2022/33 “Stronger Social Media Influence in the 2022 Philippine Elections” by Aries A. Arugay

Aries A. Arugay

2022/33 “Stronger Social Media Influence in the 2022 Philippine Elections” by Aries A. Arugay

*One of the many social media sites on the Philippines 2022 Presidential Elections – “Election 2022 Philippines Group” on Facebook, https://www.facebook.com/groups/620176091924911*

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

Social media will play a prominent role in the campaign strategy of candidates in the upcoming 2022 elections due to the increasing reliance of Filipinos on social media and the face-to-face restrictions associated with the pandemic.

While there is no one model of successful social media campaigning in the Philippines, previous presidential campaigns exposed unconventional uses of this technology and its susceptibility to disinformation.

The rapid evolution of new types of social media limits the ability of the government to monitor, regulate, and prevent social media applications from sowing fake news related to the 2022 elections.

The regulatory and transparency deficits inherent in social media technology today stem from outdated and/or non-existent Philippine electoral laws and regulations which should be addressed through policy reforms and new legislation by the next administration.

* Aries A. Arugay is Visiting Fellow at the ISEAS – Yusof Ishak Institute where he manages The Philippine Studies Project. He is also Professor of Political Science at the University of the Philippines-Diliman.

ISEAS Perspective 2022/33, 7 April 2022

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INTRODUCTION

While the May 2022 Philippines national and local elections will be the first to be held under a global pandemic, its outcome will likely be shaped by social media. The 2016 presidential contest was already widely considered as the first mainstream “social media election” in the Philippines. In that election, Rodrigo Duterte swept into office with the help of what appeared to be an “army” of dedicated social media followers.[1] Scholars of Philippine politics attributed the victory to the Duterte campaign’s savvy use of social media to the point of spreading fake news.[2] However, to say that Duterte’s victory was solely because of his savvy social media strategy exaggerates the power of virtual manipulation during that time and ignores the symbiotic relationship between online fervour and grassroots political mobilisation.[3]

Reliance on social media in the campaign strategy of candidates is expected to rise given the increased usage by Filipinos of this technology, and the physical restrictions imposed by the Covid-19 pandemic. While it remains doubtful that a candidate can win the presidency through a successful social media strategy alone, there is a realisation that this type of technology is becoming an indispensable part of the contemporary electoral “political machine”.[4]

Experts argue that social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, etc., were not intended for political purposes at the outset. But as IT technologies evolved, many have noted their potential for political mobilisation.[5] Driven by profit, big social media firms have taken advantage of how users share their information, including their political ideologies, opinions, and policy viewpoints. It is now fairly established that disinformation has become rampant because of its power to harness emotive reactions and therefore gain more engagement from social media users. Social media algorithms built within the technology itself seem to fit well with the nature of electoral campaigning.[6] In other words, social media and electoral campaigns seem to make a perfect match; one serves the profit motive of tech companies and the other the wish of candidates and parties to garner votes.

The Philippines is an appropriate site to examine the mobilisation power of social media during an election campaign. This article argues that the 2022 election campaigns so far have displayed increasing utility of social media as a highly evolving information and communication technology which at the same time addresses some of the contact limitations imposed by the Covid-19 pandemic.

Election campaigns so far have also exhibited a more intense and varied use of social media to sow disinformation and fake news to either support or undermine certain candidates. Unfortunately, these concerns can currently not be addressed, given the inadequate regulations and the absence of a specific law that regulates social media use in electoral campaigns in the Philippines.[7]

This article proceeds by discussing research related to the 2016 presidential elections, during which Rodrigo Duterte was able to clinch victory through an unconventional social media strategy. It then provides the features of the social media landscape in the country as well as the various new channels and ways in which disinformation is spread virtually. This paper concludes with some insights on how the gaps in social media regulation and policy can be addressed in the future.

THE 2016 PHILIPPINES PRESIDENTIAL ELECTIONS: THE ROLE OF SOCIAL MEDIA

The key debate in the 2016 elections is whether social media helped Duterte win. In one study, analysis of Facebook activities and comments on the public pages of the five major presidential candidates—Roxas, Poe, Santiago, Duterte and Binay—confirms that Duterte’s online fans were the most active, engaged and networked.[8] Moreover, a careful analysis confirms that Duterte’s social media fans were uniquely zealous, aggressive and unrelenting in their support for their candidate, as well as in their criticism of his opponents.

This type of digital behaviour seems consistent with the actions of paid trolls and influencers. Indeed, there was already ample evidence that at least some of the pro-Duterte social media traffic was generated by influencers, bots, and foreign entities.[9]

Table 1: 2016 Presidential Elections Facebook Campaigns

	Likes	Likes Change*	Ave PTAT**	Posts	Comments per post	Shares per posts
Duterte	2.9M	+99%	410,044	73	2,068	11,292
Santiago	3.6M	+9%	217,230	228	612	797
Poe	3M	+40%	306,942	244	1,145	580
Binay	2.7M	+42%	176,833	509	1,007	644
Roxas	1.4M	+15%	152,839	199	2,907	1,989

Note: *Likes Change = the percentage increase in likes in the posts from the start and the end of the official campaign period. **Average People Talking About This (PTAT) = average number of people interacting (posting, commenting, liking, sharing) per each post. It is a main measurement of interactivity used in social media analytics.

Source: Sinpeng, et al. 2021, p. 359.

