money laundering and criminal breach of trust, and is arguably the source of much of Malaysia’s recent political turmoil. Yet, this position is clearly part of the pact between Anwar and Zahid and binds the Unity Government’s largest and second-largest coalitions together. It also provides grist for Zahid’s argument to his party that UMNO is better-placed in Anwar’s grouping as the sole outfit representing Malay voters. Despite their long-standing rivalry, this partnership is preferable to being outshone by the Islamic party PAS and Muhyiddin Yassin’s Parti Pribumi Bersatu Malaysia (Bersatu) should BN throw in their lot with Perikatan Nasional.
The depth and breadth of the Anwar-Zahid agreement is further seen in the allocation of the ten largest ministries by budget (Figure Two). The distribution of the key portfolios shows that at the centre of the Unity Government constellation lies a binary system with a smaller planet in their orbit. Anwar’s PKR and Zahid’s UMNO occupy nine out of the ten largest ministries and GPS’s PBB holds the tenth. This is the clearest indication that, rhetoric notwithstanding, principles have had to, for the moment at least, cede ground to securing power.
Figure 2: Ministries by Budget (2023)
Source: data from the Malaysian Ministry of Finance
THE FOLLOWERS
Turning first to the followers, Anwar’s Parti Keadilan Rakyat did the best of all Unity Government members – netting eight cabinet positions – of which six are among the ten biggest ministries – and five deputy ministerships.[7] The biggest of them all, finance, is held by Anwar himself, who also helms an expanded prime minister’s department which has absorbed what used to be the ministry of federal territories.
For much of PH’s vote base, the retention of the finance portfolio by the prime minister brings back memories of the first Mahathir administration and, more recently, the Najib Razak era. In addition to these unwelcome associations, this moonlighting has practical implications. With a budget of more than RM 65 billion and a bevy of government-linked investment companies such as Khazanah, the Employees’ Provident Fund, and Permodalan Nasional Berhad under the purview of the ministry of finance, covering all bases will be demanding to say the least. This then implies a greater role for the two deputy ministers or, more likely, external advisors for policy inputs.[8]
Education, health, and home affairs were awarded to established PKR members and Anwar loyalists. Fadhlina Sidek, the minister of education is a first-time MP and the head of the PKR women’s wing. She is also the daughter of Siddiq Fadzil, the founder of ABIM – the Islamic student movement which Anwar once led. The minister of health, Zaliha Mustafa, is also a first-time MP. She is a medical doctor and is seen as being close to Anwar’s wife, Wan Azizah. Saifuddin Nasution is, arguably, Anwar’s most trusted ally dating back to his time in UMNO. He is the Secretary-General of PKR and despite serving in various state and federal seats over the years, lost his parliamentary contest in 2022. Appointed as a senator, Saifuddin now helms the Ministry of Home Affairs, which oversees the police, prisons, as well as the Registrar of Societies. The Registrar is charged with monitoring the governance of guilds, associations, and political parties. Most recently, it approved UMNO’s decision that the positions of president and deputy president would not be contested in that party’s ongoing internal election.[9]
Turning to the remaining ministries, Nik Nazmi is a PKR vice president and holds the newly-formed natural resources, environment, and climate change ministry. Part of the younger generation of leaders, Nik has a long association with Anwar, including once being his assistant. Two other smaller, yet quite strategic, ministries are: communication and digital, headed by PKR communications chief Fahmi Fadzil, who is Nurul Izzah’s former political secretary; and science, technology, and innovation, now helmed by Chang Lih Kang, who as PKR vice-president is the party’s highest-ranking non-Malay.
Yet, while observing party hierarchy is evident in most of these choices, there are exceptions. An accountant by training and gifted at sniffing out graft and corruption, PKR deputy president Rafizi Ramli was a contender for the finance portfolio.[10] However, as minister of economy, he has a high-profile but very constrained position. While the ministry is responsible for long-term planning through the Economic Planning Unit, it has a very small budget and does not have the means to compel other ministries to follow its recommendations. Unlike Azmin Ali, who served in the same capacity during the first Pakatan Harapan administration, the economy ministry has relinquished ownership and oversight of government-linked corporations to the ministry of finance.[11]
The official reason for retaining the finance portfolio is that naming anyone else would alienate PH’s coalition partners.[12] But this is an unusual argument as inter-coalition squabbles are over which grouping gets the ministry in question, not which person. It is more likely, then, that Rafizi is being placed there to cool his heels. This nomination is the clearest indication that Anwar is planning on sticking around for a good while yet.
FORBIDDEN FRIENDS AND FORMER FOES
Turning now to PH’s forbidden friends, Barisan Nasional got six ministerial portfolios of which three are particularly key. Defence went to UMNO deputy president Mohamad Hasan. In addition to commanding Malaysia’s most prestigious institution, the popular former menteri besar of Negri Sembilan will be charged with managing the Littoral Combat Ship (LCS) scandal. Involving some RM 9.2 billion to procure six ships which have yet to appear, the affair implicates both former prime minister Najib Razak and Zahid Hamidi who oversaw the project during their respective tenures as minister of defence.[13]
Khaled Nordin, the former menteri besar of Johor and UMNO vice president was appointed to the higher education portfolio – a position he held from 2008 to 2013. Rounding out the top three is Zahid Hamidi himself, who was named to the rural and regional development ministry. This portfolio will stand UMNO in good stead as it seeks to bolster its profile in its rural Malay-majority heartland.
Azalina Othman, the longstanding MP for Penggerang and UMNO Supreme Council member was named law and institutional reform minister. She is one of only a handful of female ministers, and as deputy speaker during the Muhyiddin Yassin administration acquired a name for speaking her mind. BN secretary-general Zambry Abdul Kadir was named minister of foreign affairs, and former minister of finance Tengku Zafrul was moved to international trade and industry.
When seen through the lens of UMNO’s hierarchy, these appointments were very strategic and foreshadowed the party purge that took place the following month. The party’s apex took the largest portfolios on offer, with the president (Zahid), the deputy president (Mohamad Hasan), and one vice president (Khaled Nordin) being awarded the choicest portfolios.[14]
Conversely, party members that had cabinet positions under Ismail Sabri were bypassed. Thus, the other two vice presidents, Mahadzir Khalid and Ismail Sabri were left out, as were Hishammuddin Hussein, Khairy Jamaluddin, and former minister of higher education Noraini Ahmad. Furthermore, none of the other new ministers – Azalina, Zambry, Zafrul – are themselves powerful enough to constitute an alternative centre of power. Of note is that both Zambry and Zafrul lost their parliamentary contests and were named as senators to enable them to join cabinet.
The third largest coalition in the Unity Government is Gabungan Parti Sarawak (GPS). It is comprised of four parties, of which the largest and most influential is Parti Pesaka Bumiputera Bersatu (PBB). PBB was a plank of Barisan Nasional until 2018, when it left the coalition and formed GPS with three other parties. During the first Pakatan Harapan administration, relations with GPS were rocky, outlined by public disagreements between then-minister of finance Lim Guan Eng and Sarawak premier Abang Johari.[15]
GPS’ performance in the state has solidified, with the coalition securing a total of 23 out of Sarawak’s 31 MPs in the general election.[16] In the days following the polls, it seemed likely that GPS would join the Perikatan Nasional grouping. However, while PBB’s leadership was disposed to this, its other coalition members were not, asserting that Sarawak’s more mixed ethnic and religious composition would be ill-served in PN.[17] Following considerable lobbying and apologies by PH leaders, GPS agreed to let bygones be bygones.[18]
In addition to the deputy prime ministership, three senior PBB leaders secured cabinet portfolios. Thus, Fadillah Yusof, senior vice president, Alexander Nanta Linggi, secretary-general, and Nancy Shukri, women’s vice-chief, were named minister of plantations & commodities, works, and women, family & community development, respectively. GPS as a whole also secured six deputy ministerships, including several strategic nominations, including natural resources and rural & regional development – which are key to the sprawling state’s economic progress. In addition, the portfolios of transport and health also map onto areas where Sarawak is pushing for greater autonomy.
THE REST
What can be said about the other members of Anwar’s cabinet?
Despite the need to bring the Unity Government’s sprawling membership to the table, one appointment was decidedly non-partisan. Na’im Mokhtar is former Chief Judge of the Syariah Court, the apex of Malaysia’s religious judiciary. An established scholar and law lecturer, Na’im has served in Syariah courts in different parts of the country for more than two decades. Given the centrality of religious issues in Malaysia’s political context, this move was strategic and avoided internal tension.
Despite being the party with the most MPs (40), the Democratic Action Party (DAP) only secured four ministerial portfolios. The cohort of ministers and deputy ministers is, on aggregate, younger than that of the first PH administration, and several high-profile personalities were left out. Of the four: DAP secretary-general Anthony Loke was named to transport, which he held during the first PH administration; Perak State Chairman Nga Kor Min is minister for local government and development; deputy secretary general V Sivakumar has the human resources portfolio; and assistant national publicity secretary Hannah Yeoh is minister for youth and sports. The relatively small haul of ministries for the DAP is partially compensated by six strategic deputy ministerships. These include finance, trade and industry, education, communication, law and institutional reform and – somewhat surprisingly for the largely urban party – agriculture.
Given its relatively scant haul of 8 MPs, PH’s third component party Amanah did relatively well –– securing two ministries and two deputy ministerships. Party president Mohamad Sabu was named minister of agriculture, and deputy president Salahuddin Ayub is in charge of the domestic trade and cost of living portfolio. Amanah members were also awarded the deputy ministerships for defence and women, family & community development. Surprisingly, the well-regarded Dzulkefly Ahmad was not invited to return to the ministry of health – probably because awarding a third ministry to Amanah would have raised the hackles of other coalition members.
This favourable treatment can be seen in relation to Gabungan Rakyat Sabah, the fourth coalition partner of the Unity Government. Despite contributing six MPs to Anwar’s majority, the coalition was awarded only one (albeit strategic) ministerial portfolio – that of Sabah and Sarawak affairs – and a deputy ministership of the relatively small-budget tourism, arts, and culture portfolio.
Other component parties that did less well out of the deal include Warisan and the Malaysian United Democratic Alliance (MUDA). Sabah-based Warisan has three MPs and is led by Shafie Apdal, the high-profile former menteri besar of Sabah. Despite being one of the five signatories to the Memorandum of Agreement to support Anwar’s Unity Government, it only received a deputy ministership, that for higher education. This was most likely due to the breakdown in relations with Pakatan Harapan in the GE15 campaign, which led Warisan to directly compete against Anwar’s coalition. Furthermore, Shafie Apdal was seriously considered as an alternative prime ministerial candidate for PH in 2020 and 2021. MUDA, led by charismatic MP Syed Saddiq also came home empty-handed. The youth-focused party underperformed in GE15, and also has had a fractious relationship with PKR.
OUTLOOK
Despite backtracking on key PH reform items, Anwar’s position within his own coalition is relatively secure. Despite its penchant for internal factionalism, PKR looks relatively cohesive for now. Its waves of high-profile and unseemly departures have ebbed, and Rafizi is unlikely to rock the boat in the near term. Similarly, the DAP and Amanah are unlikely to cause trouble, as this is the best deal on offer for them.
However, the price to pay for forging a sprawling multi-party bloc is that Anwar can now be affected by internal turmoil within other parties and partner coalitions. At present, the biggest issue for Anwar is, paradoxically, UMNO – the erstwhile most disciplined of organizations. UMNO is still dealing with the fallout from its 2018 loss and, while many party dissenters have been purged, Zahid’s position is not entirely secure. His opponents may yet secure a majority in either the Supreme Council or the vice-presidencies in the party elections. In addition, Anwar’s support of Zahid may become untenable in the event the latter is convicted in his ongoing court case.
Looking elsewhere in the Unity Government, GRS has also had its moments of instability and tension. GRS and BN, which both are active in Sabah, have had deep disagreements over cabinet positions in the Sabah state government. This led to a short-lived attempt by the UMNO branch in Sabah to topple the state administration.[19] While this has died down, relations still remain fraught between BN in Sabah and GRS.
Last, while GPS’ hold on power in Sarawak is unshakable, it has very different interests than the other coalitions. All peninsula-based groupings see state governments as an intermediate step on the way to securing federal power. Sarawak, with its rich natural resource base and more expansive remit of state government responsibilities, is a different proposition altogether. While Fadillah Yusof, Alexander Nanta Linggi, and Nancy Shukri hold important positions in PBB, they are actually not the party’s paramount leaders. The PBB president, Abang Johari, and the two deputy presidents, Douglas Uggah Embas and Awang Tengah Ali Hassan, are the Sarawak premiers and deputy premiers respectively. Consequently, GPS will focus overwhelmingly on more resources and autonomy for Sarawak, and these considerations will outweigh any plum position – barring that of the prime ministership itself – that can be offered by Anwar.
With his first 100 days behind him, Anwar has acted proactively to solidify his hold on power. Adept at backroom negotiations, gifted at understanding the prevailing mood of the times, and an able orator, the nature of the alliance that he has cobbled together will test his formidable capabilities. And, that is in addition to governing the country.
Appendix One – The Unity Government and its Supporters
Appendix Two – Anwar Ibrahim’s Cabinet
| Current Ministry/ Pakatan Harapan Equivalent | Budget RM mil* | Person | Party | Constituency |
| Finance | 65,799 | Anwar Ibrahim | PKR | Tambun, Perak |
| Education | 55,569 | Fadhina Sidek | PKR | Nibong Tebal, Penang |
| Health | 36,139 | Zaliha Mustafa | PKR | Sekijang, Johor |
| Home Affairs | 18,307 | Saifuddin Nasution | PKR | Senator |
| Defence | 17,379 | Mohamad Hasan | UMNO | Rembau, Melaka |
| Prime Minister’s Department | 15,543* | |||
| Economy | Rafizi Ramli | PKR | ||
| Religious Affairs | Na’im Mokhtar | n/a | Senator | |
| Parliament and Laws | Azalina Othman | UMNO | Penggerang | |
| Sabah and Sarawak Affairs & Special Duties | Armizan Mohd Ali | Sabah Bersatu | Papar, Sabah | |
| Higher Education | 15,089 | Khaled Nordin | UMNO | Kota Tinggi, Johor |
| Rural and Regional Development | 10,931 | Zahid Hamidi (also Deputy Prime Minister) | UMNO | Bagan Datuk |
| Natural Resources, Environment, and Climate Change/ Environment and Water & Energy and Natural Resources | 10,704 | Nik Nazmi | PKR | Setiawangsa, KL Federal Territory |
| Works | 8,136 | Alexander Nanta Linggi | PBB (GPS) | Kapit, Sarawak |
| Transport | 6,093 | Anthony Loke | DAP | Seremban, Negri Sembilan |
| Local Government Development | 5,409 | Nga Kor Ming | DAP | Teluk Intan, Perak |
| Agriculture and Food Security | 5,317 | Mohamad Sabu | Amanah | Kota Raja, Selangor |
| Women, Family, and Community | 3,392 | Nancy Shukri | PBB (GPS) | Santubong, Sarawak |
| Communications and Multi-Media | 2,737 | Fahmi Fadzil | PKR | Lembah Pantai |
| International Trade and Industry | 1,557 | Tengku Zafrul | UMNO | Senator |
| Human Resources | 1,327 | V. Sivakumar | DAP | Batu Gajah, Perak |
| Domestic Trade and Cost of Living | 1,251 | Salahuddin Ayub | Amanah | Pulai, Johor |
| Tourism, Arts, and Culture | 1,165 | Tiong King Sing | Progressive Democratic Party (GPS) | Bintulu, Sarawak |
| Science, Technology and Innovation | 1,062 | Chang Lih Kang | PKR | Tanjong Malim, Perak |
| Youth and Sports | 977 | Hannah Yeoh | DAP | Segambut, KL Federal Territory |
| Foreign Affairs | 921 | Zambry Abdul Kadir | UMNO | Senator |
| Entrepreneur Development and Cooperatives | 668 | Ewon Benedick | UPKO | Penampang, Sabah |
| Plantation and Commodities | 496 | Fadillah Yusof (also Deputy Prime Minister) | PBB (GPS) | Petra Jaya, Sarawak |
| National Unity | 461 | Aaron Ago Dagang | PRS | Kanowit, Sarawak |
| Economy | 265** | Rafizi Ramli | PKR | Pandan, Selangor |
* Including the re-named Department of Federal Territories.
** Mini-budget
* Including the re-named Department of Federal Territories.
** Mini-budget
ENDNOTES
For endnotes, please refer to the original pdf document.
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2023/17 “What to Expect from Indonesia’s ASEAN Chairmanship 2023” by Melinda Martinus
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
- There are high expectations that Indonesia’s ASEAN chairmanship this year will bolster the regional grouping’s relevance, given Indonesia’s success in convening the G20 Summit last year, and its excellent track record in providing transformational leadership in the region.
- Indonesia’s chairmanship will face multiple challenges, including the Myanmar crisis. How the ASEAN Chair responds to the global threats of the Ukraine War and the intensifying US-China rivalry will also matter.
- The proliferation of military and economic alliances in the Indo-Pacific such as the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue (QUAD) and the Global Security Initiative (GSI), continues to affect regional stability and challenge ASEAN centrality.
- Indonesia can be expected to push forward the negotiation for the South China Sea Code of Conduct (COC) and also advance the accession of Timor-Leste to the regional grouping.
- Indonesia has high confidence in ASEAN’s role; thus, beyond managing geopolitics and great power rivalry, it needs to direct its resources towards boosting economic recovery and strengthening the institutional capacity of the ASEAN Secretariat.
* Melinda Martinus is Lead Researcher in Socio-cultural Affairs at the ASEAN Studies Centre, ISEAS – Yusof Ishak Institute.
ISEAS Perspective 2023/17, 13 March 2023
INTRODUCTION
Indonesia’s adept leadership of the Group of 20 (G20) in 2022 has elevated its reputation as a rising middle power that can moderate great power competition. Now as it assumes the chairmanship of ASEAN for 2023, there are high expectations that Jakarta will lead the regional grouping in maintaining stability in the Indo-Pacific and re-energising the region in the post-pandemic period.
Often considered the de-facto leader of ASEAN due to its demographic and economic size, Jakarta’s previous ASEAN leadership stint has been transformational. Indonesia was proactive in conducting “shuttle diplomacy” to settle the territorial conflict between Cambodia and Thailand over the Preah Vihear Temple during its chairmanship in 2011. The country also played an essential role in the conception of the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP), the world’s largest free trade agreement (FTA) to date, and initiated the ASEAN Outlook on the Indo-Pacific, a guide for the region to shape the strategic architecture in the Asia-Pacific and Indian Ocean regions.
The poly-crisis of inflationary pressures stemming from COVID-19, the war in Ukraine, intensifying military tensions in the Indo-Pacific, and escalating US-China competition are impinging on the region. These challenges will test Indonesia’s leadership and diplomatic capabilities in the months to come.
How Indonesia will lead ASEAN remains to be seen. The latest State of Southeast Asia Survey 2023 conducted by the ISEAS – Yusof Ishak Institute might be an appropriate weathervane that can provide insights into Indonesia’s priorities in dealing with regional and global crises.[1] Although the survey results do not present a definitive view of issues in the region or represent Indonesia’s foreign policy directions, it is a benchmark for parsing and comparing the concerns and priorities of different ASEAN member states. The survey drew the views of 1,308 Southeast Asians from all ten ASEAN member states to understand their perceptions on regional affairs, and ASEAN engagement with the major powers. 121 respondents from Indonesia (9.3% of the total respondents) participated in the survey, representing academia, businesses, civil society, governments, and international organisations.
RESPONDING TO INTERNAL AND EXTERNAL CRISES
The year 2022 was a challenging one for ASEAN. Amid increasing great power competition and evolving threats to regional security, Cambodia, as the ASEAN chair, had to walk the tightrope to manage at least three internal and external security threats affecting the region: the Myanmar crisis, the war in Ukraine, and the threat of conflict in the Taiwan Strait. Under Indonesia’s chairmanship, Myanmar will become a defining crisis for the region due to the individual ASEAN countries’ divergent stances and the lack of progress in implementing the Five Point Consensus (5PC), a guiding document agreed upon by ASEAN leaders to solve the crisis in Myanmar. Meanwhile, the global community will be closely watching how ASEAN continues to respond to the Ukraine war and to the intensifying US-China rivalry.
Pressure is now mounting for Indonesia to lead the regional grouping to restore peace in Myanmar. Indonesia arguably inherits a much more complex situation in Myanmar than the previous two chairs. The coup has aggravated Myanmar’s ethnic conflicts, worsened the humanitarian crisis, and potentially opened up an arena for proxy war for major powers. Amid this rapidly changing conflict landscape, the effectiveness of the ASEAN 5PC is in question –despite its success in galvanising international support. Indonesian elites in the survey tend to be more pessimistic about the ASEAN 5PC compared to other regional respondents. 28.1% of Indonesians hold the view that the ASEAN 5PC will not work, given the intransigence of the junta, and 24% argue that the ASEAN 5PC is fundamentally flawed in addressing complex issues. Conversely, only 18.2% agree that 5PC is the most suitable option under the current circumstances in Myanmar.
Beyond the ASEAN 5PC, Indonesia elites tend to hold a strong view that dialogue with all key stakeholders, including the National Unity Government (NUG), to build trust is vital (50.4%) – significantly higher than most elites from other ASEAN countries, especially the previous ASEAN chair, Cambodia (17.2%). Two months into its chairmanship, Indonesia has shown an appetite for corralling efforts from multiple avenues. President Joko Widodo has considered sending a top general to meet the military junta to show them how Indonesia successfully transitioned to democracy.[2] Foreign Minister Retno Marsudi stated that Indonesia will establish an office of the ASEAN special envoy on Myanmar and she underlined the importance of ASEAN efforts to be synergised with concerned neighbouring countries, and the United Nations.[3] However, the upcoming elections planned by the junta administration may put ASEAN in a dilemma of either recognising it or suspending the country for failing to meet the 5PC commitments.
On responding to the war in Ukraine, ASEAN under Cambodia’s chairmanship last year was able to facilitate Ukraine’s accession to the Treaty of Amity and Cooperation (TAC), despite ASEAN countries’ divergent stances on the Russian invasion.[4] Though symbolic, the signing was a win for Cambodian diplomacy.
Will Indonesia continue these efforts? It might not be a priority under its ASEAN chairmanship, but playing an active role on Ukraine is an excellent diplomatic exercise for President Joko Widodo’s administration. In its capacity as the president of the Group of 20 (G20), Indonesia attempted to broker peace between Ukraine and Russia. Jokowi became the first ASEAN leader to meet both Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and Russian President Vladimir Putin. The success of issuing a joint leader’s statement condemning Russia’s aggression at the G20 summit was also seen as a major diplomatic achievement by Indonesia. Jokowi and his administration seemed to enjoy approval from its citizens; more than half of Indonesian elites in the survey strongly approved or approved of their government’s diplomatic attempts. In addition, most Indonesians are extremely concerned with Russia’s invasion of Ukraine (61.2%), especially with the increase in energy and food prices and economic hardship stemming from the war.
The escalating US-China tensions will undoubtedly be felt in the region and will put ASEAN in a difficult situation. Most of the ASEAN elites in the survey agree that the conflict between the US and China in the Taiwan Strait will destabilise the region (43.3 %). ASEAN’s approach towards the Taiwan Strait has been to avoid open conflict. In the wake of US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s visit to Taiwan last year, ASEAN Foreign Ministers quickly issued a statement on the Cross Strait Development, calling for maximum restraint and reiterating support for the One-China Policy.[5] This modus operandi should endure as ASEAN citizens (45.6 %) in the survey believe that their country should oppose the use of force and instead utilise diplomatic measures to mediate the conflict. Of note, Indonesian respondents (66.1 %) express the strongest support for this approach.
There is no sign that the rivalry between the US and China will recede. Washington’s crackdown on Chinese companies’ technology access and the recent spy balloon incident have defined a new cold war between the two major powers. ASEAN is at risk of splintering between the two. When posed the hypothetical question of ASEAN having to align itself with one of the two superpowers, most of the Southeast Asian respondents chose the US (61.1%) over China (38.9 %). However, at the county level, China continues to enjoy popular support from the three ASEAN Muslim countries: Brunei (55%), Malaysia (54.8%) and Indonesia (53.7%). Interestingly, Indonesian respondents are the most evenly split in this view compared to their ASEAN cohort (53.7% choosing China and 46.7% choosing the US), indicating that Indonesian elites are quite polarised in their view of the US and China divide.
Indonesian elites’ perceptions of China have been changing gradually. The survey traced the trust and distrust ranking of major powers in the region over the past five years. While it is true that the majority of Indonesian elites are not confident about Beijing’s leadership, the level of trust in Beijing to do the right thing in the region has improved, probably due to the tangible economic impacts such as trade and investment that Beijing brings into the region. From 2019 to 2021, less than 20% of Indonesian elites participating in the annual survey had confidence in Beijing’s leadership. In the past two years (2022-2023), this number has surpassed 20% (Chart 1).
A separate survey conducted by the ISEAS – Yusof Ishak Institute of ordinary Indonesian citizens, the Indonesia National Survey Project 2022: Engaging with Developments in the Political, Economic, and Social Spheres, however, found that Indonesians generally hold negative perceptions of the China and Indonesia bilateral relationship, which is a reversal of the trend seen in the same survey conducted in 2017.[6] At the same time, negative opinions towards China’s Belt and Road Initiative are also more strongly evident.
The two mixed opinions over China among Indonesians from two different surveys indicate that there are conflicting perceptions between the significant portion of Indonesian elites who think of China favourably, and the public who express anxiety over China’s influence in the country.
Chart 1 How confident are you that China will “do the right thing” to contribute to global peace, security, prosperity, and governance? (Indonesian respondents)
Source: the State of Southeast Asia 2019-2023 Report, ISEAS – Yusof Ishak Institute
REALIGNING ASEAN CENTRALITY
ASEAN centrality continues to be challenged by the proliferation of security alliances in the Indo-Pacific led by the US and China. As a non-aligned organisation, ASEAN is generally wary that these developments would further strain regional stability and side-line the region in shaping the Indo-Pacific regional architecture. The State of Southeast Asia survey finds that Southeast Asia has diverging responses and receptiveness to these alliances.
ASEAN’s response to the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue (QUAD), an informal grouping comprising Australia, Japan, India and the United States, is generally positive. 50.4% of regional respondents agree or strongly agree that the strengthening of this mini-lateral group will be constructive for the region. Brunei, Indonesia, Malaysia, Myanmar, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam support this view. The QUAD’s positive engagement, such as vaccine assistance, and its attempt to forge tangible cooperation on climate change, cyberspace, maritime security, and humanitarian aid over the past years might have significantly shaped this welcoming attitude.
While the majority of Indonesians in the survey are receptive of the QUAD (51.3% agree or strongly agree that QUAD will be constructive for the region), the proportion of those Indonesians wary of the QUAD is among the highest in ASEAN (14.5%). Aside from tangible cooperation and assistance, Jakarta’s receptiveness can be seen from China’s growing assertiveness. Although Jakarta remains suspicious of US military motives in the region, it needs the US and its allies’ support in balancing China’s aggression in the South China Sea.[7] Meanwhile, the primary concern with the QUAD is the side-lining of ASEAN, which has been the linchpin in Indonesia’s foreign policy.[8]
President Xi Jinping’s introduction of the Global Security Initiative (GSI) to promote common and sustainable security marks a clear shift from China’s economic engagement – which is primarily defined by the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) – to one of military endeavour.[9] Critics argue that the GSI is full of ambitious rhetoric but still light on concrete initiatives. Rather than purely projecting China’s ambitious global outreach and ensuring international order, the GSI is mainly seen as an attempt to counter the growing US-coalition.[10] Thus, 44.5% of regional respondents express little or no confidence that it will benefit the region, Meanwhile, 27.4% feel confident or very confident, while 28% of respondents have no comment. This lack of confidence is most pronounced in Myanmar, Vietnam, Indonesia, the Philippines and Thailand.
Indonesia’s response to the GSI has been carefully calculated so far, given China’s growing economic influence in the country and territorial disputes around the Natuna Islands. ASEAN as a regional grouping might likely adopt the same restrained attitude. In the joint press statement following the bilateral meeting between Jokowi and Xi Jinping in July 2022, Indonesia stated that it “takes note of the Global Security Initiative and stands ready to work with the Chinese side.” The language used in the statement “takes note” is somewhat cautious and compromised rather than entirely buying into the initiative.[11]
ADVANCING THE SOUTH CHINA SEA CODE OF CONDUCT (COC) AND TIMOR-LESTE’S ACCESSION
Indonesia is expected to leverage the momentum of its chairmanship to continue advancing the South China Sea COC which remains unresolved after years of painful negotiation. Critics argue that the slow progress of the negotiations is due to member states prioritising bilateral ties with China over reaching regional consensus.[12]
In November 2002, China and the 10 ASEAN member nations approved the Declaration on the Conduct of Parties in the South China Sea (DOC) as the first region-wide step to improve trust between disputed parties before adopting a much stronger and legally binding COC.[13] All members of ASEAN were committed to peacefully resolving the conflicts, even though only Brunei, Vietnam, Malaysia, and the Philippines are direct claimant states in the disputed waters.
Indonesia is not a claimant state in the South China Sea disputes, but recently it faced Chinese vessel incursions and pushback from China over its exploration of oil and gas reserves in the Natuna Sea.[14] [15] Thus, aside from a bilateral negotiation, Indonesia’s space to negotiate the disputes is somewhat limited to it being part of ASEAN.[16] At the recent ASEAN Foreign Minister’s Retreat, Foreign Minister Retno Marsudi stated that Indonesia was ready to host negotiations of the South China Sea COC.[17] Additionally, exploring pragmatic approaches such as facilitating maritime dialogues through the ASEAN Maritime Forum and the Expanded ASEAN Maritime Forum are also important to build trust among the disputing parties.
ASEAN communities are looking forward to the accession of Timor-Leste to the regional grouping. Nearly two-thirds of Southeast Asians in the survey (61.5%) support the accession of Timor-Leste to ASEAN. Support from Indonesia is strong, with 67.8% of Indonesian respondents supporting their neighbour. Meanwhile, 24.8% of them are unsure about admitting Timor-Leste, most likely due to concerns about its readiness and capacity to fulfil its duties as a member.
Will Timor-Leste be fully admitted to the regional grouping under Indonesia’s chairmanship? Proponents of such a thought might sound sentimental: the inclusion of the young republic into ASEAN signifies Indonesia’s mea culpa and fulfilment of its debts to its former colony.[18]
BOOSTING ECONOMIC RECOVERY AND ASEAN’S INSTITUTIONAL CAPACITY
Rising geopolitical tensions are expected to overshadow Indonesia’s ASEAN chairmanship. However, the theme of the chairmanship, “ASEAN Matters: Epicentrum of Growth” is the country’s honest gesture of bringing in tangible impacts, especially on the economic front.
Indonesia’s enthusiasm for ASEAN is the highest among its ASEAN cohort. 43 % of Indonesians in the survey believe that ASEAN is a leader in championing the global free trade agenda, significantly higher than other dialogue partners such as China (18.2%), Japan (10.7%), and the European Union (10.7%). The majority (43.8%) of Indonesians in the survey also think that ASEAN is the leader in maintaining a rules-based order and upholding international law, even though civil society in the country often criticises ASEAN for its failure in protecting human rights. Thus, the claim that ASEAN is the centrepiece of the nation’s foreign policy still holds true today.
During its tenure as the G20 chair, Indonesia was able to mobilise impactful programmes. The country successfully raised US$ 1.4 billion for the Pandemic Fund, urging developed countries to assist low and middle-income countries that may struggle to finance their public health in the future.[19] This achievement demonstrates Indonesia’s solid track record in global health diplomacy.[20] Indonesia also signed an initial US$20 billion deal with the G7 Countries to launch the Just Energy Transition Partnership to help Indonesia pivot away from fossil fuels, signalling a growing priority to address climate change.[21] At the recent ASEAN Coordinating Council (ACC) meeting, Indonesia signalled an enhancement in collaboration to ensure food security, particularly to maintain the regional supply chain and strengthening logistic systems in the region as well as developing regional electric vehicle production.[22] [23]
Equally important, many expect Indonesia to initiate reforms to enhance the capacity of the ASEAN Secretariat. It is always in Indonesia’s interest, and no other ASEAN chair would probably make the same effort to ensure that the Secretariat in Jakarta is empowered. Several recommendations could include strengthening the ASEAN decision-making process for crisis response, coordinating ASEAN-led mechanisms, aligning ASEAN and sub-regional groupings’ objectives, and advancing the roles of the Committee of Permanent Representative (CPR) as well as the EAS Ambassadors Meeting in Jakarta (EAMJ). Indonesia must also consider ways to make the ASEAN Secretariat impactful for its citizens by effectively managing and disbursing dialogue partners’ assistance to the most urgent social-development needs such as public health, education, youth empowerment, and digitalisation.
CONCLUSION
Indonesia’s chairmanship of ASEAN is the continuation of an excellent momentum for President Joko Widodo and his administration to leave a legacy before the country heads into its general elections in 2024. The chairmanship will likely be defined by the managing of the Myanmar crisis and how it will continue responding to the global threats of Ukraine War and US-China intensifying rivalry. Indonesia’s leadership capabilities will also be tested by its ability to realign ASEAN centrality in response to the growing security alliances in the Indo-Pacific, negotiating the South China Sea COC, and advancing Timor-Leste’s accession to the regional grouping. Not least, the chairmanship will be assessed by how the country makes a meaningful contribution to the region’s economic recovery and to ASEAN’s institutional capacity.
ENDNOTES
For endnotes, please refer to the original pdf document.
| ISEAS Perspective is published electronically by: ISEAS – Yusof Ishak Institute 30 Heng Mui Keng Terrace Singapore 119614 Main Tel: (65) 6778 0955 Main Fax: (65) 6778 1735 Get Involved with ISEAS. Please click here: /support/get-involved-with-iseas/ | ISEAS – Yusof Ishak Institute accepts no responsibility for facts presented and views expressed. Responsibility rests exclusively with the individual author or authors. No part of this publication may be reproduced in any form without permission. © Copyright is held by the author or authors of each article. | Editorial Chairman: Choi Shing Kwok Editorial Advisor: Tan Chin Tiong Editorial Committee: Terence Chong, Cassey Lee, Norshahril Saat, and Hoang Thi Ha Managing Editor: Ooi Kee Beng Editors: William Choong, Lee Poh Onn, Lee Sue-Ann, and Ng Kah Meng Comments are welcome and may be sent to the author(s). |
2023/16 “Minilateral Cooperation in ASEAN May Help it Overcome Challenges in Multilateralism” by Joanne Lin and Laura Lee
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
- ASEAN regionalism is increasingly seen as being slow and ineffective, casting doubts on its leadership role in the region.
- Minilateral cooperation in ASEAN will allow a smaller group of like-minded ASEAN countries to work together in a targeted manner to deliver results where it matters.
- Such cooperation is not meant to replace multilateralism but rather to supplement what is not possible in the broader setting, and to promote its eventual expansion into greater regionalism when the time is ripe.
- Minilateral cooperation currently exists in ASEAN in many forms, such as: The Malacca Straits Patrol between Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore and Thailand; the Brunei-Indonesia-Malaysia-Philippines East ASEAN Growth Area, and; the Laos-Thailand-Malaysia-Singapore Power Integration Project, among many others. This allows ASEAN countries to respond to opportunities and challenges in their geopolitical environment and to overcome weaknesses in existing ASEAN cooperation.