Unlike far more social media savvy candidates such as Poe and Santiago, Duterte’s own social media presence was relatively anodyne, his messaging was minimal, and his rhetoric on Facebook was far more reserved than the “thuggish” behaviour he exhibited at actual campaign rallies. According to the study by Sinpeng et al., “Duterte’s Facebook engagement was a textbook example for ‘how not-to-do online campaigning.’ He wrote in third person and barely posted any original content.”[10] Looking at Table 1, Duterte’s official Facebook page had the least number of posts among the candidates; but his posts were noticeably the most shared and commented by Filipino Facebook users.

A 2017 survey of Filipino Facebook users provided more evidence on how engaged Duterte’s supporters were in the virtual world. It revealed the distinctiveness of their online passion for Duterte; his supporters made up their minds earlier than supporters of other candidates, voted as groups, and were also the most likely to join offline rallies.[11] In the end, this online support communicated through the keyboards of computers or keypads of mobile phones found its way to the electoral precincts and was translated into votes sufficient to deliver the presidency to Duterte.

Was Duterte’s successful Facebook campaign organic, voluntary and authentic or was it purely driven by disinformation, hired trolls and bots? So far, evidence points to a combination of these two assessments. As Sinpeng et al. argued, “it is quite likely that Duterte’s trolls and influencers were driven by both material incentives and ideological enthusiasm for Duterte.”[12] But to paint Duterte’s astounding electoral victory simply as manufactured shows a lack of appreciation of the very porous boundary between manufactured and authentic online support.[13]

What is more disturbing are some indications that Facebook has become a major source of information about Philippine politics. In that same 2017 survey, 85% of respondents “agreed” or “strongly agreed” that Facebook was Important, 70% thought Facebook influenced their vote, and a staggering 83% reported their Trust in Facebook to be “some” or “most of the time”. Those who supported Duterte were also far more likely to consider Facebook as Important, Influential and Trustworthy than the supporters of other candidates. The same study concluded that “Duterte supporters were more likely to share, like, comment, and post positively about Duterte and negatively about other candidates.”[14]

The 2016 elections seem to be a “prequel” for the succeeding years during which the Philippines has become a globally prominent site for fake news. The Duterte administration would soon benefit from a keyboard “army” of social media warriors who zealously defended the president, undermined his political opponents, and promoted his allies, including Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos, Jr. who is currently the frontrunner for the 2022 presidential elections.[15]

THE CURRENT SOCIAL MEDIA LANDSCAPE IN THE PHILIPPINES

While it remains to be seen whether a social media strategy can trump the conventional electoral campaigning model, it is expected that candidates and parties will nevertheless ramp up their use of social media. This is already apparent in the current engagements of the leading presidential candidates on social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter and YouTube. As recent studies and polls point out that more Filipinos are now more than ever connected with these apps, spend more time with them than before, and use them to get political information and possibly cues for their voting behaviour, unwarranted, unregulated, and downright unethical uses of social media present critical perils to electoral integrity in the Philippines.[16]

According to the 2021 We are Social survey, there were 73.91 million internet users in the Philippines, a 6.1% increase from the previous year, which was attributed to the Covid-19 pandemic. Internet penetration in the Philippines stood at 67.0% in January 2021. What is confounding is the finding that there were 89 million social media users in the Philippines in 2021, an increase of 22% from 2020. The number of social media users in the Philippines was equivalent to 80.7% of the total population The difference between internet users and social media users implies that many Filipinos have multiple social media accounts. To digital researchers, this likely means that some users engage in troll-like behaviour or that some of the social media accounts are fake and/or are non-humans or bots.[17]

Bypassing Facebook, YouTube rose in 2021 to become the top social media platform in the country (see Table 2).[18] Possible explanations for this include the easier accessibility of YouTube due to telecom networks offering cheaper deals to users as well as the fact that the platform’s content is mainly videos rather than text when compared to Facebook. Video content is easier to consume, share and propagate to a user’s network. Finally, YouTube has not been relatively active in addressing disinformation within their platform.[19]

Table 2. Most-Used Social Media Platforms in 2021

Social Media	Percentage
YouTube	97.2
Facebook	96.8
Facebook Messenger	92.1
Instagram	73.4
Twitter	62.7
Tiktok	48.8
Pinterest	39.1
Viber	36.9

Source: We are Social Report 2021.

The Philippines is also the top country where respondents admit that they follow social media “influencers”. While the global average is a mere 22.1%, 51.7% of Filipino survey respondents use influencers as a major source of information, even on politics and the elections. This reliance on “influencers” reveals that Filipinos value personalities and individuals more than legitimate institutions such as media, academe and even civil society organisations as their social media intermediaries. Without proper vetting verification standards and without credible reputations, the access being given to influencers to produce content has further contributed to the spread of disinformation.[20]

ISSUES AND FUTURE PROSPECTS

The impact of social media will be more evident in the 2022 Philippine national and local elections to be held on 9 May 2022. Given the restrictions posed by the Covid-19 pandemic, candidates have relied more on social media for their campaigns and voters have tapped these applications as their source for news and other election-related information. Here are some expectations on the possible role of social media in the upcoming polls:

Disinformation will be more prevalent. While previous elections focused more on candidates and parties, it is expected that disinformation will affect other aspects of the electoral process. Like electoral exercises in other countries, disinformation can be applied to the electoral process, casting doubt on the outcomes of the elections. Wrong information deliberately crafted can also suppress voters from casting their ballots on election day.[21]