- ASEAN should look beyond existing minilateral cooperation to address in like manner more challenging issues such as the South China Sea.
*Joanne Lin is Co-coordinator of the ASEAN Studies Centre at ISEAS – Yusof Ishak Institute, and Lead Researcher (Political-Security) at the Centre. Laura Lee is currently a Public Policy and Global Affairs undergraduate at Nanyang Technological University. She was an intern at the ASEAN Studies Centre from May to September 2022.
ISEAS Perspective 2023/16, 8 March 2023
INTRODUCTION
Minilateral groupings such as the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue (QUAD) and the trilateral security pact between Australia, the UK and the US (AUKUS) in the Indo-Pacific region have called into question the effectiveness of ASEAN and the security benefits it offers. It has also cast doubts on ASEAN’s centrality, especially its ability to satisfy the strategic needs of major powers.[1]
Although multilateralism will ensure an equal voice across all member countries (regardless of size and power), multilateral organisations are increasingly finding themselves in a deadlock, unable to act or slow to act, resulting in sub-optimal results.[2] This is starkly exemplified in the UN’s failure to prevent the outbreak of the Russia-Ukraine war or to end it.
Similarly, ASEAN finds itself increasingly unable to overcome challenges, with differing national interests among member states leaving the grouping divided and increasingly unable to achieve consensus. Since the bloc’s expansion from six to ten members in the 1990s, the divide between maritime and the newer continental (Mekong) countries in Southeast Asia has also become obvious.
In the State of Southeast Asia 2023 Survey Report[3], the top concern about ASEAN among regional respondents (at 82.6%) is that “ASEAN is slow and ineffective, and thus cannot cope with fluid political and economic developments, becoming irrelevant in the new world order”.
This has prompted observers and scholars to call for a paradigm shift to overcome ASEAN’s bureaucratic processes and institutional hurdles, and to become a nimbler organisation that can quickly adapt to rapid geopolitical and economic developments.[4]
This article suggests that ASEAN’s ineffectiveness may be overcome by a constructive form of ‘ASEAN minilateral cooperation’ that allows like-minded ASEAN countries to work together through concrete activities towards shared priorities (especially strategic ones) in a targeted manner for maximal impact.[5] Such minilateral cooperation could focus on issues of common interest and should not be mistaken for minilateral decision-making, which goes against the principles of the ASEAN Charter.
This is aligned to the growing preference for minilateral cooperation among countries (including major powers and ASEAN members). Besides the QUAD and AUKUS, there has been an increasing number of trilateral collaborations and engagements such as the trilateral security dialogue between Australia, Japan and the US and the Australia, India and Indonesia (AII) trilateral. The Five-Power Defence Arrangement between Australia, Malaysia, New Zealand, Singapore and the UK is an example of minilateral consultative defence cooperation; this was signed in 1971 to safeguard the external defence of Singapore and Malaysia,[6] and its functions later evolved to include non-conventional threats such as piracy and disaster relief.[7]
MINILATERAL DECISION-MAKING VERSUS MINILATERAL COOPERATION
Minilateralism is not entirely new to ASEAN. The regional organisation has a history of working in smaller groups. According to the ASEAN Charter Article 21, in the implementation of economic commitments, a formula for flexible participation, including the ASEAN Minus X formula, may be applied where there is a consensus to do so.”[8] It allows for the gradual, delayed participation of X number of state(s) in economic agreements, given the consensus of all member states (including the X states). This is to enable ASEAN to advance its cooperation and integration without being held back by members who are not ready.
However, misconceptions arise when the ASEAN-X formula is extended to decision-making process within ASEAN, as advocated by some scholars and practitioners. Often, this fails to recognise the high-degree of apprehension among several member states towards any shift away from the ASEAN fundamental principle of consultation and consensus, toward a majority-vote decision-making process.
For example, Professor Thitinan Pongsudhirak has suggested an a la carte formula allowing willing members to take common positions without waiting for unanimity among all ten countries. His proposed “ASEAN 5+X” model will allow the five original members of ASEAN, namely Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Thailand and Singapore to serve as a renewed core.[9] However, such a formula may go against ASEAN’s principle of equality (irrespective of the length of membership) and may deprive the newer members of the opportunity to lead ASEAN.
Similarly, in the case of the ASEAN Intergovernmental Commission on Human Rights (AICHR), Professor Vitit Muntarbhorn, a UN independent expert, viewed the “X minus Y formula” as a healthy development, especially as the credibility of AICHR is likely to suffer if it sits still on issues that require a substantive response” such as the situation in Myanmar.[10]
While these are innovative suggestions to help ASEAN overcome its alleged tendency to be slow and ineffective, the fear that one’s national interest or position can be overridden by a majority-vote will not sit well with member states. The entrenched processes within ASEAN are unlikely to be open to overnight reform.
Minilateral cooperation as suggested here is not about decision-making in a small group but rather, about an interest group being formed to focus on issues that matter more to some countries than to others. Humanitarian mine actions for example would be more relevant to ASEAN countries impacted by landmines and explosive remnants of war such as Cambodia and Laos, than to others. As such, ASEAN should not view minilateral cooperation to be an activity carried out by an exclusive group of members, but as an initiative involving an initial group of members that are ahead in certain areas of cooperation, and that will expand over time to include other interested members.
Premised upon the non-exclusive nature of such minilateral cooperation, the ASEAN-X formula can be expanded beyond economic cooperation into the security domain (such as areas like terrorism and preventive diplomacy)[11] in order to make progress on key transnational challenges, as well as future areas of cooperation such as artificial intelligence and space technologies where some members may not yet be ready.
ASEAN minilateralism can also take the form of a group of ASEAN members playing a greater leadership role in areas of cooperation that are specifically of greater relevance to them, such as in the case of the South China Sea where only four members are direct claimant states.
EXISTING MINILATERAL COOPERATION IN ASEAN
Similar to minilateral cooperation among major and middle powers, ASEAN countries have tried to develop various security configurations of their own in order to advance their own interests and respond to the opportunities and challenges in their geopolitical environment.[12] This takes into consideration existing gaps in ASEAN cooperation.[13]
On the security front, the Cambodia-Laos-Vietnam Trilateral Security Cooperation is an example of minilateral cooperation within ASEAN. It boosts cooperation in defence and humanitarian assistance between these three countries which have lingering border management and war legacy-related issues that can occasionally flare up.[14]
Another is the Malacca Straits Patrol between Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore and Thailand, which was launched in 2004 to enhance security in the Straits of Malacca and Singapore through coordinated sea patrols and facilitate the sharing of information between ships and their naval operational centres.[15] Likewise, the Sulu Sea Trilateral patrols—a minilateral security collaboration between Indonesia, Malaysia and the Philippines,[16] was set up in 2017 to address transnational challenges in the Sulu Sea between the three countries. There have been talks to expand and broaden the partnership to other countries in Southeast Asia.[17]
Beyond the trilaterals and quadrilaterals, Our Eyes initiative—a platform for strategic information exchange to combat terrorism and violent extremism among six ASEAN countries, namely Brunei, Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines, Singapore and Thailand—was launched in 2018.[18] The was later adopted as ASEAN Our Eyes initiative under the ASEAN Defence Ministers’ Meeting (ADMM) and serves as an example of a sub-regional minilateral initiative expanding into a full regional mechanism.
More recently, the first ASEAN Coast Guard Forum—initiated by Indonesia—took place last November to boost maritime security. Eight of the ten ASEAN countries, excepting for Myanmar and Cambodia, attended it;[19] the event was followed by the signing of the ASEAN Coast Guard Declaration[20] to promote safe and secure sea lanes in regional seas. What started as a proposal by the Indonesia Maritime Security Agency (Bakamla) to “present a coordinated approach” in matters relating to the South China Sea [21], generated a smaller grouping, made up particularly of those most directly involved, such as the claimant states in the case of the South China Sea, that could take the lead. A similar, but more extreme view was also expressed by Philippines’ Senator Maria Imelda Marcos when she proposed a code of conduct among claimants, instead of the 10-member ASEAN and China.[22]
Apart from security initiatives, ASEAN minilateralism in the economic sector such as the Brunei-Indonesia-Malaysia-Philippines East ASEAN Growth Area (BIMP-EAGA, launched in 1994) allows the four ASEAN members to boost growth in trade, investment and tourism through intra-regional shipping routes and air links. While boosting sub-regional economic growth, the initiative also contributes to greater ASEAN economic integration.
A new initiative for a regional QR code payment to be constructed between the central banks of five ASEAN members—Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines, Thailand, and Singapore, launched in November last year[23] is also a form of minilateral arrangement that can help advance ASEAN economic integration, starting with partners who are ready and willing to later expand to include others in the grouping.
Likewise, energy cooperation through the ASEAN Power Grid to promote regional power interconnection is currently in a “minilateral” phase.[24] At this point, the Laos-Thailand-Malaysia-Singapore Power Integration Project serves as ASEAN’s pilot in addressing technical, legal and financial issues of multilateral electricity trade.[25]
The ASEAN Power Grid was originally envisioned in the 1990s as a region-wide initiative to encourage collaboration on energy efficiency and renewable energy innovation. However, after 20 years, not much progress has been made due to differences in energy policies and commitment, as well as economic inequality among ASEAN member states.[26]
To go beyond this difficult situation, countries that are ready for broader cooperation in the energy sector could proceed first and let others to follow when ready. In this way, cross-border cooperation on bilateral terms may be expanded to a sub-regional level, and ultimately allow for the creation of an integrated multilateral ASEAN power grid system. Similarly, the Trans ASEAN Gas Pipeline could potentially be another model of how bilateral and minilateral cooperation within ASEAN that has the potential to be scaled up to regional level.
EXPLORING NEW MINILATERAL INITIATIVES IN ASEAN
Beyond existing minilateral cooperation in ASEAN, there is potential for ASEAN to expand such an approach in order to address more challenging issues. The South China Sea is an area of contention within ASEAN due to competing national interests and to deep differences between ASEAN countries and China. ASEAN and China have worked together for 20 years on a Code of Conduct in the South China Sea,[27] but with no clear end in sight.
Claimant and non-claimant states within ASEAN may not share the same level of interest and priority with regard to the negotiations. Four out of the ten ASEAN members are claimant states, namely Brunei, Malaysia, the Philippines and Vietnam, while Indonesia has an overlapping claim with China in the Natuna Islands. Scholars have observed that non-claimant members have little or no interest in standing up against China.[28] They have also noted the possibility of an intra-ASEAN caucus (or an ASEAN South China Sea Forum) to coordinate more closely with each other on their respective national positions on the South China Sea issue and the Code of Conduct negotiations.[29] Such a caucus or forum may also be used for intra-ASEAN settlement of disputes. By settling disputes among themselves first, ASEAN claimants of the South China Sea may have a stronger stance in negotiating a Code of Conduct with China.[30] A consensus between the claimant states could serve as ASEAN’s negotiating position against China, resulting in greater bargaining power for ASEAN.
Indonesia and Vietnam set the stage for closer coordination by coming up with an agreement to demarcate their exclusive economic zones (EEZ) in December last year after 12 years of negotiation. The successful EEZ delimitation between Indonesia and Vietnam may also encourage the Philippines and Malaysia to follow suit.[31]
However, for such a minilateral caucus to work, a consensus should first be reached among all ASEAN countries to agree to leave certain issues and decision-making to a group of ASEAN members. In the case of the South China Sea, once claimant states have agreed on a common position, consensus should also be sought from non-claimant states, since the COC is to an agreement between all ten ASEAN countries and China (rather than between the claimant states alone).
Another potential area for minilateral cooperation is the ASEAN peacekeeping force. The initiative was proposed in 1994, 2003, and 2015 by Indonesia and Malaysia but failed to attain consensus among all ASEAN members. [32],[33] This is considering that eight ASEAN members (except Laos and Myanmar)[34] have contributed to the United Nations peacekeeping missions. The ASEAN Defence Ministers’ Meeting has been cooperating closely on peacekeeping operations, including through the ASEAN Peacekeeping Centres Network (APCN).[35] However, a joint force under the banner of ASEAN seems to be a distant dream. For the strong proponents of this initiative, perhaps a good starting point could be an ASEAN-X peacekeeping force to which willing members may contribute under the banner of ASEAN, allowing other members to join when they are ready.
Other forms of minilateral cooperation to complement ASEAN’s work could be in enhanced cooperation on counter-terrorism and anti-radicalisation among high-risk countries such as Indonesia, the Philippines, Malaysia, and Singapore.
CONCLUSION
Evolving geopolitical developments necessitate an exploration of new approaches to cooperation in order for ASEAN to stay relevant and uphold its centrality. The opportunity cost is high if ASEAN fails to take concrete action in dealing with important regional issues such as the South China Sea. While the preservation of ASEAN unity is important, the regional bloc must balance the usefulness of moving together against the loss of credibility if it fails to act.
Minilateral cooperation within ASEAN will allow it to make greater progress and to better serve the diverse interests of member states. Such cooperation is not meant to replace multilateralism but to supplement what is not possible in the broader setting, while facilitating its eventual expansion into greater regionalism when the time is ripe.
ENDNOTES
For endnotes, please refer to the original pdf document.
| ISEAS Perspective is published electronically by: ISEAS – Yusof Ishak Institute 30 Heng Mui Keng Terrace Singapore 119614 Main Tel: (65) 6778 0955 Main Fax: (65) 6778 1735 Get Involved with ISEAS. Please click here: /support/get-involved-with-iseas/ | ISEAS – Yusof Ishak Institute accepts no responsibility for facts presented and views expressed. Responsibility rests exclusively with the individual author or authors. No part of this publication may be reproduced in any form without permission. © Copyright is held by the author or authors of each article. | Editorial Chairman: Choi Shing Kwok Editorial Advisor: Tan Chin Tiong Editorial Committee: Terence Chong, Cassey Lee, Norshahril Saat, and Hoang Thi Ha Managing Editor: Ooi Kee Beng Editors: William Choong, Lee Poh Onn, Lee Sue-Ann, and Ng Kah Meng Comments are welcome and may be sent to the author(s). |
“Tides of Insecurity: Vietnam and the Growing Challenge from Non-traditional Maritime Threats” by Phan Xuan Dung and To Minh Son
2023/15 “Towards More Sustainable Agro-Food Systems in Indonesia” by Maria Monica Wihardja, Bustanul Arifin and Mukhammad Faisol Amir
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
Indonesia needs to focus on developing sustainable agro-food systems if it is to achieve its three major goals: eradicating extreme poverty, maintaining food and nutrition security and attaining net-zero carbon emissions.
This paper lays out major hurdles Indonesia has to clear in order to achieve that ambition:
- The agricultural sector’s heavy reliance on (ineffective and large) state support.
- The practice of extensive land expansion.
- The high level of food waste and loss.
- The lack of agricultural extension services, climate information and advisory services.
- The competing goals of food security and energy security.
We recommend the following to the government to overcome the above challenges:
- Continue redirecting fertiliser price subsidies towards direct subsidies for farmers through the farmer card (Kartu Tani) system and better regulation of dangerous pesticides.
- Allow the private sector to compete alongside state-owned enterprises in input markets; create an output market that enables farmers to obtain a higher price for their efforts in maintaining ecosystems, including sustainability certification and payments for environmental services; and support fee-based, private agricultural extension services.
- Invest in post-harvest technologies, especially cold chain logistics, dryers and modern milling equipment.
- Institutionalise Science Field Shops that promote farmers’ agrometeorological knowledge, helping them to adapt to increasing climate variability.
- Diversify biofuel sources to non-food commodities such as the seeds of the rubber tree and Ricinus, and increase palm oil productivity.
* Maria Monica Wihardja is Visiting Fellow at ISEAS – Yusof Ishak Institute, Bustanul Arifin is Professor of Agricultural Economics at Lampung University and Mukhammad Faisol Amir is Junior Researcher at the Center for Indonesian Policy Studies.
ISEAS Perspective 2023/15, 3 March 2023
INTRODUCTION
As in many other developing countries, agricultural growth has contributed significantly to poverty reduction and economic transformation in Indonesia. Although the sector’s contribution to the country’s gross domestic product has declined from 17% in 1995 to 13% in 2019, it still accounts for around one-third of Indonesian employment today, compared with around 44% in 1995.[1] Moreover, the agriculture sector is estimated to have been responsible for about half of the reduction in extreme poverty (USD1.9 per day) from 2000 to 2021. Indonesia’s ambition to eradicate extreme poverty by the end of 2024 – it was 2.2% in 2021 – will be next to impossible without further improvement in agricultural productivity and in farmers’ incomes.
Moving from production to consumption, Indonesia still faces huge nutritional issues. Today, 21.6% of Indonesian children under five suffer from chronic malnutrition (stunting), though this figure has been declining. Indonesia’s ambitious target to bring its stunting rate down to 14% by the end of 2024 means nutritious food must become more accessible and affordable, and diets must become healthier.
However, the business-as-usual strategies to improve the agro-food systems in Indonesia are no longer sustainable nor effective. The agro-food systems have been both a contributor to and a victim of climate change. Indonesia’s ambitious target of net-zero carbon emissions by 2060, which was recently brought forward by a decade, will be unachievable without more sustainable agricultural practices and efficiency along the food value chain. Agriculture, land-use change (mostly deforestation to create agricultural lands) and forestry are the largest contributors to greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions in Indonesia. At the same time, its farmers and fishers have been severely impacted by extreme and unpredictable weather.[2] This century, about 25–30% of global food production could be affected by extreme weather and other climate change shocks.[3]
Indonesia needs new strategies for more sustainable agro-food systems if it is to meet the three goals of: eradicating extreme poverty, maintaining food and nutrition security and attaining net-zero carbon emissions. Ideally, agro-food systems must produce agricultural products without deforestation and natural habitat conversion, and at the same time educate farmers and consumers to adapt to and mitigate the effects of climate change. Ignoring the emission of GHGs from our agro-food systems is not an option.[4] Indonesia is the world’s fifth-largest GHG emitter, contributing about 4% of global GHG emissions in 2019; thus, making its agro-food systems more sustainable would significantly contribute to global climate change mitigation efforts. However, Indonesia is stuck in a production-centric mindset and faces big challenges in transforming its agro-food systems and embracing sustainability.
This paper lays out key challenges to developing sustainable agro-food systems in Indonesia, namely: (A) heavy reliance on (ineffective and large) agricultural supports, (B) extensive land expansion for food, (C) high level of food waste and loss, (D) lack of agricultural extension services and climate information and advisory services, and (E) competing goals of food security and energy security. We also propose policy recommendations to address these challenges.
CHALLENGES AND POLICY RECOMMENDATIONS
Globally, agro-food systems account for one-third of GHG emissions.[5] In Indonesia, GHG emissions from the agro-food system largely come from land-use change and forestry, contributing 48.7% in 2019, and agriculture, contributing 9% (Table 1). In comparison, globally 18.4% of GHG emissions come from agriculture, land-use change and forestry.[6] Indonesia’s share of GHG emissions from land-use change and forestry is the highest among ASEAN nations, higher even than China’s and India’s (see Annex Figure 1). Around 73% of land-use change and forestry came from deforestation, largely driven by cultivation of palm oil from 2000 until 2016 when the government decided to impose a five-year moratorium on the issuance of new oil palm plantation permits.[7]
Table 1: Sectoral contributions to GHG emissions in Indonesia
| 1990 | 2000 | 2010 | 2019 | |
| Land-use change and forestry | 61% | 44% | 32% | 49% |
| Agriculture | 11% | 12% | 14% | 9% |
| Waste | 13% | 16% | 11% | 7% |
| Industry | 1% | 2% | 2% | 2% |
| Manufacturing and construction | 2% | 5% | 11% | 8% |
| Transport | 3% | 5% | 8% | 8% |
| Electricity and heat | 4% | 8% | 13% | 13% |
| Buildings | 3% | 4% | 3% | 2% |
| Fugitive emissions | 3% | 3% | 4% | 3% |
| Other fuel combustion | 0% | 1% | 1% | 0% |
| Aviation and shipping | 0% | 0% | 0% | 0% |
Source: Our World in Data
Rice cultivation is the largest source of GHG emissions in Indonesia’s agriculture sector (39%).[8] In fact, Indonesia’s agricultural emissions account for 38% of the ASEAN region’s total, while the country is home to 41% of the region’s population.[9] In many developing Southeast Asian countries, including Indonesia, rice significantly contributes to GHG emissions chiefly through paddy flooding which releases methane[10]. Globally, 10% of methane emissions comes from rice cultivation, but in Southeast Asia rice cultivation accounts for as much as 25–33% of methane emissions.[11]
In the 1960s, the green revolution introduced intensive agricultural practices, which then required industrial inputs – such as fertilisers, pesticides and high-yielding seeds – to increase yield. Although the green revolution technology saved Indonesia from rice shortages and famines during times of drought and political instability in the 1960s, the production-centric paradigm[12] of the green revolution has created a crisis for the ecosystem – for soil, groundwater, air and other natural resources – and human health. This paradigm is entrenched in farmers’ practices and government policies and shifting it towards an ecosystem-centric paradigm is not an easy task especially since the green revolution was a largely successful one.[13]
The challenges faced in creating sustainable agro-food systems in Indonesia are described in detail below. The measures are by no means exhaustive, and instead exemplify some of the most urgent issues to address. Some policy recommendations are provided thereafter.
Heavy reliance on agricultural supports
Among emerging and OECD economies, Indonesia provides the highest level of support to the agriculture sector measured in percentage of GDP.[14] However, agricultural support has been provided mainly in the form of market price support (e.g., fixed prices and trade barriers) and direct subsidies (e.g., fertilisers, seeds) towards rice production, instead of providing public goods such as rural and urban infrastructure and post-harvest technologies to reduce food losses. Such agricultural support not only disincentivises farmers from diversifying their production away from rice, but also carry large environmental costs in terms of GHG emissions, land degradation and environmental pollution, since rice is one of the most water-intensive and GHG-emitting crops.
One example of such agricultural support is fertiliser subsidies, 60% of which are targeted for smallholder rice farmers, but with a significant amount leaking out to large palm oil plantations.[15] Fertiliser subsidies have risen from Rp 2.5 trillion in 2005 to Rp 25.3 trillion in 2021. They account for 25–30% of the annual agricultural budget – or 1% of the total state budget – and are expensive but poorly targeted, regressive, subject to leakage, and cost-ineffective at increasing production.[16] Evidence also suggests that subsidies may have caused unbalanced use of fertilisers,[17] with farmers overapplying and causing water pollution, soil degradation and excess nitrous oxide emissions.[18] Indonesia has higher levels of nitrous oxide emissions – a product of nitrogen fertiliser use – from agriculture than all other ASEAN nations, plus China and India.[19]
Farmers have also had increasing access to pesticides over the past two decades due to looser regulations since decentralisation in 1999.[20] This has led to overuse and a resurgence of pests that had previously been successfully managed, such as the brown planthopper.[21] Additionally, pesticides are highly toxic and have had an adverse effect on the physical health of farmers using them and consumers eating the crops, as well as the ecosystems to which they are applied.[22]
Policy recommendations: The government could continue redirecting fertiliser price subsidies (subsidising goods) towards direct subsidies for farmers (subsidising people) through the farmer card (Kartu Tani) system.[23] Targeted social protection such as direct subsidies for farmers requires better social registry data from Indonesia’s unified database or Data Terpadu Kesejahteraan Sosial, which still has many weaknesses.[24] The government could also better monitor and regulate dangerous pesticides, fill a regulatory gap in the national integrated pest management system, which refers to a pest management system that applies sustainability principles including using more pest-resistant seed varieties, provision of habitat for natural enemies of pests (predators, parasites and pathogens), crop rotation, and restricting application of chemical pesticides unless deemed necessary. This must be accompanied by better enforcement and awareness among all stakeholders, including extension services workers, about the dangers of overusing and misusing pesticides.
High rate of land expansion for food
One-third of Indonesia’s 192 million hectares (ha) is taken up by agriculture. Between 2014 and 2018, the rate of agricultural land expansion was 1.7%, higher than the regional average of 1.2% and the second highest in Southeast Asia after Vietnam.[25] The largest contributor to land-use conversion are oil palm plantations.[26] In 2018, rice and palm oil dominated 80% of Indonesia’s planted area. This is very rice and palm oil-centric if compared to, for example, China which has much more diversified food crops in its planted area.[27]
Since 2020, the Government of Indonesia has been developing “food estates” in the provinces of Central Kalimantan, East Nusa Tenggara, South Sumatra, Central Sulawesi and Papua. Some estates (in Central Kalimantan and Papua), however, are derived from cleared forests and peatlands. This is permitted by the regulation on Food Estate Programmes,[28] conflicting with the government’s climate commitments, such as its Enhanced Nationally Determined Contribution target and Indonesia’s Forestry and Other Land-Use Net Sink 2030.[29], [30], [31]
Policy recommendations: Indonesia could focus on intensification instead of extensification. Increasing yields rather than expanding agricultural land will increase the income of farmers and help retain and attract new farmers into the industry. Intensification requires more investment in human capital and technology, as well as policy reforms to facilitate this investment. Policy reforms could include:
- Allowing the private sector to compete alongside state-owned enterprises in inputs such as seeds and fertilisers as well as machines and other equipment. Indonesia’s current policy in agri-inputs (such as seeds and fertiliser), for example, limits the use of more sustainable inputs, such as hybrid seeds to increase yields and plant resiliency, by creating barriers to market entry.[32]
- Creating an output market that enables farmers to obtain a higher price for their efforts in maintaining ecosystems. This would incentivise them to adopt more sustainable agricultural practices, including through sustainability certification and payments for environmental services (PES), a form of climate financing for smallholder farmers and jurisdictions, such as the PES Rejoso watershed project in Pasuruan District, East Java.[33] Sustainability certification is developing in Indonesia and is one way to boost competitiveness. It is already occurring in Indonesia’s coffee and palm oil sectors, for example (see Annex 2 for case studies), but could be developed in other export commodities as well, such as tea and cocoa.
- Supporting fee-based, private agricultural extension services through partnerships with NGOs, development agencies, farmer associations and the private sector. Such initiatives are already underway, such as that supported by confectionery company Mars and NGO Rikolto for cocoa farmers in Sulawesi.[34]
Food wastage and low efficiency along the supply chain
Instead of clearing forest and opening peatland to create new agricultural land, the government could focus on improving efficiency along the food value chain, for example, by reducing food loss and food waste (FLW).[35] In per capita terms, Indonesia is estimated to be the second-largest FLW-producing country in the world, at 300 kg per capita per year.[36] Globally, FLW is linked to approximately 6% of GHG emissions,[37] three times the emissions of the aviation sector.[38]
Indonesia’s food supply chain is inefficient, starting from the production of food crops in the field to the chain of post-harvest supply through to consumption. Around one-third of all food produced in Indonesia is either lost or wasted.[39] Investment in post-harvest logistics and storage, as well as technologies, is urgently needed to reduce food loss along the supply chain, especially for horticulture and animal-based products, which are perishable. Over the next five years, the demand for cold storage is projected to increase by 10% and 20% annually.[40]
Policy Recommendations: Indonesia could prioritise investment in post-harvest logistics, storage and technologies – and especially cold chain logistics. Existing cold chain logistics in Indonesia are not standardised, for example, in terms of storage temperature, security and operating procedures.[41] The market for cold chain logistics is forecast to increase to USD12.6 billion in 2031 from USD4.97 billion in 2021[42], and it is therefore a promising industry for both the private sector and the government. Furthermore, a detailed public spending review could be carried out to evaluate the appropriateness and efficiency of spending on agricultural equipment. For example, more spending could be directed to support farmers to buy dryers and to support millers to purchase more modern milling machines in order to reduce post-harvest food losses, rather than providing farmers with four-wheel combine harvesters.
Lack of agricultural extension services and climate information and advisory services
Crop production is being affected by climate change, but Indonesia is investing little in educating farmers on mitigating it or adapting to it. Since decentralisation in 1999, Indonesia’s agricultural extension services – government services providing agricultural advice – have been greatly weakened. In 2018, only 18 out of 34 Indonesian provinces had agencies to manage and provide extension services.[43] The national government set a target of at least one agricultural extension worker per village since decentralisation, but it was recently estimated that only half of Indonesian villages have a dedicated worker.[44]
The central government has been attempting to digitalize some extension services to make up for insufficient human resources.[45] [46] It uses phone calls and video conferences with farmers and CCTV for crop monitoring, has increased the use of mobile phones and personal computers, and developed mobile applications for extension services. However, not all regions have sufficient digital infrastructure to allow them to use such services. And without a dedicated extension service worker on the ground, making use of digital services is an uphill battle, as many farmers have limited knowledge of digital technologies and only use them for communication and accessing social media.
Government efforts to support farmers in adapting to climate change are complicated by a lack of accessible and reliable climate information and advisory services to help farmers understand and manage the risks posed by climate change.[47] [48] As a result, most farmers still rely on inherited knowledge to make decisions.
Policy recommendations: The government could institutionalise Science Field Shops that help farmers gain agrometeorological knowledge and adapt their practices to increasing climate variability. The government could commit to long-lasting education and training and technology transfers, instead of relying on short-life programmes.[49] Moreover, the government could support its digital extension service efforts by improving digital connectivity in remote regions and cyber agricultural extension systems, and by engaging more younger farmers who may be more adept at using digital technology. Programmes to increase technological adoption, such as those currently developed and implemented by the Research Institute for Agricultural Technology (Balai Pengkajian Teknologi Pertanian), accessible in all provinces across Indonesia, could be integrated with farmers’ empowerment programmes under the Centre for Agricultural Extension in the Ministry of Agriculture.
Pressure on palm oil and food-energy competition
Since 2006, Indonesia has been developing biofuels sourced from crude palm oil (CPO), which has resulted in competition between food security and energy security.[50] [51] The country’s biodiesel policy stipulates that fossil fuels must be blended with palm oil, with the aim of securing energy, reducing carbon emissions and reducing the trade deficit. The regulation contains steady increases in mandatory levels of CPO-sourced biofuel, beginning with 5% in 2006 to reach 30% by 2021. This was achieved on time.
In Indonesia, CPO-sourced biodiesel accounts for close to 40% of total CPO use, while food accounts for close to 50%; this creates competition between food security and energy security.[52] For example, in early to mid-2022, the CPO-sourced biofuel policy may have exacerbated the sharp increases in the prices of domestic CPO and cooking oil. The policy may have placed additional pressure on domestic demand at a time when global energy and food prices were high due to the war in Ukraine, and CPO producers rushed to export.[53],[54]
The CPO-sourced biofuel programme has the potential to threaten food security and also to drive up land conversion for oil palm plantation use. A 2021 study found that cuts in export revenues from the CPO-sourced biofuel programme, if the programme is carried through to 2030, could outweigh the savings on imports of fossil fuels. It also found that the oil palm planted area would need to expand by 48% to 76% to meet demand.[55]
Policy recommendations: The government could consider diversifying biofuel sources to non-food commodities such as the seeds of the rubber tree and Ricinus.[56] The government could focus on increasing productivity in palm oil, which is currently still very low compared to other palm oil producers, to avoid opening new land. For example, Malaysia produces 3.96 tonnes of palm oil per hectare annually, compared to 2.70 tonne per hectare in Indonesia.[57]
CONCLUSION
Indonesia could build more sustainable agro-food systems by focusing on intensification instead of extensification, improving efficiencies in supply chains, building climate change adaptation and mitigation capacity through improved agricultural extension services and technologies, and removing incentives and policies that support unsustainable practices. These changes call for new knowledge, tools, policies and wisdom, and will require an interdisciplinary approach, as ecological risks and food security raise biophysical, socioeconomic and health issues. The changes needed for agro-food systems to become sustainable must rely on science to create evidence-based policy and implementation at the national, provincial and local levels. A shift away from production-centric towards ecosystem-centric agricultural practices, however, needs to be well calibrated, coordinated and staggered, as the real world experience from Sri Lanka has demonstrated.[58] Sweden is a model for sustainable agro-food systems and the country ranks first, alongside Japan, for sustainability in agro-food systems.[59] As this year’s ASEAN Chair, Indonesia’s plan to develop a Roadmap for the ASEAN Guideline on Sustainable Agriculture is highly commendable.[60]
Annex 1
Annex Figure 1: Contributors to GHG Emissions by Country
Source: Our World in Data
Annex 2: Case Studies on Sustainability Certification
Case studies on sustainability certification for coffee and palm oil in Indonesia provide examples of ways to move towards inclusive and sustainable agriculture:
- Coffee: Sustainability certification in coffee has grown rapidly in the last decades. Sustainability certification started in Indonesia in 1992 with Gayo Mountain Organic Coffee from the Takengon region of Central Aceh, followed by organic coffee cooperatives in East Timor, Utz Certified coffee (part of the Rainforest Alliance since 2018) in Aceh, Lampung, East Java and in Sulawesi, and the Starbucks CAFÉ Practices scheme in North Sumatra, Aceh and Toraja South Sulawesi (as one of best practices at the company level).
- Certification standards have encouraged more sustainable land management practices in Aceh, Toraja and Bali, where organic, low-input and shade-grown farming has been adopted by coffee farmers. After some years, the coffee eco-certification had affected the price structure of coffee: traders selling organic-certified coffee to exporters were receiving higher prices than were received for non-certified coffee (Arifin, 2021).
- Palm oil: The Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO) was formed in 2004 by CPO buyers, NGOs and environmental organisations. The RSPO initially targeted large companies to produce palm oil sustainably – refraining from clearing forests, protecting orangutan habitat, conserving wildlife and not converting peatland, among others. Several Indonesian palm oil companies have joined the RSPO and achieved certification.
- The management of sustainable certification involving smallholder farmers is a complex and large task, given that 41% of Indonesia’s producers of fresh fruit bunches (FFB; the fruit from which palm oil is made) are smallholders, with most owning no more than 2 ha of land. Farmers need to form groups and partner with big companies. From a number of empirical studies, it is revealed that sustainable certification does not directly provide higher premium price for selling certified FFB for small-scale oil palm farmers yet[lxi] (Hidayat et al., 2016). Notwithstanding the weaknesses, sustainable palm oil is believed to be more inclusive and may become new strategies for competitiveness. Indonesia is serious about implementing sustainable certification at the global level (RSPO and International Sustainability and Carbon Certification), which is voluntary, and at the national level (Indonesia Sustainable Palm Oil), which is mandatory. The development of sustainable palm oil has improved the standards of Indonesia’s palm oil industry, especially RSPO certification, and hence access of the palm oil industry, especially to countries that have imposed high sustainability standards, including those of the European Union.
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ENDNOTES
For endnotes, please refer to the original pdf document.
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2023/14 “An End to the Three Generals Era and a New Beginning for Thai Democracy” by Termsak Chalermpalanupap
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
- The “Three ‘Por’ Group” of three former army chiefs, which seized power in the 2014 coup, is falling apart.
- Two of the three, Palang Pracharat party leader General Prawit Wongsuwan and Prime Minister General Prayut Chan-o-cha, are vying for the premiership in a cut-throat competition.
- The rivalry between the two generals is intensifying, and this will make the upcoming general election in Thailand more tenacious, and its outcome less predictable.
- General Prawit has the political edge because his party, the largest in the ruling coalition, has many experienced MPs who can win re-election with their strong political networks. He also has more powerful allies and fewer political enemies.
- General Prawit’s new selling point is to move Thailand beyond the existing political polarisation. He has tried to distance himself from the 2014 coup and from General Prayut, whom his party successfully nominated to capture the premiership after the last general election.
- After breaking up with General Prawit, General Prayut joined a new party, United Thai Nation. That party is trying to woo MPs from other parties, but lacks a clear potent selling point to attract support.