The current pandemic lends more critical importance to social media. Given their ability to rapidly spread information, social media has been a powerful tool of communication during the pandemic. However, the lack of an effective regulatory regime within the country has allowed social media apps to spread disinformation about pandemic situations in voting precincts and other important sites. At present, the country’s election commission admits that without a law regulating social media campaigning, their ability to detect and sanction disinformation is severely limited.[22]

The toxic nature of electoral campaigning is intensified by social media. As the algorithms of social media apps like Facebook feed users with more content that they want, to maintain or increase engagement, it is unavoidable that pernicious polarisation between the Marcos and Robredo camps will dictate the 2022 election campaign. At present, some candidates like Robredo are already being painted as communists, terrorists, and other labels used by the Duterte administration to designate candidates as enemies of the state.[23]

Micro-targeting allows for pieces of disinformation to cater to specific voter groups. As data breaches in social media apps become more common (e.g., Cambridge Analytica data harvesting), there is now a possibility of a more complex social media strategy that targets specific voter groups. Micro-targeting appeals to the trigger points of voters that may nudge them to campaign for/against a specific candidate and even influence their choice on voting day. The scandal surrounding the 2018 data breach of Cambridge Analytica reveals that data from 1.17 million Filipino Facebook users have been illegally harvested and could potentially be used for the 2022 elections.[24]

The threat of foreign interference and influence looms large in the 2022 elections. Like the elections in other countries, the 2022 elections could be exposed to foreign-induced or supported interference. This is a credible and dangerous threat that jeopardises the elections as the sovereign expression of the Filipino electorate. As the Philippines is walking a tightrope in the great power competition between the US and China, there is a temptation to influence the 2022 elections to benefit the big powers.[25]

Considering these challenges, regulation of social media use must be diligent, decisive, and consistent. Even if the country’s Commission on Elections can put in place a clear policy on social media campaigning, implementation may face its own challenges. Regulation must also keep up with the latest trends that place disinformation in a totally different level, for example the use of “deep fakes” or computer-generated videos which “make it appear that a particular personality is saying or doing something that he or she didn’t actually say or do”.[26] In addition, the proliferation of fake news has now moved from social media apps like Facebook and Twitter to messenger apps like WhatsApp, Viber, Facebook Messenger where posts or messages are not as publicly shared as the usual apps. This is a clear blackhole in social media regulation.[27]

Regardless of the outcome, the 2022 elections should push the next administration to prioritise policy reforms and new legislation that will seriously address disinformation in all its different manifestations. This should be part of the political and electoral reform agenda of the new government.

ENDNOTES

[1] Aim Sinpeng, “How Duterte won the election on Facebook,” New Mandala, May 12, 2016, https://www.newmandala.org/how-duterte-won-the-election-on-facebook/

[2] Aim Sinpeng, Dimitar Gueorguiev, and Aries A. Arugay. 2020 “Strong Fans, Weak Campaign: Social Media and Duterte in the 2016 Presidential Election.” Journal of East Asian Studies 20(3): 2020.

[3] Maria Isabel T. Buenaobra, “Social media: A game changer in Philippine elections,” InAsia Insights and Analysis, April 27, 2016, https://asiafoundation.org/2016/04/27/social-media-a-game-changer-in-philippine-elections/

[4] Zachary J. Autor and Jeffrey A. Fine. “Social Media Campaigning: Mobilization and Fundraising on Facebook.” Social Science Quarterly 99(1): 2018.

[5] Porismita Borah, “Political Facebook use: Campaign strategies used in 2008 and 2012 presidential elections”. Journal of Information Technology & Politics, 13(4): 2016.

[6] Filippo Menczer, “Facebook’s algorithms fueled massive foreign propaganda campaigns during the 2020 election – here’s how algorithms can manipulate you”, The Conversation, September 10, 201, https://theconversation.com/facebooks-algorithms-fueled-massive-foreign-propaganda-campaigns-during-the-2020-election-heres-how-algorithms-can-manipulate-you-168229.

[7] “Comelec expands rules on pol ads run on social media,” Philippine Daily Inquirer, November 19, 2021
https://newsinfo.inquirer.net/1517074/comelec-expands-rules-on-pol-ads-run-on-social-media#ixzz7NZBfGvaB.

[8] Sinpeng, et al., 354.

[9] Jonathan Corpus Ong and Jason Vincent A. Cabanes. “Architects of Networked Disinformation: Behind the Scenes of Troll Accounts and Fake News Production in the Philippines.” The Newton Tech4Dev Network, February 5, 2018. http://newtontechfordev.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/ARCHITECTS-OF-NETWORKED-DISINFORMATION-FULL-REPORT.pdf

[10] Sinpeng, et al., 355.

[11] Ibid.

[12] Ibid.

[13] Ong and Cabanes.

[14] Sinpeng, et al., 364.

[15] “12 times social media boosted Duterte’s lies,” Rappler, July 2, 2021, https://www.rappler.com/newsbreak/iq/times-social-media-boosted-rodrigo-duterte-lies-false-statement/.

[16] “Filipinos remain most active internet, social media users globally—study,” Philippine Daily Inquirer, February 1, 2021,
https://technology.inquirer.net/107561/filipinos-remain-most-active-internet-social-media-users-globally-study#ixzz7NZZqAlMI

[17] “PH remains top in social media, internet usage worldwide – report,” Rappler, January 28, 2021, https://www.rappler.com/technology/internet-culture/hootsuite-we-are-social-2021-philippines-top-social-media-internet-usage/.

[18] Ibid.

[19] Cheryll Ruth R. Soriano and Fatima Gaw. “Platforms, alternative influence, and networked political brokerage on YouTube,” Convergence: The International Journal of Research into New Media Technologies, July 2021, doi:10.1177/13548565211029769.

[20] Camille Elemia, “Stars, influencers get paid to boost Duterte propaganda, fake news,” Rappler, February 27, 2021.

[21] Ronald Mendoza, Imelda Deinla, and Jurel Yap. “Philippines: diagnosing the infodemic,” The Interpreter, December 1, 2021, https://www.lowyinstitute.org/the-interpreter/philippines-diagnosing-infodemic.

[22] “Comelec vows to strictly monitor social media campaigns in 2022,” Rappler,May 30, 2021, https://www.rappler.com/nation/elections/comelec-says-social-media-expenses-2022-candidates-strictly-monitored/.

[23] “Robredo’s volunteers deny paid rally attendance, decry red-tagging,” CNN Philippines, March 7, 2022, https://www.cnnphilippines.com/news/2022/3/7/Robredo-Remulla-Lacson-Cavite-rally-supporters.html.

[24] Natashya Gutierrez, “Did Cambridge Analytica use Filipinos’ Facebook data to help Duterte win?” Rappler, April 5, 2018, https://www.rappler.com/nation/199599-facebook-data-scandal-cambridge-analytica-help-duterte-win-philippine-elections/.

[25] “Ex-DFA chief urges voters: Don’t let ‘Manchurian candidates’ win again,” Philippine Daily Inquirer, November 19, 2021,
https://newsinfo.inquirer.net/1517126/ex-dfa-chief-urges-voters-dont-let-manchurian-candidates-win-again#ixzz7NZf53GoR

[26] “Comelec’s Jimenez: Integrity pledge bars deep fakes in Eleksyon 2022,” GMA News Online, November 5, 2021, https://www.gmanetwork.com/news/scitech/technology/809814/comelec-s-jimenez-integrity-pledge-bars-deep-fakes-in-eleksyon-2022/story/.

[27] “Viber says to fight ‘fake news’ as Halalan 2022 heats up,” ABS-CBN News, January 17, 2022, https://news.abs-cbn.com/business/01/17/22/viber-says-to-fight-fake-news-in-halalan-2022

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“ASEAN’s Newer Member Countries in Two Financial Crises: Impact, Response and Lessons” by Jayant Menon

2022/32 “Enabling Domestic Data Flows for E-Commerce in ASEAN Countries” by Sithanonxay Suvannaphakdy

Establishing open data policies serve as a stepping stone to enable value creation for boosting economic growth. Picture: Freepik. https://www.freepik.com/free-vector/blue-gradient-futuristic-technology-background_18952566.htm.

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

Establishing a comprehensive regulatory framework to build trust in data sharing between stakeholders and to enhance domestic data flows in ASEAN countries are urgent concerns. This is a precondition for enhancing cross-border data flows and promoting e-commerce in the region.

An analysis of 14 regulatory elements using data from the World Bank’s Global Data Regulation Diagnostic Survey in 2021 reveals that regulatory frameworks to enable domestic data flows are unevenly developed across different enablers and ASEAN countries. These divergences may be exacerbated by different degrees of enforcement of laws and regulations.

E-commerce and e-transactions-related laws and regulations are the only area in which all ASEAN countries are doing relatively well. Enabling reuse of public intent data is moderately developed, while enabling reuse of private intent data is the weakest area of performance in most ASEAN countries.

Limited reuse of public and private intent data means that e-commerce firms and consumers in ASEAN have not yet reaped the full benefits of data flows. Unlocking domestic data flows requires a two-pronged approach, i.e. enabling reuse of public intent data and enabling reuse of private intent data.

The reuse of public intent data should be enhanced by adopting regulatory frameworks of common technical standards and open licensing regime for data; allowing individuals and firms to access public sector data that have not been published on an open data platform; and establishing policies on open data and data classification.

The reuse of private intent data should be enhanced by encouraging open data licenses among private firms, promoting data portability right for individuals, and strengthening public-private partnership to utilize the digital identification system.

* Sithanonxay Suvannaphakdy is Lead Researcher at the ASEAN Studies Centre, ISEAS – Yusof Ishak Institute, where he undertakes policy-oriented research on ASEAN’s economic integration. He is grateful to valuable comments and suggestions from Tham Siew Yean and Sharon Seah. All remaining errors are his own.