- The end of the political domination of the “Three ‘Por’ Group” augurs well for Thai democracy. Now, two of the three strongmen from this group are appealing for support from Thai voters, instead of holding onto power through political machinations.
* Termsak Chalermpalanupap is Visiting Fellow and Coordinator of the Thailand Studies Programme, ISEAS – Yusof Ishak Institute.
ISEAS Perspective 2023/14, 27 February 2023
INTRODUCTION
Political dominance by the group of three former army chiefs – the so-called “Three ‘Por’ Brothers”[1] – in Thailand is coming to an end. This augurs well for the political future of the country where parliamentary democracy has been faltering since the end of the Siamese absolute monarchy in 1932.
The main cause of the continuing failure of Thai democracy was and still is the delusion entertained by a handful number of army generals who think that they can run a government administration better than their civilian compatriots. The Thai military has little tolerance for the chaos of parliamentary politics, and no respect for most politicians, whom they see as mostly corrupt and self-serving.
Big Brother General Prawit Wongsuwan, a deputy prime minister and the leader of Palang Pracharat Party (PPRP), the largest government party, now wants the premiership for himself. He and his PPRP will no longer support Prime Minister General Prayut Chan-o-cha in the upcoming general election.
However, General Prayut feels he still has some significant unfinished business to finish, and thus he wishes to stay in power for at least another two years, until the end of his 8-year eligibility to hold the premiership, in mid-2025. Therefore, he has joined a new party, United Thai Nation (UTN), as its chief strategist, and will be its No.1 candidate for the premiership.
The rivalry between these two former army chiefs is a crucial change for the better in Thai politics. The two strongmen are now courting voters’ support to return to power, instead of seizing it with military force and holding onto power through political machinations.
Meanwhile, the middle brother in this triumvirate, Interior Minister General Anupong Paojinda has claimed that he has had enough of Thai politics, and intends to retire to a quiet peaceful life when his time in the current Prayut Administration is over. He has dismissed speculations of him joining the UTN, saying that he considers himself “unsuitable” to continue in Thai politics.[2]
Whether or not General Anupong will actually wash his hands of politics remains to be seen. He has accepted his recent appointment to the 5-member Committee on National Strategy, which is led by Deputy Prime Minister Dr Wissanu Krea-ngam.[3]
THE MAY 2014 COUP
General Prayut, when the army chief, led the coup on 22 May 2014 to seize power from the civilian government of the Pheu Thai-led coalition.[4] Fifteen days prior to the coup, Prime Minister Yingluck Sinawatra had to step down following a decision against her in the Constitutional Court for abuse of power.[5] Yingluck is a younger sister of exiled former prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra, who had also been toppled in another coup on 19 September 2006.[6]
The coup in 2014 saw the emergence of the Three “Por” Generals to control both the Thai polity and the Thai military. They established the National Council for Peace and Order (NCPO), with General Prayut as the head of the junta, and General Prawit as the deputy head.
Political parties were banned from undertaking any political activity. Critics and protest leaders were either arrested, or summoned to army barracks to listen to NCPO’s reasons for the coup and its promises of an early return of happiness to the Thai people.
Under the 2014 Interim Constitution, a new National Legislative Assembly (NLA) was set up with 250 members handpicked by the NCPO. It was chaired by Dr Pornpetch Wichitcholachai, a law professor, who in 2019 became president of the new Senate.
General Prayut also assumed the post of prime minister in September 2014. General Prawit became a deputy prime minister and defence minister; and General Anupong took over the post of interior (home affairs) minister, which supervises all of Thailand’s provincial governors.
Before long, the three generals realised they would need much more time to create real “happiness” for the Thai people. Thus, a new constitution had to be designed to enable them to continue holding onto power by constitutional means.
NEW CONSTITUTIONAL FOR POWER SUCCESSION
At first, a new comprehensive draft constitution was formulated by a group led by Dr Borwornsak Uwanno, a respected jurist and a deputy president of the NLA. Unfortunately, the NCPO disliked the draft and signalled the NLA leadership to scuttle it in September 2015. Dr Borwornsak later lamented that his draft constitution could not ensure a “long stay” of those in power, and thus it was rejected.[7]
A new smaller group was formed to draft a new constitution. Led by Dr Meechai Ruchupan, another senior jurist and a former acting-prime minister, its new draft was finally accepted by the NLA on 7 April 2016.
For a national referendum on the new draft constitution on 7 August 2016, the NLD laid down a set of guidelines, which included banning public rallying to oppose the draft constitution. The NLA also included for the national referendum a subsidiary question on whether or not 250 senators appointed to the Senate should be empowered to join elected MPs in the House to vote for a new prime minister after each general election during the Senate’s first five-year term.
The NPCO urged voters to accept the draft constitution as it was only a temporary measure, so that a general election could be held sooner. After that, the new elected civilian government could amend the constitution to make it more palatable to all parties concerned.
The national referendum approved the draft constitution with a vote of 61.35% (from about 16.8 million voters); and agreed with a vote of 58.07% (from about 15.1 million voters ) to let the 250 appointed senators join MPs in voting for a new prime minister.
However, after the draft constitution went into force on 6 April 2017, it quickly became clear that amending the new constitution would be more difficult than previously assumed. In order to approve a proposed constitutional amendment, the support of at least a majority of the combined membership of the House and the Senate is required; and the majority vote must include at least one-third of the existing senators, as well as 20% of MPs from parties whose members do not hold any cabinet posts or the posts of House Speaker and Deputy House Speaker.[8]
2019 GENERAL ELECTION
Pheu Thai (PT) Party came first in the general election on 24 March 2019, but it failed to win the subsequent premiership race in parliament. The PT was handicapped by the NCPO’s two political innovations: the single ballot election designed to hobble large popular parties, and the involvement of the 250 senators in the premiership selection.
In the 2019 general election, each voter cast only one ballot to elect a constituency candidate. All votes collected by all candidates of a party went to determining the party’s share of the 150 party-list seats in the House of Representatives. Crucially, the allocation also took into account how many House seats a party “deserved” to have, based on the total of its candidates’ collected votes as a percentage of the total votes cast in the general election.
The PT’s candidates won 136 constituency seats with a total of about 7.88 million votes – which constituted about 22.16% of the grand total of votes. Based on this number, the PT “deserved” to have only 110 MPs in the House (22% of 500 House seats). Since its candidates had already won altogether 136 Houses seats – 26 more than the party deserved to have – the PT did not get any share of the 150 party-list House seats.
One dire consequence of this unexpected outcome was the failure of the entire PT top leadership on the party-list to enter the House as MPs.
The PT-led coalition[9] of seven parties had only 246 MPs, five seats short of a simple majority in the House, while the PPRP-led coalition of 19 parties had 254 MPs.[10] When it came to the premiership race, the PT-led coalition could muster only 244 votes[11] for the opposition’s candidate Thanathorn Juangroongruangkit. General Prayut, who was nominated by the PPRP, easily won with 500 votes – including 249 of the 250 senators’.[12]
The Three “Por” Generals came up with a new division of power-sharing among them: General Prawit would manage the PPRP and control MPs in the ruling coalition; General Anupong would, from his post as the interior minister, supervise all provincial governors and local government administrations; and General Prayut would do the heavy-lifting of running the government administration, including choosing his own appointees to the defence, the home affairs, the finance, and the energy ministries.
However, two crucial flaws in this new arrangement soon soured ties between General Prawit and General Prayut. General Prawit lost to General Prayut both the defence minister post and the job of supervising the national police force.
Moreover, politicians in the PPRP have been griping about their party not getting a fair share of plum cabinet posts despite being the largest in the ruling coalition.[13] And they also resented the alleged indifference of General Prayut to their tedious and thankless job in parliament. Indeed, General Prayut has kept at arm’s length all government MPs, since he himself is neither a member of the PPRP nor an MP.
WIDENING RIFT LED TO MUTUAL DISTRUST
The widening rift between General Prayut and General Prawit’s PPRP came to a head in early September 2021. PPRP secretary-general Captain Thammanat Prompao and his followers were caught planning to join opposition parties in voting out General Prayut from the premiership in a no-confidence debate.
However, Captain Thammanat’s secret plan was leaked, and General Prayut managed to foil the conspiracy and prevail in the no-confidence vote. He quickly retaliated by removing Captain Thammanat from the post of deputy agriculture minister.
Subsequently, in January 2022, Captain Thammanat was “expelled” from the PPRP, together with 20 MPs who chose to join him in a new party, Thai Economic, and to serve as an “independent opposition”. The main charge for the expulsion was a serious breach of the party’s regulations in creating internal disunity.[14]
The expulsion was apparently done by mutual consent between Captain Thammanat and party leader General Prawit. It allowed Captain Thammanat and his followers to leave the PPRP to join a new party without losing their House membership. If they simply resigned from the PPRP, they would have automatically lost their House membership in the process.
Under mysterious circumstances, the PPRP joined the PT to change the election system to increase the number of election constituencies from 350 to 400, and to reduce the number of party-list House seats from 150 to 100. Another crucial change was the return to using two ballots: one for electing a constituency candidate, and another for choosing a party. Second ballot votes will go to determining the allocation of the party-list House seats, but this time the allocation will be by way of a simple direct proportion, i.e. if a party receives 10% of all second ballot votes in the next general election, then the party will get 10 party-list House seats, regardless of how many constituency seats it has won.
These changes will benefit large and well-funded parties like the PPRP and the PT which have resources to field competitive candidates in all the 400 constituencies in the next general election.
One explanation gaining attention in the Thai media is that General Prawit and Thaksin have struck a “secret deal”. After its “landslide victory” in the next general election, the PT will team up with the PPRP to support General Prawit for the next premiership. In return, General Prawit will, for the sake of national reconciliation, help Thaksin return to Thailand after 15 years in exile overseas.[15]
The talks about the “secret deal” sometimes also included Bhumjaithai, the second largest government party. But its leader, Deputy Prime Minister and Public Health Anutin Charnvirakul, has denied having any deal with any other parties. He intends to lead the next government coalition with himself as the prime minister if his party wins 120 House seats or more.[16]
Likewise, leaders of the PPRP and the PT all have publicly denied any such “secret deal”. Nevertheless, it is common knowledge that many senior politicians in the PPRP, the PT, and Bhumjaithai (including Anutin) all used to belong to Thaksin’s Thai Rak Thai Party,[17] until the coup in September 2006.
By early January 2023, the widening rift between General Prawit and General Prayut worsened beyond repair. General Prawit announced in an “open letter” posted on his Facebook on 13 January confirming that General Prayut would separate from the PPRP, and join a new party, the UTN.
General Prawit described his mixed feelings as follows: “I had stated [the slogan] “3 ‘Por’ Forever”. I still have the same old feeling without change. …But I just cannot describe my current feeling into words now, except to congratulate him for his decision and to wish him success in his new political path which he has chosen. …”[18]
Nevertheless, General Prawit dropped one bomb shell in his “open letter”. He stated that it was General Prayut who wished to continue doing political work in order to finish what he had started after staging the 2014 coup. Therefore General Prawit had to set up the PPRP to support General Prayut and to nominate him for the premiership.[19]
Earlier, General Prawit had also claimed during a no-confidence debate on 22 July 2022 that the 2014 coup was the brainchild of General Prayut. Neither he nor General Anupong were involved.[20]
TWO GENERALS, ONE PREMIERSHIP
The rivalry between General Prawit and General Prayut for the next premiership will intensify in the upcoming general election. For the time being, General Prawit has the clear advantage of having more MPs in his PPRP, while General Prayut’s UTN is new and untested.
The UTN is frantically trying to woo MPs from other parties, including those in the PPRP – much to the chagrin of the PPRP leadership. So far, Labour Minister Suchart Chom-klin and PM’s Office Minister Anucha Nakasai of the PPRP have shown clear intention to join the UTN.
At the same time, the PPRP has welcomed the return of Captain Thammanat and 10 MPs from his group. Also returning to the PPRP are Dr Uttama Saowanayon and Sonthirat Sonthijirawong. Dr Uttama was the first PPRP leader and a former finance minister while Sonthirat was the first PPRP secretary-general and a former energy minister.
These two political heavyweights had given up on their two-year-old Sarng Anakot Thai Party, partly because of their failure to work out a merger with Thai Sarng Thai (TST) Party led by Khunying Sudarat Keyurapan.
Khunying Sudarat was the PT’s No.1 candidate for the premiership in the 2019 general election. When it was clear that there was no chance of beating General Prayut, the PT turned to endorse the nomination of Future Forward party leader Thanatorn to enter the race for the premiership.
Subsequent power struggles inside the PT eventually forced Khunying Sudarat and her followers to quit the PT, and to join the TST. Khunying Sudarat has had some success in attracting support, especially in north-eastern provinces, at the expense of the PT. One of her potent selling points is to offer the TST as an open-minded new party to overcome the old political polarisation between the PT’s pro-Thaksin camp versus the pro-General Prayut conservative establishment.
Undoubtedly, the PPRP is also going with the same selling point. This was why General Prawit has tried to distance himself from the 2014 coup and coup leader General Prayut, as well as from the feud between General Prayut and Thaksin. Now, General Prawit is avoiding dismissing the possibility of his PPRP collaborating with the PT in forming the next government coalition.
On the other hand, the mutual distain between General Prayut and Thaksin is well-known. General Prayut finds it hard to tolerate the PT’s pro-Thaksin inclination, whereas Thaksin and the PT have ridiculed General Prayut as a usurper and as the enemy of Thai democracy. The possibility of General Prayut’s UTN working with the PT in a new government coalition is nil.
For many politicians who are looking for a sure winning bet, jumping on the political bandwagon of General Prawit and his PPRP is a no-brainer choice. General Prawit clearly has more friends than enemies, unlike General Prayut who has many enemies and few friends.
Worse still, at the UTN, it is still doubtful whether the new party will be able to win up to 25 House seats in order to qualify for putting forth General Prayut’s name in the race for the premiership in parliament after the general election. The party has no new selling point beyond maintaining the status quo of political polarisation and continuity.
It is also unclear how most of the 250 senators will vote, knowing that General Prayut’s eligibility to hold the premiership will end in mid-2025.
CONCLUSION
The end of the “Three ‘Por’ Group” is a welcome change for the better in Thai politics.
The rivalry between General Prawit and General Prayut for the premiership will make the next general election a crucial turning point in Thailand. The outcome of the election will be less predictable, and the formation of the new government coalition will be more complicated.
General Prawit may be enjoying a clear political edge, but it is still premature to jump to the conclusion that he will be the next Thai prime minister.
Uncertainties remain in Thai politics, because General Prayut is determined to soldier on, both in the general election and in the Senate, to hold onto the premiership.
ENDNOTES
For endnotes, please refer to the original pdf document.
| ISEAS Perspective is published electronically by: ISEAS – Yusof Ishak Institute 30 Heng Mui Keng Terrace Singapore 119614 Main Tel: (65) 6778 0955 Main Fax: (65) 6778 1735 Get Involved with ISEAS. Please click here: /support/get-involved-with-iseas/ | ISEAS – Yusof Ishak Institute accepts no responsibility for facts presented and views expressed. Responsibility rests exclusively with the individual author or authors. No part of this publication may be reproduced in any form without permission. © Copyright is held by the author or authors of each article. | Editorial Chairman: Choi Shing Kwok Editorial Advisor: Tan Chin Tiong Editorial Committee: Terence Chong, Cassey Lee, Norshahril Saat, and Hoang Thi Ha Managing Editor: Ooi Kee Beng Editors: William Choong, Lee Poh Onn, Lee Sue-Ann, and Ng Kah Meng Comments are welcome and may be sent to the author(s). |
2023/13 “Impact of GE 15 in Sarawak: Preliminary Observations and a Look Ahead” by Lee Poh Onn
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
- The 15th General Election (GE 15) on 19 November 2022 followed eleven months after the Sarawak state election (SSE), which took place on 18 December 2021. Concerns over the costs of living, education, endemicity of Covid-19, and employment were among the uppermost thoughts of Sarawakians when GE 15 was announced.
- What resulted from GE 15 was a hung parliament at the federal level. In a strange turn of events, BN, with its 30 seats became the kingmaker for Pakatan Harapan (PH). Sarawak also became crucial in providing 23 seats to the unity government.
- The Gabungan Parti Sarawak (GPS) initially pledged its support to Perikatan Nasional (PN) but eventually joined Pakatan Harapan (PH), making Anwar Ibrahim the 10th Malaysian Prime Minister under the decree and suggestion of the Malaysian Agong. Currently, many benefits under the unity government are flowing to Sarawak following its relative increase in importance in federal politics.
- Sarawak is now allowed to use English along with Bahasa Malaysia as its official language. The unity government has also empowered both the Sabah and Sarawak state governments to directly manage federally-funded projects worth RM 50 million and below. The number of ministerial and deputy ministerial positions has also been raised.
- Sarawak Premier, Abang Johari, is now standing on much firmer ground, especially after the victories in SSE 2021 and this election.
* Lee Poh Onn is Senior Fellow and a member of the Malaysia Studies Programme at ISEAS – Yusof Ishak Institute. He would like to thank Francis E. Hutchinson and Lee Hwok Aun for comments on an earlier version and Rebecca Neo for producing the map of Sarawak and its constituencies.
ISEAS Perspective 2023/13, 23 February 2023
INTRODUCTION
The 15th General Election (GE 15) on 19 November 2022, followed about one year after the Sarawak state election, which took place on 18 December 2021. Political fatigue was widely expected among voters in this election in Malaysia and in Sarawak. Politicking at the federal level in the past four years, including the Sheraton move that toppled the Pakatan government, had undermined political confidence in the country.[1] In Sarawak, when GE 15 was announced, concerns over the costs of living, education, endemicity of Covid-19, and employment were at the top of voters’ minds.[2] An additional deterrent were the seasonal monsoon rains.[3] These factors eventually dampened voter turnout in GE15 in Sarawak.