ISEAS Perspective 2022/32, 4 April 2022

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INTRODUCTION

The rapid growth of electronic commerce (e-commerce) and availability of digital platforms (e.g. social networks, e-commerce marketplaces) present an opportunity for small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in ASEAN to increase their participation in domestic and international markets. E-commerce is defined as the sale or purchase of goods or services, conducted over computer networks by methods specifically designed for the purpose of receiving or placing of orders.[1] Global retail e-commerce sales have been estimated to grow by 14.3 percent, from US$4.28 trillion in 2020 to about US$4.89 trillion in 2021.[2] About 50 million SMEs use Facebook to find customers; 70 percent of their fans are domestic, and 30 percent are from outside the country.[3] Retail e-commerce sales in ASEAN are estimated to grow faster than those in the world, with a growth rate of 26.1 percent from US$59 billion in 2020 to US$74.4 billion in 2021.[4]

One key towards enabling e-commerce is the enhancement of data flows. The free flow of data reduces transaction costs, accelerates the spread of ideas, and allows users to make use of new research and technologies. This is particularly important for ASEAN, where the e-commerce chapter under the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) Agreement aims to create a conducive environment for e-commerce through protection of online consumers and online personal data as well as facilitating cross-border data flows. However, ASEAN countries tend to allow different degrees of domestic data flows, which restrict cross-border data flows in the region. Data flow restrictions can impose costs on local firms as they are not free to use the most convenient data processing provider, and may have to pay for more expensive services when transferring data.

The present study investigates the extent to which regulatory frameworks in ASEAN countries have allowed the use, reuse or sharing of domestic data by the government, e-commerce firms, and e-commerce consumers. Domestic regulatory frameworks serve as a basis to promote regional regulatory cooperation on data. The RCEP provisions on e-commerce may offer an important signal to ASEAN’s e-commerce markets on the future of cross-border data flows. Yet, until policy makers have the confidence that allowing data to leave their borders will not undermine domestic regulatory goals, there will remain a strong incentive to restrict cross-border data flows.

Following the World Bank (2021),[5] regulatory frameworks for data sharing are assessed against three enablers, namely electronic transactions (e-transactions), public intent data, and private intent data. Public intent data refers to data collected with the intent of serving the public good by informing the design, execution, monitoring, and evaluation of public programmes and policies. Such data include administrative, census and survey data produced by government agencies, citizen-generated data produced by individuals, and machine-generated data produced without human interactions.[6] Private intent data refers to data collected by the private sector as part of routine business processes. Such data include transaction and browsing histories, mode of payments, internet protocol (IP) addresses, and smartphone app logs. These three enablers aim to capture policies, laws, regulations, and standards that facilitate the use, reuse, and sharing of data within and between stakeholder groups through openness, interoperability, and portability.

The enablers of domestic data flows are further broken down into 14 regulatory elements. Enabling e-transactions involves four elements, namely legal basis for e-commerce or e-transactions, legal equivalence, legal recognition of electronic signatures, and digital identification (ID) system for online service access. Enabling public intent data consists of six elements, namely mandatory use of common technical standards for data, open data policies, data classification policy, mandatory use of common data classification, individuals’ right to access government data, and adoption of open licensing regime. Enabling private intent data consists of four elements, namely individuals’ right for data portability, individuals’ right to obtain machine-readable data, private sector’s ability to digitally verify ID, and mandatory licensing of essential data.

This study focuses on nine ASEAN countries, namely Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, and Vietnam, and utilizes the World Bank’s Global Data Regulation Diagnostic Survey in 2021.[7] The survey collected information on attributes of the regulatory framework in 80 countries, which provides details on regulatory status of data-related laws and regulations in sample countries as of June 1, 2020. This study does not include Brunei because of data unavailability; that country was not included in the survey.

Findings in this study reveal that regulatory frameworks to enable data flows in ASEAN are unevenly developed across different enablers and countries. These divergences may be exacerbated by different degrees of enforcement of laws and regulations. E-commerce and e-transactions-related laws and regulations are the only area in which all ASEAN countries are doing relatively well. Enabling reuse of public intent data is moderately developed. Enabling reuse of private intent data is the weakest area of performance in ASEAN countries, except in Malaysia and the Philippines (Table 1).

ENABLING ELECTRONIC TRANSACTIONS

Data are used or transferred via electronic transactions. Laws and regulations governing e-commerce and e-transactions create trust in both public and private sectors that engage in online data transactions. Adoption of e-commerce and related legislation is widespread across ASEAN countries. Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore and Thailand have constituted all e-commerce and related legislation. Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar, and Vietnam have not yet established government-recognized digital ID systems that enable people to remotely authenticate themselves to access online services. The Philippines have not yet established the government-recognized digital ID system and legal recognition of e-signatures (Table 2).

Establishing e-commerce laws and legal equivalence of paper-based and electronic communications

All nine ASEAN countries in this study have constituted their e-commerce laws, which is an essential condition to enable e-commerce. They have also established legal equivalence of paper-based and electronic communications (Table 2). Such legal equivalence allows the online transaction, contract, or communication to have the same legal value to physical transactions such as a signature on a paper contract or physical evidence.

Establishing legal recognition of electronic signatures

E-signatures are signatures that are expressed in an electronic form. Fully recognized and enforced e-signatures are essential to allow for remote electronic contracts and transactions as businesses engaged in e-commerce expand their network of clients and suppliers both within and across borders. Some examples of e-signatures include clicking the ‘Agree’ button of a website’s Terms and Conditions, a scanned image of a handwritten signature, a tick-box at the end of an online form, and a drawn signature using mobile device.[8] Except for the Philippines, ASEAN countries have established the legal recognition of e-signatures (Table 2).

Introducing digital identification system

The digital ID system provides reliable authentication and enables delivery of a range of services via web or mobile applications that require proof of identity. It collects and validates attributes to establish a person’s identity, which can be used by identity-holders to prove their identity, for example to employers, financial institutions or government agencies.

Four of nine ASEAN countries included in the survey have established government-recognized digital ID systems that enable people to remotely authenticate themselves to access online services. They are Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, and Thailand. The remaining five countries, namely Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar, the Philippines, and Vietnam, do not have such systems (Table 2).

In e-commerce, the use of digital ID reduces time and costs for business transactions by securing digital payments and streamlining processes of registration, authentication, corporate registrations, permits, and authorizations. An empirical study by McKinsey Global Institute[9] reveals that countries implementing full digital ID coverage, namely Brazil, China, Ethiopia, India, Nigeria, the United Kingdom and the United States, could create economic value equivalent to 3 to 6 percent of GDP by 2030. ASEAN countries should also gain from the digital ID system if they fully implement and interoperate it across private and public service providers both within and across countries.

ENABLING REUSE OF PUBLIC INTENT DATA

Regulations enabling access and reuse of public intent data are unevenly developed across ASEAN countries. Indonesia and Thailand have established all necessary regulations to enhance access and reuse of public intent data, while Cambodia and Laos have not yet established any of them. The Philippines needs to constitute the mandatory use of common technical standards for exchanging data across governments’ entities. Malaysia needs to introduce regulatory frameworks on the mandatory use of common data classification and individuals’ right to access government data. Singapore needs to establish regulatory frameworks on data classification, mandatory use of common technical standards, and individuals’ right to access government data. Vietnam needs to constitute regulatory frameworks on open data, mandatory use of common technical standards, and open licensing regime for data (Table 3).

Establishing open data policies

A country’s public sector data being prepared for publication can be classified on a spectrum from closed to open. The degree of data openness depends on four factors, namely accessibility, machine readability, cost and rights for reuse and redistribution.[10] According to Open Knowledge Foundation,[11] a piece of data is open if anyone is free to use, reuse, or redistribute it – subject only, at most, to the requirement to attribute and share-alike. Using this definition, five out of nine ASEAN countries have established an open data act or open data policy applicable across the entire public sector. They are Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, and Thailand. The remaining four countries, namely Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar, and Vietnam, have not yet done so (Table 3).

Establishing open data policies serve as a stepping stone to enable value creation for boosting economic growth. Such value benefits governments, firms and consumers in three channels, including decision making, new products and services, and transparency. Open data enables decision makers to use a fact base for making more informed and objective choices using information that is often available in real time. It also enables firms to better understand potential markets and to design new data-driven products. Moreover, it enables citizens to monitor government activities such as tracking public expenditures and impacts. An empirical study by McKinsey Global Institute[12] reveals that the combination of three value channels of open data – decision making, new products and services, and transparency – can generate more than US$3 trillion annually for the global economy.

Ensuring unified data classification standards

Data classification policies typically require the classification of data based on their sensitivity such as classified, confidential, or business use only. In ASEAN, six out of nine countries have established policies or directives on government data classification. These include Indonesia, Malaysia, Myanmar, the Philippines, Thailand, and Vietnam. The practical effect of data classification policies in some countries such as Malaysia tends to be limited because it is not mandatory to use the common data classification categories across all government database applications or document management systems. The remaining three countries, namely Cambodia, Laos and Singapore, have not yet established data classification policies (Table 3).

Allowing access to information

Access to information (ATI) legislation enables individuals or firms to access public sector data that have not been published on an open data platform. The degree of the ATI legislation for enabling public data access depends on the scope of the exemption categories for disclosure. Greater scope of the exemption categories reduces the degree of public data access.

In ASEAN, four out of nine countries have established ATI legislation that grants individuals the right to access government records or data. These include Indonesia, the Philippines, Thailand, and Vietnam. However, these countries have placed significant exceptions on an individual’s rights to access public information under such legislation. These exceptions include sensitive information on national security, defence, or foreign policy grounds; trade secrets or other commercial interests; personal data; law enforcement; and privileged information. The remaining five countries, namely Cambodia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, and Singapore, have not yet established ATI legislation to allow public data access (Table 3).

Adopting an open licensing regime for data

An open license for data grants rights to anyone and is subject to certain minimal conditions like attribution of the data’s owner. If data is not licensed legally, it cannot be used by anyone else. In ASEAN, five out of nine countries have adopted some forms of open licensing regime for public intent data. They are Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, and Thailand (Table 3).

The Government of Singapore, for example, launched the one-stop portal called ‘data.gov.sg’ in 2011 to communicate government data and analysis through visualizations and articles, and to facilitate analysis and research. Such a portal contains publicly-available datasets from 70 public agencies and more than 100 apps created by the use of government’s open data.[13] By accepting the license, users can use, access, download, copy, distribute, transmit, modify and adapt the datasets, or any derived analyses or applications.

Adopting a legal framework of common technical standards for data

According to the Federal Enterprise Data Resources of the United States,[14] a technical standard for data refers to a specification that describes the way in which data should be stored or exchanged for the consistent collection and interoperability of that data across different systems, sources and users. The legal framework of common technical standards for data aims to ensure that all government entities connect to and use the government’s interoperability platform as a vehicle for exchanging data.

In ASEAN, three out of nine countries have adopted a full range of common technical standards, such as the principles of FAIR (findable, accessible, interoperable, and reusable), that enable the interoperability of systems, registries, and databases. These include Indonesia, Malaysia, and Thailand (Table 3). Malaysia and Thailand have established standards for open application programming interfaces (APIs) for government to government (G2G), government to business (G2B), and government to consumer (G2C) services; standardized communications protocols for accessing metadata; and developed semantic catalogues for data and metadata. Indonesia has standardized communications protocols for accessing metadata; and developed semantic catalogues for data and metadata.