What resulted from GE15 was a hung parliament. PN won 73 seats, PH won 82, and BN won 30 out of the total of 221 seats.[4] For a simple majority, a minimum of 112 seats was a prerequisite. PH just needed BN to work with it in order to form this simple majority, but PN needed both BN and Gabungan Parti Sarawak (GPS) to fly past this simple majority.[5] No single coalition had secured enough seats and in a strange turn of events, BN, with its 30 seats became the kingmaker for PH, which had won 82 seats. Sarawak then became crucial in providing additional stability with its 23 seats, and a building block towards the 148 seats needed for a two-thirds supermajority in the Malaysian Parliament.
This perspective will analyse the election outcome in Sarawak and, at the same time, also quickly retrace what immediately happened in Peninsular Malaysia after GE 15. It also provides some observations of the election results in Sarawak. How did GPS and its opposition parties perform? What are the implications of this victory? It then examines developments that took place immediately after GE 15, when no coalition was left with a majority in government. After that, the new dynamics under the unity government are examined.
PRELIMINARY OBSERVATIONS: GE 15 IN SARAWAK
The 2022 general election (GE15) in Sarawak was a pivotal one for Abang Johari. First, this was watched to see if it would replicate the solid showing of the Sarawak State Election in 2021 (SSE 2021). In SSE 2021, GPS won 76 out of the 82 contested state seats, the opposition Parti Sarawak Bersatu (PSB) won 4, while DAP Sarawak won two seats.[6] There was an expectation that GPS would perform similarly well for GE15 by capturing around 25 of the 31 parliamentary seats. Second, Abang Johari has since 13 January 2017 held the office of Chief Minister of Sarawak – renamed Premier in March 2022.[7] A reduction in the number of seats won in GE15 compared to the number of seats in GE 14 would mean that GPS was losing ground.[8] GPS performed well, however, and secured 23 out of the 31 seats (Table 1 below). This was less than the expected 25 seats but a good indication that GPS had strengthened its electoral position compared to GE 14.
TABLE 1: GE 15 Outcome of GPS Component and Opposition Parties
| Party | Political Party/Component | Seats Contested | Seats Won |
| Gabungan Parti Sarawak (GPS) | PBB (Parti Pesaka Bumiputera Bersatu) | 14 | 14 |
| PDP (Progressive Democratic Party) | 4 | 2 | |
| PRS (Parti Rakyat Sarawak) | 6 | 5 | |
| SUPP (Sarawak United People’s Party) | 7 | 2 | |
| GPS Total | 31 | 23 | |
| Pakatan Harapan (PH) | DAP Sarawak (Democratic Action Party – Sarawak) | 8 | 5 |
| PKR (Parti Keadilan Rakyat) | 16 | 1 | |
| PBM (Parti Bangsa Malaysia) | 1 | 1 | |
| PH Total | 25 | 7 | |
| Perikatan Nasional (PN) | Bersatu (Parti Pribumi Bersatu Malaysia) | 3 | 1 |
| PN Total | 3 | 1 | |
| Other Parties and Independents (PSB, PBK, PBDS, Independents) | PBS (Parti Sarawak Bersatu), PBK (Parti Bumi Kenyalang), Sedar, PBDS (Parti Bansa Dayak Sarawak Baru) PBM (Parti Bangsa Malaysia) Independents | 33 | 0 |
| Other Parties and Independents Total | 33 | 0 |
Source and Notes: Compiled from Borneo Post Online, Sabah and Sarawak Results, https://ge15.theborneopost.com/results/index.html. The Star, GE 15, https://election.thestar.com.my/sarawak.html. Both accessed on 28 December 2022. See Appendices 1 to 9 for a detailed breakdown of seats contested by the various candidates.
The average turnout for SSE 2021 was 60.67 percent[9] with 9 out of the 82 seats having a voter turnout of less than 50 percent. Historically, election turnouts in Sarawak have averaged 68 percent.[10] In the recent GE15, turnout in Sarawak was 61.7 percent;[11] lower than the turnout of 72 percent in GE 14 and the long-term average turnout of 68 percent. This was in spite of the 1.943 million registered voters in the state, understood to be around a 59 percent increase over GE 14.[12] In rural constituencies like Kapit, Baram and Limbang, the turnout was 49.9 percent, 50.8 percent and 47.9 percent respectively (Appendices 2 and 3).
The increase in the number of voters with automatic registration and the inclusion of youths 18 years and above did not manage to raise turnout rates in Sarawak. The survey done by Merdeka Study Centre before GE 15, which indicated that only about 40 percent of eligible youths would actually vote[xiii] had proven correct.[14] Generally it is understood that a low turnout would give an edge to GPS, with its established election machinery in getting/transporting voters to the voting centres even in rural areas.[15]
In Sarawak, 15 constituencies had three contesting candidates (three-cornered fights), five had four candidates, and one had five candidates (see Appendices 1 to 9). Out of the 31 seats, seven were marginal victories. From Appendices 1 to 9, it can be seen that multi-cornered fights did dilute the results in some constituencies, notably in Sri Aman (GPS), Kanowit (GPS), Sibu (DAP Sarawak), Miri (PKR), Lubok Antu (GPS) and Julau (PBM).
Out of the seven marginal seats[16] in this election, three belonged to the PRS component of GPS (Sri Aman, Kanowit, and Lubok), two to DAP Sarawak (Stampin and Sibu), one to Parti Keadilan Rakyat (Miri), and one to PBM (Julau). PRS therefore represents the weakest component in GPS. The entry and victory of the PN candidate, Ali Biju in Saratok, is a worrying concern on one level, but this should be placed in context, in that he was a PKR candidate in GE 14 who switched sides to Bersatu in GE 15. The worry however is that he will continue to remain in Bersatu and allow the party to make further inroads into Sarawak.
Abang Johari has maintained the Sarawak parties’ established stance that UMNO not be allowed to not enter the state. In that vein, Bersatu’s decision to contest GE 15 in Sarawak also subverted the norm in Sarawakian politics. Not only would Peninsular race and religion politics be entering into the state through Bersatu, which is a breakaway component of UMNO, but these parties would also be contesting directly against GPS. For example, in this election, Ali Biju of Bersatu contested against Giendam Jonathan Tait of GPS. PAS was however visibly absent in Sarawak this time; Hamdan Sani from PAS who contested in GE 14, now contested under the PN banner in Batang Lupar in GE 15 (see Appendix 1). How this can translate into a less visible entry by PAS into Sarawak (through the PN backdoor) is a matter that should be tracked in future state and general elections.
On the surface, the opposition appears not to have lost too much ground; retaining eight seats in GE15 compared to twelve in GE 14 (see Figure 1 below).[17] However, out of these eight seats, four are marginal. Chong Chien Jen (Stampin seat – DAP – indicated in red) only had a marginal victory against his SUPP opponent, Loh Khere Chiang. Oscar Ling (Sibu seat – DAP – indicated in red) also only had a marginal victory against Clarence Ting of SUPP. The Sarawak-based party PSB did not win any seats despite fielding Wong Soon Koh (in Sibu) and Baru Bian (in Lawas), strong candidates in PSB’s fold. PSB has lost its earlier footing gained during the Sarawak state election a year earlier. Larry Sng (Julau seat – PBM – indicated in green) also only won marginally, his victory diluted in a four-cornered fight.
FIGURE 1: General Election and Winning Party in Sarawak
POLITICAL JOSTLING IN FEDERAL POLITICS AND A RELUCTANT GPS BRIDE
Abang Johari on 23 October 2022 stated that GPS would support the party that can form a strong federal government to ensure political stability and prosperity for Malaysia.[18] Stability was important, Abang Johari pointed out, and a weak administration would only slow down progress and the implementation of projects. This was witnessed in developments which unfolded after the 2018 general election where there were three changes of governments within one parliamentary term. Abang Johari also stated that GPS would support any prime minister candidate who is fair to Sarawak, one who will understand and protect the state’s rights as enshrined in the Malaysia Agreement 1963. Sarawak was fortunate, he added, in that it does not follow the “culture of Malaya” (specifically Peninsular Malaysia’s culture of race and politics), and it will not allow Malayan culture to come into the state. Thus, Sarawak does not want UMNO and Bersatu to come into the state.[19] The drama unfolded in the five days after polling day.
– 20 November 2022
One day after GE 15, Abang Johari announced that GPS had agreed to form a coalitional Federal Government with PN, BN, and Gabungan Rakyat Sabah (GRS). GPS also agreed to support Muhyiddin Yassin as the 10th Prime Minister.[20] The establishment of this coalition government was of course premised on the Federal Constitution, the Sarawak State Constitution, and the sovereignty of laws as enshrined in the Malaysia Agreement 1963 and Inter-Government Committee (IGC) Report.[21] PN, however, needed more than GPS to form a simple majority of 112, as opposed to PH which just needed 30 seats from any party. In retrospect, this announcement by GPS was made on the understanding that BN would also support the PN coalition.
On the same day (20 November), Zahid Hamidi came out to say that BN had not made a decision and had yet to hold any formal talks with GPS on forming a coalition. There had also been no negotiations with PN which could lead to “any understanding on forming a federal government with the coalition.”[22]
– 21 November 2022
BN subsequently held separate meetings with PN and PH. PN did not agree in writing to conditions laid down by BN, including not identifying the unity government to the name of a particular party, the formation of the cabinet, the issue of Islam, Malays and Bumiputera, the royal institution, and the Malay language.[23] PN stated that they were ready to consider the points brought forward by BN while PH agreed to these conditions by BN in writing. PN also rejected the Agong’s suggestion to form a unity government with PH. Muhyiddin also claimed that he had the support of 10 MPs from BN to support his PN government, which Zahid likened to treason as the decision of these 10 MPs was not in line with the party’s stance.
The decision for BN to join the unity government headed by PH, was also in line with the Agong’s decree to form a unity government, and was also not unilaterally made by Zahid Hamidi, as UMNO Supreme Council had agreed to back Anwar as the Prime Minister.[24] In this instance, BN with its 30 seats, effectively became kingmaker in the formation of the Unity Government. Under these fluid circumstances, GPS then came out again to say that it would wait before deciding on who to partner to form a coalition government.[25] It was prudent for GPS to keep out of the political impasse in Malaysia as BN was still undecided on PN or PH as its coalition partner. GPS was still inclined to support Muhyiddin as the new Prime Minister.
– 23 November 2022
On 23 November, GPS was advised by the Agong to consider forming a unity government to end this political crisis and break the deadlock, as PN had refused to join PH to form a unity government. Senior Vice-President of Parti Pesaka Bumiputera Bersatu (PBB) Fadillah Yusof who represented GPS for an audience with the King, then conveyed this message to GPS Chairman Abang Johari.[26]
– 24 November 2022
On 24 November 2022, one day after the meeting Fadillah Yusof had with the Agong, GPS Chairman, Abang Johari, announced that GPS had accepted the Agong’s advice on the formation of a unity government at the Federal Level, with Anwar as the 10th Prime Minister.[27] The open apology made personally during a visit by DAP Secretary-General Anthony Loke to the residence of Abang Johari on 24 November 2022 may have worked towards GPS softening its stance towards PH. Following Loke, DAP Chairman, Lim Guan Eng also offered his apology via Facebook.[28] Both apologies were accepted by GPS but DAP Sarawak nevertheless remains an opposition party in the state assembly.[29] Indeed the DAP element in PH was a strong deterrent for GPS to support the unity government under Anwar. It is also understood unofficially that GPS would only support the unity government if no Cabinet positions were given to MPs in DAP Sarawak.[30] The years of being in parties that opposed one another in Sarawak has made it very “complicated” for both parties to now be in coalition in the unity government. This will remain an important issue that needs to be closely followed in the months ahead.
Naturally, mixed feelings were expressed in Sarawak on the proposed move by Abang Johari to join PN. This came from both local social activists and politicians.[31] Abang Johari’s decision to support PN which only had 73 seats as opposed to PH which had 82 seats ran contrary to the principles of majoritarian democracy, according to Denis Hang Bilang. Reservations were also expressed by state assemblyperson and PSB secretary-general Baru Bian on the proposal by GPS to form a coalition with PN (and PAS). Sarawak has a multiracial and multi-religious society which has existed harmoniously and which has to be preserved.[32] The ethnic composition of Sarawak is also distinct from West Malaysia as only 30 percent of the population are Muslim, while 44 percent are Christian.[33] Another social activist however felt that Abang Johari’s decision to support PN was not an individual but a unanimous decision by the four component parties in GPS. GPS as a party wanted to support a strong and stable coalition government, which it felt only PN could deliver. Elsewhere, concerns were also expressed by several retired SUPP politicians on the proposed coalition government with PN (and PAS), as sentiments against PAS in Sarawak are very negative.[34] Moving into digital space, there were three online petitions launched on Change.Org to persuade GPS to reject PN and particularly PAS.[35] These three petitions accounted for more than 50,000 signatures.
Currently, a unity government is in place comprising Pakatan Harapan (82 seats), Barisan Nasional (30 seats), Gabungan Parti Sarawak (23 seats), Gabungan Rakyat Sabah (6 seats), Warisan (3 seats), Parti Bangsa Malaysia (1 seat), Social Democratic Harmony Party (2 seats), and an independent backer from the Kudat Constituency in Sabah (1 seat).
NEW DYNAMICS UNDER ANWAR’S UNITY GOVERNMENT
At the federal level, GPS is in the unity government with DAP Sarawak. At the state level, however, DAP Sarawak remains in the opposition. There is also no formal cooperation inked between GPS and DAP Sarawak under this unity government structure. However, it is understood that at the state assembly level, DAP Sarawak and PH would still take on the task of monitoring affairs of the state.[36] How DAP Sarawak adopts a more conciliatory approach towards GPS at the parliamentary level but remain in the opposition at state assembly meetings will be an interested development to observe. Any untoward or unreasonable behaviour towards GPS at the state level may strain the support given by GPS to the unity government at the parliamentary level. From the stance of GPS, Fadillah Yusof[37] also took pains to remind Sarawakians that GPS is part of the unity government and is not part of the PH government.[38] He also said that GPS has the right to pull its support from the national unity government if state rights were challenged, though it recognises the current support given by Prime Minister Anwar in resolving outstanding issues in the Malaysia Agreement 1963. Anwar has also given the full mandate to Fadillah Yusof to sort out the outstanding claims under this agreement.[39] GPS also only supported this move because it was vital to have a strong and stable national administration, especially now with the appointment to many ministerial and deputy ministerial positions of Sarawakians and GPS in particular.
This time around, GPS managed to secure five ministerial and six deputy ministerial positions under the unity government, in addition to Fadillah Yusof being appointed a Deputy Prime Minister (see Table 2 below). GPS thus has two more positions than it had in Ismail Sabri’s cabinet. Then, GPS only had four ministerial and five deputy ministerial positions. Under the Muhyiddin Yasin cabinet, the party’s position was even weaker. GPS had only four ministerial and four deputy ministerial positions then.
TABLE 2: Ministerial and Deputy Ministerial Cabinet Positions for GPS and its Component Parties
| Component Party/Constituency | Position | |
| Fadillah Yusof | GPS – PBB – Petra Jaya | Deputy Prime Minister and also Minister of Plantation and Commodities |
| Alexander Nanta Linggi | GPS – PBB – Kapit | Minister of Works |
| Nancy Shukri | GPS – PBB – Santubong | Minister of Women, Family and Community Development |
| Tiong King Sing | GPS – PDP – Bintulu | Minister of Tourism, Arts and Culture |
| Aaron Ago Dagang | GPS – PRS – Kanowit | Minister of National Unity |
| Wilson Ugak Kumbong | GPS – PRS – Hulu Rajang | Deputy Minister in the Prime Minister’s Department |
| Hanifah Hajar Taib | GPS – PBB – Mukah | Deputy Minister of Economy |
| Habibillah | GPS – PBB – Limbang | Deputy Minister of Transport |
| Lukanisman Awang Sauni | GPS – PBB – Sibuti | Deputy Minister of Health |
| Rubiah Wang | GPS – PBB – Kota Samarahan | Deputy Minister of Rural and Regional Development |
| Huang Tiong Sii | GPS – SUPP – Sarikei | Deputy Minister of Natural Resources, Environment and Climate Change |
Currently, under the unity government, many benefits are flowing to the state. Sarawak is now allowed to use English along with Bahasa Malaysia as its official language.[40] The unity government has also empowered both the Sabah and Sarawak state governments to directly manage federally-funded projects worth RM 50 million and below. This would mean that around 70 percent of projects in Sarawak can be fully managed and decided over without referral to the federal government.[41] Projects within this range would include schools, clinics, fire stations and other rural projects. The return of autonomy in education and health has already also been agreed to in principle with the details currently being worked out by the federal government.[42] In 2023, Sarawak would also be receiving an increased annual special grant of RM 300 million (previously this only amounted to RM 16 million), and Sabah would be receiving RM 260 million as opposed to RM 26 million previously (Article 122D of the Federal Constitution). It was also reported that a clearer formula will be finalised to calculate the amount of these special grants.[43]
CONCLUSION: WHAT LIES AHEAD?
Post GE 15, Sarawak’s position in federal politics has been strengthened by the appointment of the unity government by Malaysia’s Agong. Abang Johari is now standing on much firmer ground, especially after the victories in SSE 2021 and in this election. A present worry for GPS is PN’s further entry into Sarawak. Sarawak has already been gaining visible benefits from the unity government, for example, larger funding and greater autonomy in managing projects below RM 50 million. It will be interesting to track what further benefits will come to the state and how federal-state dynamics will evolve to benefit the state and raise its investment potential for outside investors.
ENDNOTES
For endnotes, please refer to the original pdf document.