ENABLING REUSE OF PRIVATE INTENT DATA

Regulations enabling access and reuse of private intent data are lagging those for public intent data across ASEAN countries. Four out of nine ASEAN countries have not yet established any necessary regulations to enable access and reuse of private intent data. These include Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar, and Thailand. Malaysia has not yet established a regulatory framework to allow individuals to access data portability, while the Philippines needs to constitute a regulatory framework on mandatory licensing of essential data. Indonesia, Singapore and Vietnam need to establish regulatory frameworks on mandatory licensing of essential data, individuals’ right for data portability, and individuals’ right to obtain portable data in a machine-readable format (Table 4).

Mandatory licensing of essential data

Open data licenses allow users to freely share, modify, and use a database without regard to copyright or other intellectual property rights (IPR) or limitations around data ownership. Open licenses of non-personal data could be done voluntarily by IPR holders, or implemented on a compulsory basis by regulators to avoid market distortions. In ASEAN, only Malaysia (e.g. standard-setting organizations) has mandated IPR holders to provide voluntary licensing access to critical data or applications based on FRAND (fair, reasonable, and non-discriminatory) terms. Other ASEAN countries have not yet done so (Table 4).

Promoting open data licenses based on FRAND terms can be a useful mechanism in enhancing technological innovation such as development of e-commerce platforms or websites in ASEAN. IPR holders do not necessarily share their data or applications for free, but they should offer them on reasonable and non-discriminatory terms. This means that they can control access to licensed products and receive returns on their investments. This should reduce costs of access to licensed products of dominant platforms incurred by micro, small, and medium-sized enterprises (MSMEs), and hence promote more inclusive growth of e-commerce in the region.

Promoting data portability right for individuals

According to the Information Commissioner’s Office of the United Kingdom,[15] the right to data portability allows individuals to obtain and reuse their personal data provided to data controllers (e.g. e-commerce stores) for their own purposes across different services. This facilitates the movement or transfer of personal data from one e-commerce store to another in a safe and secure way. In ASEAN, only the Philippines has allowed individuals to request the transfer of their personal data from one data controller to another service or product provider. The remaining ASEAN countries have not yet done so (Table 4).

Accessing a machine-readable format of data portability

Transferring personal or nonpersonal data from one e-commerce firm to another requires the use of a standard machine-readable format. In ASEAN, only Malaysia and the Philippines have granted the right of individuals to access their data processed by data controllers in a machine-readable format. The remaining seven ASEAN countries have not yet done so (Table 4). The lack of standard data format restricts the potential benefits of data portability right for individuals as data provided in one e-commerce firm may not be compatible with those of other firms.

Strengthening public-private partnership to utilize the digital ID system

Digital ID systems play an important role in promoting e-commerce development. Firms — including banking and financial services, mobile operators and e-commerce platforms — must verify and authenticate the identities of their users at various points in the customer lifecycle. The key data source to validate customer identity is typically a government-provided or recognized credential, such as national ID or passport. Lack of authoritative proof of identity reduces customer pools and increases administrative overhead and risks of fraud for e-commerce firms.

In ASEAN, only four out of nine countries have allowed private sector service providers to digitally verify or authenticate the identity of a person against data stored in the ID system. These include Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, and Vietnam. The remaining five countries have not yet done so (Table 4).

CONCLUSION AND POLICY IMPLICATIONS

The findings in this study confirm that establishing a comprehensive regulatory framework to increase trust on data sharing between stakeholders is an urgent priority to enhance domestic data flows in ASEAN countries. This is a precondition to enhance cross-border data flows and to promote e-commerce in the region. Regulatory frameworks to enable data flows are unevenly developed across different enablers and countries. These divergences may be exacerbated by different degrees of enforcement of laws and regulations. E-commerce and e-transactions-related laws and regulations are the only area in which all ASEAN countries are doing relatively well. Enabling reuse of public intent data is moderately developed, while enabling reuse of private intent data is the weakest area of performance in most ASEAN countries.

At the domestic level, limited reuse of public and private intent data means that e-commerce firms and consumers in ASEAN countries have not yet reaped full benefits of data flows. Unlocking potential benefits of data flows requires a two-pronged approach, including enabling reuse of public intent data on the one hand and enabling reuse of private intent data on the other. Reuse of public intent data should be enhanced by adopting a legal framework of common technical standards and an open licensing regime for data; allowing individuals or firms access to public sector data that have not been published on an open data platform; and establishing open data policies as well as policies or directives on government data classification. Reuse of private intent data should be improved by encouraging open data licenses between private firms, promoting data portability right for individuals, and strengthening public-private partnership to utilize the digital ID system.

At the regional level, there are a number of multilateral arrangements to facilitate cross-border data flows. These include the RCEP provisions on e-commerce and the ASEAN e-Commerce Agreement. The effectiveness of these arrangements depends on the extent to which regulatory frameworks on data sharing are coherent across countries. Regulatory divergence reduces cross-border data flows, while regulatory convergence increases them. Since ASEAN countries are in the early stage of developing their regulatory frameworks for sharing public and private intent data, policymakers and regulators should embed international best practices into their domestic rule-making procedures and prevent regulations creating unnecessary barriers to cross-border data flows in the future. Meanwhile, ASEAN countries should explore the possibility to establish mutual recognition arrangements and/or harmonize their data-related regulations both within and outside the region. Greater coherent data-related policies should boost e-commerce in regional and international markets.