APPENDICIES
For appendicies (Appendix 1 to 9), please also refer to the original pdf document.
| ISEAS Perspective is published electronically by: ISEAS – Yusof Ishak Institute 30 Heng Mui Keng Terrace Singapore 119614 Main Tel: (65) 6778 0955 Main Fax: (65) 6778 1735 Get Involved with ISEAS. Please click here: /support/get-involved-with-iseas/ | ISEAS – Yusof Ishak Institute accepts no responsibility for facts presented and views expressed. Responsibility rests exclusively with the individual author or authors. No part of this publication may be reproduced in any form without permission. © Copyright is held by the author or authors of each article. | Editorial Chairman: Choi Shing Kwok Editorial Advisor: Tan Chin Tiong Editorial Committee: Terence Chong, Cassey Lee, Norshahril Saat, and Hoang Thi Ha Managing Editor: Ooi Kee Beng Editors: William Choong, Lee Poh Onn, Lee Sue-Ann, and Ng Kah Meng Comments are welcome and may be sent to the author(s). |
2023/12 “The Vaccine R&D System and Production Network in Thailand: Possibilities for Strengthening Domestic and International Partnerships” by Antonio Postigo
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
- While Thailand enjoys self-sufficiency in many of the vaccines it needs, when COVID-19 hit, the country’s R&D preparedness and response were not strong enough to develop vaccines in a timely manner. And amid supply shortages after COVID-19 vaccines were developed, Thailand, like the rest of ASEAN, initially relied on vaccines produced elsewhere.
- Thailand ranks high among ASEAN countries in many indicators of R&D inputs and outputs. However, its R&D and innovation systems are not yet sufficiently developed to translate vaccine R&D inputs into patents that can then lead to new vaccines.
- Public and private pharmaceutical firms in Thailand conduct vaccine R&D in the national immunisation programme in collaboration with universities and research institutes in Thailand and abroad. Thailand is also home to many international and domestic contract research organisations.
- ASEAN has launched several initiatives to strengthen its biomedical R&D infrastructure and human resources, build a network of research centres across the region, and promote cooperation in R&D among ASEAN members, ASEAN’s Dialogue Partners, the United States, and the European Union.
- Thailand and ASEAN can strengthen their vaccine security by pooling and coordinating their financial and scientific resources to address diseases of regional concern.
* Antonio Postigo is Associate Fellow in the Thailand Studies Programme, ISEAS –Yusof Ishak Institute, Singapore, and a Visiting Fellow in the Department of International Development, London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE).
ISEAS Perspective 2023/12, 23 February 2023
INTRODUCTION
Although non-communicable diseases are now the main drivers of mortality and morbidity rates in Thailand, some infectious diseases still have high levels of incidence and prevalence.[1] In most circumstances, particularly when no therapeutic drugs are available and in low-income settings, vaccines are a cost-effective public health intervention in controlling the spread of, and reducing mortality and morbidity from infectious diseases.[2]
Thailand not only self-procures many of the vaccines in its Expanded Programme on Immunisation, but it is also ASEAN’s second-largest vaccine exporter after Indonesia, mainly of influenza vaccines to other ASEAN countries.[3] Still, in 2020, Thailand reported more than 60,000 cases of vaccine-preventable diseases.[4]
KEY INDICATORS IN THE THAI BIOMEDICAL AND VACCINE R&D SYSTEM
Developing effective vaccines rapidly requires strong vaccine research and development (R&D) preparedness and response. As illustrated by the rapid development of vaccines for COVID-19, R&D preparedness and response necessitates not only adequate financial and scientific resources, but also a policy and regulatory R&D environment that fosters innovation, public-private partnerships, and international cooperation.
Vaccine R&D is also essential for achieving the UN’s Sustainable Development Goal 3 (SDG 3: Ensure healthy lives and promote well-being for all ages), and other SDGs that depend on healthy people and populations.[5] In fact, some SDG targets include indicators related to biomedical R&D.
The diversity in economic development within ASEAN is mirrored by variability in terms of R&D intensity. Thailand ranks among the ASEAN countries with higher inputs and outputs indicators in biomedical R&D. In 2017, gross expenditures on R&D relative to GDP (SDG indicator 3.b.2) in Thailand stood at 1.0%, only behind Singapore (1.9%) and Malaysia (1.4%).[6] In countries with total R&D spending above 1%, the private sector tends to be a major, often the largest, contributor to R&D expenditures (Table 1). The private sector accounts for 80.8% of total R&D expenditures in Thailand, the largest in ASEAN. In 2018, Thailand had 1,350 researchers per million inhabitants in full-time equivalents (SDG indicator 9.5.2), the third largest in ASEAN.
Regarding R&D output indicators, the picture is mixed (Table 2). On the one hand, Thai researchers are among the most productive in ASEAN in terms of the number of academic publications and clinical trials, but they lag in the number of patents. Thailand trails Indonesia, Malaysia, and Singapore in the number of articles published in peer-reviewed journals in the broad field of biomedicine, but when it comes to the specific topic of vaccines, Thai researchers published more articles than their peers elsewhere in ASEAN countries, and were only behind China, Japan, India, the Republic of Korea and Iran in all of Asia. [7]
A bibliometric analysis of the articles published in 2019 by ASEAN scientists indicates that Thai researchers collaborate more with scientists from the United States and Australia than with colleagues from other ASEAN countries.[8] The Southeast Asian office of the WHO established as one of the objectives of its 2016-2020 Vaccine Strategic Plan the participation of all countries in vaccine clinical trials.[9] As of March 2022, the Asia-Pacific region had conducted 24.1% of all vaccine clinical trials in the world, led by China with 571 trials. Thailand, with 200 vaccine clinical trials, ranked first in ASEAN (36.5% of all vaccine clinical trials in ASEAN) and fourth in Asia Pacific.[10]
However, research does not necessarily generate economic value if it does not create new products, services, and/or processes. Thailand has still to translate its investments, publications, and clinical trials into patents, which is a good proxy of a country’s ability to innovate. As of March 2022, Thailand had 41 patents in the field of biotechnology and 47 in pharmaceuticals, 7 times fewer than Malaysia and 20 times fewer than Singapore.[11]
MAIN PLAYERS IN THE THAI VACCINE R&D SYSTEM
As in other middle-income Asian economies, vaccine R&D and production in Thailand is centred on traditional technology vaccines included in its Expanded Programme on Immunisation. Thai vaccine manufacturers do not yet have the technological capacity to produce mRNA vaccines. As the R&D and production capabilities of Thai and ASEAN vaccine manufacturers improved, many of their vaccines had been exported to developing countries within Asia and beyond.
The policy process and government agencies involved in establishing vaccine security policy, deciding which vaccines should be included in the National List of Essential Vaccines as well as creating the regulatory framework for licensing and marketing of vaccines have been described in detail elsewhere.[12] The main government agencies that participate in setting the R&D agenda and allocating research funds are the Thai National Institute of Health (TNIH, Department of Medical Sciences, Ministry of Public Health, MoPH), the National Research Council of Thailand, the National Science and Technology Development (NSTDA), the National Science Technology and Innovation Policy Office, and the Thailand Centre of Excellence for Life Sciences. The TNIH is one of only five Asia Pacific R&D funding organisations included in the Global Research Collaboration for Infectious Disease Preparedness (GLOPID-R), an international coalition of funders of R&D to combat infectious diseases with pandemic potential. Regarding vaccine R&D, various organisations within the MoPH regulate and fund early preclinical research stages; namely, the Food and Drug Administration, the National Vaccine Institute (NVI), and the Department of Disease Control. Among its institutional goals, the NVI aims to strengthen R&D infrastructure, including training and capacity building, and technology transfer through its training vaccine centre.
The main pharmaceutical firms involved in vaccine R&D and manufacturing are the state-owned Government Pharmaceutical Organisation (GPO), the Queen Saovabha Memorial Institute-Thai Red Cross (QSMI), and the private firm BioNet Asia. The GPO conducts vaccine R&D and accounts for a significant share of Thai vaccine manufacturing, and it also exports vaccines to other ASEAN countries.[13] The QSMI packages and distributes serums and rabies vaccines. Both companies are members of the Developing Countries Vaccine Manufacturers Network (DCVMN), which encompasses 41 public and private pharmaceutical firms in developing countries.[14] BioNet Asia is one of the most active and innovative ASEAN firms, and the only Thai firm that produces vaccines prequalified by the WHO for procurement by UN agencies and governments.[15] Bionet has developed low-cost vaccines for Haemophilus influenzae type b (Hib) using traditional technologies and, in collaboration with the NSTDA and several Thai research institutes, has patented processes for the development of a dengue vaccine.
Several Thai public and private pharmaceutical firms and universities have engaged in collaboration with foreign organisations for R&D and production of vaccines. For instance, BioNet has developed a pentavalent vaccine covering diphtheria, tetanus, pertussis, hepatitis B, and meningitis in collaboration with the Thai NSTDA and with South African scientists.[16] Bionet also partnered with the NSTDA and Mahidol and Chiang Mai universities, to develop a dengue vaccine, which was later improved through a partnership with the Sanofi Pasteur Institute and the biotech firm In-Cell-Art in France. Sanofi Pasteur has also established a joint venture with the GPO (GPO-Merieux Biological Products, GPO-MBP) to conduct process development and finish-and-fill for new vaccines for ASEAN countries. Under the arrangement, Sanofi Pasteur supplies the vaccine in bulk and the GPO-MBP formulates and releases finished forms. The Thai Armed Forces Research Institute of Medical Sciences also conducts R&D on vaccines for enteric diseases, malaria, and HIV-AIDS. The MoPH has partnered with the USA’s NIH and the United States Military HIV Research Program to conduct clinical trials for an HIV vaccine. And Siam Bioscience was selected by Astra-Zeneca to produce its COVID-19 vaccine for ASEAN countries, and obtained the WHO’s approval.
Although the development of vaccines using the newest mRNA technologies still remains concentrated in a handful of American and European companies (Moderna, Pfizer/BioNTech, Curevac), some of them have plans to open manufacturing plants in developing countries.[17] In Thailand, the Chula Vaccine Research Centre at Chulalongkorn University and the King Chulalongkorn Memorial Hospital have joined forces with BioNet to develop and manufacture the first Thai-made mRNA vaccine for COVID-19, the ChulaCov19 BNA159 vaccine. Stages 1 and 2 of clinical trials for this vaccine have been conducted in Australia.[18]
The offshoring by global pharmaceutical firms of R&D activities to developing countries can potentially lead to technology transfer and enhance the R&D and manufacturing capabilities of domestic biotechnology firms. Many of the global pharmaceutical firms with a presence in Thailand conduct late manufacturing stages for vaccines and therapeutic drugs. However, they have chosen other Asian countries (mainly China, India, Japan, the Republic of Korea, and Singapore) in which to establish regional R&D centres. Many of these global pharmaceutical firms have outsourced some of their R&D, initial clinical trials but increasingly other tasks as well (preclinical research, applications for ethical committees, and regulatory authorities) to so-called contract research organisations (CROs). Thailand is home to several of the largest global CROs (Covance, ICON, IQVIA, Novotech, Parexel, PPD, Synchron, and Syneos Health) but also to local firms such as Aclires and Asia Global Research.[19]
VACCINE R&D COOPERATION IN ASEAN AND BEYOND
The COVID-19 pandemic has shown how international cooperation can accelerate vaccine development. It has also exposed how beggar-thy-neighbour policies, such as export restrictions on medical protective equipment and vaccine nationalism, can leave many developing countries at the expense of donor countries to secure vaccines for their most vulnerable populations.[20]
In the context of a pandemic, vaccine production may not be sufficiently elastic, opening the debate about whether or not countries should strengthen their vaccine security by developing their vaccine R&D and manufacturing capacity. Most developing countries lack the financial and technological resources to invest in vaccine R&D. In addition, it is not sensible to replicate R&D capabilities in each country. Instead, international agreements to facilitate unimpeded trade and global/regional cooperation should ensure vaccines for countries without R&D and vaccine production capabilities.
During the 2003-2004 SARS epidemic, the ASEAN Secretariat issued recommendations to contain the epidemic.[21] ASEAN has also been very active during the COVID-19 pandemic with multiple initiatives, including the establishment of the ASEAN Centre for Public Health Emergencies and Emerging Diseases, and the ASEAN Public Health Emergency Coordination System programme to coordinate national and regional preparedness and response to health emergencies. The ASEAN Committee on Science and Technology (COST), a committee to promote cooperation in science, technology, and innovation (ST&I) among ASEAN members, formulated the 2016-2025 ASEAN Plan of Action on ST&I (APASTI 2016-2025). TheAPASTI 2016-2025aims at intensifying R&D collaboration between the public and private sector, strengthening ST&I infrastructure and human resources, networking research institutes and centres across ASEAN, and promoting closer cooperation in R&D with ASEAN’s Dialogue Partners.[22]
The ASEAN Secretariat has also established international collaborations in R&D. Thus, in 2020, the United States launched the US-ASEAN Health Futures Initiative to strengthen public health in ASEAN through the development of R&D infrastructure, human capital, and health system capacity. As part of the Initiative, there are now more than 300 joint projects between ASEAN members and the US NIH. The Initiative includes US$ 30 million over the last 10 years in grants to research institutions in ASEAN, and technical support for clinical trials for treatment of infectious diseases.[23] Likewise, the United States Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) established the US-ASEAN Infection Prevention and Control Task Force.[24]
Meetings among key stakeholders in vaccine R&D in ASEAN (health policymakers, biomedical researchers, and the pharmaceutical industry) sponsored by the Southeast Asian Ministers of Education Organisation (SEAMEO) Tropical Medicine Network identified dengue, HPV, HIV, malaria, Japanese encephalitis, leptospirosis, and influenza as the key regional R&D priorities.[25] Likewise, expert group meetings convened by the WHO have identified key areas for ASEAN collaboration and integration in vaccine R&D; namely, vaccine security and self-reliance, human resource capacity building, pooled vaccine procurement, and communication and coordination.[26]
Regional cooperation in vaccine R&D has also taken place outside the framework of supranational and intergovernmental organisations. Three of them deserve to be noted here. First, the Association of Academies and Societies of Sciences in Asia (AASSA), which comprises 32 ST&I societies from 30 Asian countries, including two from Thailand: the Thai Academy of Sciences, and the Science Society of Thailand.[27] In the context of the COVID-19 pandemic, AASSA organised webinars but, compared to similar organisations elsewhere, AASSA has played a relatively low-key role. Second, the Southeast Asia Infectious Disease Clinical Research Network (SEAICRN), a partnership between hospitals and research institutions in Thailand, Viet Nam, and Indonesia, which promotes clinical research collaborations on emerging infectious diseases of public relevance.[28] SEAICRN receives financial and technical support from the NIH in the USA, the Wellcome Trust in the UK, and the governments of Thailand, Viet Nam and Indonesia. Third, the ASEAN Network for Drugs, Diagnostics, Vaccines and Traditional Medicines Innovation (ASEAN-NDI), which has the support of the WHO, maps the overall research capacity of ASEAN countries in vaccines, drugs, traditional medicines, and diagnostic tools.[29] The ASEAN-NDI aims inter alia at strengthening cooperation between ASEAN countries in health R&D, sharing information on infectious diseases, transferring knowledge and/or technology, and facilitating collaboration in R&D initiatives.
CONCLUSION
As an upper-middle income country, Thailand has the financial and technological capabilities, in cooperation with other ASEAN countries, to ensure its national and regional vaccine security. Still, there are several actions at the national and regional levels that can enhance incentives for pharmaceutical firms to invest in vaccine R&D.[30] On the supply-side, Thailand and other ASEAN governments can incentivise vaccine R&D by mobilising financial and scientific resources for R&D on vaccines for diseases posing a domestic or regional public health threat. Thailand can also use other supply-side mechanisms, such as regulatory, policy, tax, and direct subsidies to reduce investment risks for pharmaceutical firms. On the demand-side, Thailand can strengthen policies and regulations to increase the uptake of vaccines through public information campaigns.
Partnerships between universities and the pharmaceutical industry are key sources of innovation. Thailand can promote new alliances and strengthen existing ones through a series of actions. Some of them require increasing financial resources for R&D; for example, such as the establishment of start-up incubators or the financing of joint projects between universities and public research institutes, and pharmaceutical firms. However, others involve regulatory and legislative reforms; for example, better defining the intellectual property rights of pharmaceutical companies and academic institutions for knowledge sharing and technology transfer, allowing academic researchers to carry out projects in pharmaceutical firms, or facilitating cross-participation of academic researchers and industry leaders on corporate and university boards.
Finally, at the regional level, ASEAN as a group, rather than Thailand alone, can pool financial resources to establish advanced purchase commitments with pharmaceutical firms for the R&D and manufacturing of vaccines against diseases of regional concern.
ENDNOTES
For endnotes, please refer to the original pdf document.
| ISEAS Perspective is published electronically by: ISEAS – Yusof Ishak Institute 30 Heng Mui Keng Terrace Singapore 119614 Main Tel: (65) 6778 0955 Main Fax: (65) 6778 1735 Get Involved with ISEAS. Please click here: /support/get-involved-with-iseas/ | ISEAS – Yusof Ishak Institute accepts no responsibility for facts presented and views expressed. Responsibility rests exclusively with the individual author or authors. No part of this publication may be reproduced in any form without permission. © Copyright is held by the author or authors of each article. | Editorial Chairman: Choi Shing Kwok Editorial Advisor: Tan Chin Tiong Editorial Committee: Terence Chong, Cassey Lee, Norshahril Saat, and Hoang Thi Ha Managing Editor: Ooi Kee Beng Editors: William Choong, Lee Poh Onn, Lee Sue-Ann, and Ng Kah Meng Comments are welcome and may be sent to the author(s). |
“GVC Reconfiguration: Risks and Opportunities for ASEAN Members” by Sithanonxay Suvannaphakdy and Pham Thi Phuong Thao
2023/11 “Why Is China’s Global Security Initiative Cautiously Perceived in Southeast Asia?” by Hoang Thi Ha
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
- The Global Security Initiative (GSI) – launched by President Xi Jinping in April 2022 – contains broad general principles that reiterate China’s previous foreign policy and security statements.
- The GSI is the latest expression of China’s international discourse that seeks to challenge the Western-led global governance system, and especially to de-legitimise the US role in Asia and advocate an exclusivist approach to Asian security governance.
- According to the State of Southeast Asia survey 2023, the region’s overall reaction to the GSI is rather ambivalent and cautious as they fear that the GSI will increase US-China tensions and intensify pressure on regional states to take sides.
- Judging by their official statements, mainland Southeast Asian states, except Vietnam, appear to be more accommodating towards the GSI while maritime Southeast Asian states are more cautious.
- There is a gap between the GSI’s moralistic posturing and the manifested reality of China’s nationalistic foreign policy, especially in situations where China’s interests collide with those of its neighbouring states, such as the South China Sea disputes.
- Southeast Asian countries’ caution towards the GSI, in contrast to their support for China’s Global Development Initiative, indicates the dichotomy between their reservations about China’s role as a security provider and their appreciation of China’s role as an economic partner.
The GSI can still gain traction in non-traditional and non-military areas, for example in law enforcement cooperation that cuts across the need to protect China’s overseas interests and to provide political/public security in some mainland Southeast Asian states.
* Hoang Thi Ha is Senior Fellow and Co-coordinator of the Regional Strategic and Political Studies Programme, ISEAS – Yusof Ishak Institute.
ISEAS Perspective 2023/11, 22 February 2023
INTRODUCTION
Chinese President Xi Jinping proposed the Global Security Initiative (GSI) at the Boao Forum for Asia annual conference on 21 April 2022. The GSI is encapsulated in “six commitments”: (i) pursuing common, comprehensive, cooperative and sustainable security; (ii) respecting the sovereignty and territorial integrity of all countries; (iii) abiding by the purposes and principles of the UN Charter; (iv) taking the legitimate security concerns of all countries seriously; (v) peacefully resolving differences and disputes between countries through dialogue and consultation; and (vi) maintaining security in both traditional and non-traditional domains.[1]
On 21 February 2023, China released the GSI concept paper which elaborates on the “six commitments” and identifies priorities areas of cooperation. According to the concept paper, the mechanisms for the GSI implementation include various Chinese initiatives at the UN system and Chinese engagement with the Global South via multiple multilateral platforms over which China has strong ownership and influence, namely the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), BRICS cooperation, the Conference on Interaction and Confidence Building Measures in Asia (CICA), and the Lancang-Mekong Cooperation (LMC), among others.[2] As China’s near-abroad and being situated at the heart of the Indo-Pacific region, Southeast Asia is arguably one of the most critical constituencies of the GSI. It is listed as the first region in the GSI concept paper’s priorities of cooperation, followed by the Middle East, Africa, Latin America and the Caribbean, and Pacific island countries. This article examines the strategic rationale behind the GSI and how it has been received and perceived in Southeast Asia.
WHAT DOES THE GSI STAND FOR?
The GSI with its “six commitments” is contained within only one paragraph but its strategic rationale is organically linked to other parts of Xi’s entire speech, especially those promoting “Asian cooperation”, “Asian unity” and “Asian family”. This, coupled with the fact that Xi chose the Boao Forum to launch the GSI, suggests that China’s strategic gaze remains intensely focused on Asia where it is locked in a contest for primacy with the US. The GSI is in large part an extension of China’s New Asian Security Concept introduced by Xi himself at the 2014 Boao Forum which appeals to non-Western sentiments, de-legitimises the US role in Asia and advocates an exclusivist approach to Asian security governance.[3]
The “six commitments” of the GSI are long embedded in China’s national and international security discourse. It consolidates the basic norms of modern China’s foreign policy codified in the Five Principles of Peaceful Co-existence, including respect for sovereignty and territorial integrity and non-interference. The GSI also replays the terms “common, comprehensive, cooperative and sustainable security” from the New Asian Security Concept. The only new addition to the GSI is the commitment “to take the legitimate security concerns of all countries seriously” which derives from the ‘indivisible security’ concept. This concept was first coined in the Cold War-era 1975 Helsinki Final Act and then the 1990 Charter of Paris for New Europe which stated that “security is indivisible and the security of every participating State is inseparably linked to that of all the others.”[4] The Charter, however, also “fully recognize[s] the freedom of States to choose their own security arrangements”, a key principle that both China and Russia wilfully overlook.
While the logic of ‘indivisible security’ – i.e. the pursuit of one’s security should not be at the expense of others’ security – seems straightforward, its interpretation and application are highly subjective, especially in terms of defining the threshold of “at the expense of other’s security”. This concept has become particularly controversial after Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022 using the pretext that NATO’s eastward expansion jeopardised Russia’s security interests. Although China stops short of endorsing Russia’s action, Beijing is aligned with Moscow in attributing the cause of the war to NATO and the West, and has actively propagated this narrative. A couple of weeks before Russia’s invasion, Moscow and Beijing signed the 4 February 2022 joint statement, evoking ‘indivisible security’ to oppose NATO’s expansion and vowing that both countries would “stand against attempts by external forces to undermine security and stability in their common adjacent regions”, namely Europe for Russia and Asia for China.[5] As such, ‘indivisible security’ would potentially become a new sound bite and normative device for China to advance its longstanding geopolitical end goal, namely to dismantle the US’ alliance system and security partnerships which Beijing sees as detrimental to its own security and hegemonic ambitions in the region.
The GSI should also be perceived in the broader context of China’s push to reform the global governance system to better suit its interests and values, alongside the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) and Global Development Initiative (GDI), among others.[6] The GSI now becomes the overarching framework for multiple Chinese security initiatives at the UN and in the Global South that seek to challenge the Western-led global system and project itself as a leader in the global governance and security architecture.[7] Xi’s speech at the 2022 Boao Forum and subsequent Chinese commentaries on the GSI are full of tropes framing China as a responsible actor – e.g. in enabling the world’s response to the Covid-19 pandemic, poverty reduction and economic recovery – versus the US and its allies that engage in “exclusive, bloc politics”, “decoupling”, “supply chain disruption” and “maximum pressure”. The most common refrain is that the GSI reflects “true multilateralism”, advocates “democracy in international relations”, and offers “a new type of security path of dialogue rather than conflict, forming partnerships rather than alliances, and win-win rather than zero-sum outcomes”.[8] Of note, the GSI has also been used to undermine US-led efforts to rally international punitive measures against Russia, including what China views as “the wanton use of unilateral sanctions and long-arm jurisdiction”.[9]
Another angle that needs further examination is the nexus between the GSI and China’s Comprehensive National Security (CNS) concept. Introduced in 2014, the CNS reflects Xi Jinping’s thinking about national security that aims to realise the “unity of political security, people’s security and national interests”.[10] Under this concept, national security covers multiple types of security, with “political security” at the top as well as other areas of consequence to international security such as “security of overseas interests”, “resource security”, “space security”, “polar security” and “deep-sea security”.[11] In April 2022, China and the Solomon Islands inked a security agreement that allows China, upon the Solomon Islands’ request, to send its “police, armed police, military personnel and other law enforcement and armed forces to Solomon Islands to assist in maintaining social order”; such Chinese forces can also be used “to protect the safety of Chinese personnel and major projects in the Solomon Islands”.[12] The agreement is a clear example of the convergence between the protection of Chinese overseas interests and the imperative to ensure regime security of the host country, which provides a perfect condition for China to expand its military footprint in this strategic location.
SOUTHEAST ASIA’s AMBIVALENT AND CAUTIOUS RESPONSE
Southeast Asians Are Cautious and Ambivalent about the GSI
While receptions of the GSI vary across Southeast Asian countries, the overall reaction has been rather muted and cautious. According to the State of Southeast Asia 2023 survey, 44.5% of respondents express little or no confidence that the GSI will benefit the region versus 27.4% who feel confident or very confident. The sense of ambivalence and uncertainty is also palpable as 28% choose the ‘no comment’ option.[13] Respondents from Brunei, Cambodia and Laos are most supportive of the GSI while those from Myanmar, Vietnam, Indonesia are most cautious, followed by the Philippines, Thailand, Malaysia and Singapore.
Table 1: How Confident Are You in China’s Global Security Initiative
to Benefit the Region?
(State of Southeast Asia survey 2023)
The above results largely mirror the official responses from most Southeast Asian governments to the GSI (except for Myanmar[14] and Thailand). The outcome documents of Xi’s recent meetings with the Vietnamese, Indonesian, Singaporean and Philippine leaders suggest the latter’s cautious position vis-à-vis the GSI, in contrast to their warm embrace of the GDI. The Chinese read-out of Xi’s meeting with Singapore Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong in November 2022 said that both sides would pursue the GDI but made no reference to the GSI.[15] Speaking at an international conference in May 2022, Lee voiced Singapore’s support for the GDI but refrained from any mention of the GSI.[16] Like Singapore, Malaysia has stayed silent on the initiative – the read-outs from both Malaysia and China regarding the Wang Yi-Saifuddin meeting in July 2022 did not mention the GSI and focused mainly on economic cooperation.[17] As for Vietnam, according to the joint statement on the occasion of Vietnam Communist Party (VCP) general secretary Nguyen Phu Trong’s visit to Beijing in October 2022, Vietnam recognises China’s GSI only on the basis of the goals and principles of the UN Charter while expressing its support for and readiness to participate in the GDI.[18] Likewise, the joint press statement during Indonesia’s President Joko Widodo’s visit to China in July 2022 simply stated that Indonesia “takes note of the Global Security Initiative” but said much more about bilateral cooperation to implement the GDI, including development-oriented financing, cooperation in health, agriculture, poverty alleviation, food security, green development and digital economy.[19]
Typical of the Southeast Asian hedging position, the GSI is mentioned in their high-level joint statements with China but with certain qualifications. First, Southeast Asian countries are willing to consider the GSI so long as it conforms to the principles of the UN Charter and the Treaty of Amity and Cooperation in Southeast Asia (TAC) to which China is a party. Second, further details and communication on the GSI are needed to explore future cooperation, as reflected in the Indonesia-China joint statement in November 2022[20] and the Philippines-China joint statement[21] during President Marcos Jr.’s visit to China in January 2023. The ambivalent and non-committal attitude by these major ASEAN member states has been extrapolated to the ASEAN level, as reflected in the chairman’s statement of the 2022 ASEAN-China summit which “took note of the GSI proposed by China… and looked forward to further details of the GSI”.[22]
Except for Vietnam, other mainland Southeast Asian countries appear to be more supportive of the GSI. The joint statement during Prime Minister Hun Sen’s visit to China in early February 2023 says that “Cambodia supports China’s proposal of GSI, and stands ready to work with China on global security governance towards common, comprehensive , cooperative and sustainable security.”[23] According to Chinese sources, Thailand and Myanmar respectively expressed support for the GSI and GDI at the meeting between Xi and Thailand’s Prime Minister Prayut Chan-o-cha in November 2022; and at a working-level meeting with Myanmar’s ambassador to China in January 2023.[24] In an interview with Global Times in September 2022, the Lao ambassador to China also stated that her government attaches importance to and welcomes the GSI, alongside the BRI and GDI, because they “embrace the expectations of the countries to promote peace, development and win-win cooperation”.[25] It is argued that Southeast Asian countries that do not have territorial and maritime disputes with China and that lean towards China strategically tend to hold more favourable views about the GSI.
The GSI as a Public Good: Rhetoric and Reality
Southeast Asian countries generally subscribe to the GSI principles, especially the pursuit of comprehensive and cooperative security, respect of national sovereignty and territorial integrity, sanctity of the UN Charter, peaceful settlement of disputes, and security in both traditional and non-traditional domains. The GSI concept paper’s affirmation of support for ASEAN-centred regional security architecture and adherence to the ASEAN way of consensus-building also sounds assuring. What then explains Southeast Asians’ hesitance to embrace the GSI wholesale?
The devil is in the practice because there is a yawning gap between China’s high-sounding moralistic posturing and the manifested reality of its nationalistic foreign policy. It boils down to the question of how China would interpret and apply these principles in specific security situations where its interests collide with those of its neighbouring countries. Although the principle of sovereign equality is pre-requisite to friendly inter-state relations and in accordance with the UN Charter,[26] China’s policy and behaviour in the South China Sea disputes indicate the “winner takes all” approach. China’s preaching about these principles falls flat given its excessive claims that violate the 1982 UN Convention on the Law of the Sea and its constant encroachments, intimidations and harassments against other claimant states. For all the Chinese talk about making the South China Sea “a sea of peace, friendship and cooperation”, Southeast Asians’ top two concerns in these waters are (i) China’s militarisation and assertive actions and (ii) China’s encroachments in the maritime zones of other littoral states.[27] Likewise, China’s support for the purposes and principles of the UN Charter does not square with its decision not to criticise Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and instead lend propaganda support for Moscow’s justification for waging its war?[28]
Southeast Asian reservations about the GSI are also rooted in their growing anxiety about the US-China rivalry. The fear that the GSI will increase US-China tensions and intensify pressure on regional states to take sides is the biggest reason for their doubts about the GSI, according to the SSEA survey 2023.[29] Of particular concern is the ‘indivisible security’ concept which serves as China’s new normative device to discourage Southeast Asian countries from closer security ties or alliances with Washington. Beijing can be expected to fully exploit this concept in order to emphasise its sense of insecurity over the strategic autonomy of its neighbouring states to choose their own security arrangements.
In practice, the point that “security is indivisible” is so nebulous and subjective that it is of little help in addressing the deepening mistrust and security dilemma in the region. For example, although China criticises the US military presence and alliance/coalition building with its Asian partners as hurting Chinese national security, China’s own military build-up and power projection have been alarming to the South China Sea littoral states as well. The annual SSEA survey among foreign policy-security establishments in Southeast Asia consistently ranks China as the most distrusted major power (although the degrees of distrust may vary across regional countries). This distrust is rooted in their fear of losing sovereignty, territorial integrity and strategic autonomy in making their own foreign policy choices in the face of a strong and assertive China (Table 2). It is doubtful that the moral high ground that China claims in the GSI would help alleviate these concerns.
Table 2: Why Do You Distrust China and What Can China Do to Improve Ties?
(State of Southeast Asia survey 2020-2023)
Where Can the GSI Gain Traction?
Since the GSI adopts an encompassing definition of security, it stands a good chance to gain traction in non-military and non-traditional areas. Given the proximity and expanding connectivity between China and the region, law enforcement cooperation to address transnational crimes is a major area where China’s capacity and resources can be brought to bear. Apart from cooperation at the bilateral and ASEAN levels, one noteworthy minilateral arrangement in this respect is the Mekong river joint patrol by China, Thailand, Laos and Myanmar, with 125 joint patrols being carried out thus far since its start in 2011.[30] While such cooperation is mutually beneficial and necessary for practical reasons, it may have long-term strategic implications in enabling the extraterritorial reach of China’s law enforcement in some mainland Southeast Asian states.[31]
There is also a growing nexus between the need to ensure political/public security in those countries that have weak state capacity and their policing cooperation with China in the name of strengthening local law enforcement capabilities and protecting China’s overseas interests. The China-Solomon Islands security agreement stands as a clear example. Elements of this nexus are emerging in some mainland Southeast Asian states. At a meeting with his Cambodia counterpart in 2021, Chinese Minister of Public Security Zhao Kezhi called for “enhanced cooperation in preventing political security risks, implementing drug control and strengthening law enforcement capabilities to promote the building of a community with a shared future between the two countries.”[32] In Myanmar, following the coup in 2021, the junta regime has sought China’s assistance to step up its policing of internet use, including to obtain information on political dissidents and protestors.[33] In Laos, where China is the largest foreign investor with multiple special economic zones and the recently launched Vientiane-Kunming railway, both countries have agreed to strengthen security cooperation for major Belt and Road projects, safeguard national security and address transnational crimes, including through China’s equipment transfer and personnel training.[34] Seen from this angle, the GSI could effectively serve as a purveyor of China’s state-centred and all-encompassing approach to security and “market globally the instruments of China’s security state”.[35]
Another area where the GSI will draw international applause is its affirmation that “a nuclear war cannot be won and must never be fought”.[36] While this is a longstanding policy of China, this affirmation holds a significant meaning at this juncture as President Putin of Russia – China’s “no-limits” partner – has been using nuclear blackmail in his war against Ukraine. In this respect, China can also take the moral high ground as it is the only nuclear weapon state that agrees to sign on to the Southeast Asian Nuclear-Weapon-Free-Zone (SEANWFZ) Treaty without any reservation.
Last but not least, the GSI has been rolled out in conjunction with the GDI, reflecting the integration of security and development in China’s global outreach that sees “development as the basis for security, and security as the condition for development”.[37] China has already made its mark in terms of supporting Southeast Asian countries in pandemic response, vaccine support and economic development, and has leveraged its positive impact in these fields to further its geopolitical goals in the region. It is in these non-traditional, non-military areas that China is better positioned as a leader and provider of regional public goods.
CONCLUSION
There are some paradoxes that China – in its push to become a provider of regional security – should take notice of. First, China has become “more militarily capable than ever”, according to the latest Asia Power Index 2023 report.[38] Yet, few Southeast Asians in the foreign policy-security establishment think that China’s military is an asset for global peace and security, as found in the SSEA annual survey.[39] Military cooperation also ranks as the lowest option in foreign policy preferences towards China, according to a recent public opinion survey in Indo-Pacific states, including Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam.[40] Second, while Southeast Asian countries would, in principle, agree with China that development guarantees security, their explicit support for the GDI and caution towards the GSI indicates the dichotomy between their appreciation of China’s importance as an economic partner and their reservation about China’s role as a security provider. As noted by Evelyn Goh, China’s hegemonic bargain towards the region may have gained significant headway in the economic domain, but in the security domain, China still needs “to demonstrate credible self-restraint for reassurance”.[41] To persuade regional states that it is a net contributor to regional security and stability, China should exert more efforts to match its words with its deeds.
ENDNOTES
For endnotes, please refer to the original pdf document.
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