A key limitation in the present study is that it focuses only on the regulatory frameworks of data enablers to promote trust on data sharing between stakeholders. There are other factors that affect trust on data sharing such as regulatory frameworks of data safeguards. Data safeguards promote trust in the data governance and data management ecosystem by avoiding and limiting harm arising from the misuse of data or breaches affecting their security and integrity. Building safeguards for trusted data use in ASEAN will be a subject for future research.

ENDNOTES

[1] OECD, Glossary of Statistical Terms: https://bit.ly/3qZZRQF. Accessed February 25, 2022.

[2] eMarketer, Global E-commerce Update 2021: https://www.emarketer.com/content/global-ecommerce-update-2021. Accessed February 25, 2022.

[3] McKinsey Global Institute. 2016. Digital Globalization: The New Era of Global Flows. McKinsey & Company.

[4] eMarketer: https://www.emarketer.com/content/southeast-asia-ecommerce-forecast-2022. Accessed March 3, 2022.

[5] World Development Report. 2021. World Development Report 2021: Data for Better Lives. Washington, DC: World Bank.

[6] World Bank, Data as a Force for Public Good: https://wdr2021.worldbank.org/stories/data-as-a-force-for-public-good. Accessed March 6, 2022.

[7] World Bank, Global Data Regulation Diagnostic Survey Dataset 2021: https://microdata.worldbank.org/index.php/catalog/3866. Accessed February 20, 2022.

[8] Sleek: https://sleek.com/sg/resources/electronic-signatures-are-legal-in-singapore. Accessed February 20, 2022.

[9] McKinsey Global Institute. 2019. Digital Identification: A Key to Inclusive Growth. https://www.mckinsey.com/~/media/mckinsey/business%20functions/mckinsey%20digital/our%20insights/digital%20identification%20a%20key%20to%20inclusive%20growth/mgi-digital-identification-executive-summary.pdf

[10] Chui, M., Farrell, D., Jackson, K. 2014. How Government Can Promote Open Data. McKinsey Global Institute. https://www.mckinsey.com/~/media/mckinsey/industries/public%20and%20social%20sector/our%20insights/how%20government%20can%20promote%20open%20data/how_govt_can_promote_open_data_and_help_unleash_over_$3_trillion_in_economic_value.pdf

[11] Open Knowledge Foundation, Open Data Handbook: http://opendatahandbook.org/guide/en/what-is-open-data. Accessed February 20, 2022.

[12] Chui, M., Farrell, D., Jackson, K. 2014. How Government Can Promote Open Data. McKinsey Global Institute. https://www.mckinsey.com/~/media/mckinsey/industries/public%20and%20social%20sector/our%20insights/how%20government%20can%20promote%20open%20data/how_govt_can_promote_open_data_and_help_unleash_over_$3_trillion_in_economic_value.pdf

[13] Government of Singapore: https://data.gov.sg/about. Accessed February 20, 2022.

[14] Federal Enterprise Data Resources of the United States: https://resources.data.gov/standards/concepts/. Accessed on February 23, 2022.

[15] Information Commissioner’s Office of the United Kingdom, Right to Data Portability: https://ico.org.uk/for-organisations/guide-to-data-protection/guide-to-the-general-data-protection-regulation-gdpr/individual-rights/right-to-data-portability. Accessed on February 23, 2022.

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).

2022/31 “Greenwashing: A Market Distortion Needing Serious Attention in Southeast Asia” by Michael T. Schaper and Ryan Wong Yee Yang

Indonesian activists participate in a rally calling for action against climate change, in Jakarta on November 29, 2019. Picture: BAY ISMOYO/AFP.

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

“Greenwashing” refers to the practice of falsely claiming that a product, service or business activity is environmentally-friendly, or reduces greenhouse gas emissions, when it does not.

It distorts consumer patterns of purchasing; penalises legitimate eco-friendly businesses who are bringing real and meaningful innovations to the marketplace; and creates a risk that new, more sustainable products and services will fail, allowing unsustainable business practices to continue to thrive.

Current examples in Southeast Asia include questionable net emissions claims for electrical vehicles manufactured in the region; mistakenly labelling carbon capture as “clean coal”; and claims about financial investments.

Possible steps to reduce greenwashing can include increasing the level of knowledge about environmental matters amongst firm employees, managers and company directors; educating marketing professionals about the issues; applying greater scrutiny of advertising claims by competition and consumer protection regulators; implementing standardised financial taxonomies for investors; and encouraging civil society to be more active in the area.

* Michael Schaper is Visiting Senior Fellow with the ISEAS – Yusof Ishak Institute, and an Adjunct Professor with the John Curtin Institute of Public Policy, Curtin University, Western Australia. Email: michael.schaper@gmail.com. Ryan Wong was previously Lead Researcher at the Climate Change in Southeast Asia Programme, ISEAS – Yusof Ishak Institute. Email: ryanwongyeeyang@gmail.com.

ISEAS Perspective 2022/31, 1 April 2022

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INTRODUCTION

Consumers and businesses are increasingly making a conscious effort to buy products and services that help promote ecological sustainability, assist the environment, and reduce the impact of climate change. But are they always getting what they expect when they buy such commodities?

In many cases, they are not, and this is due to the process of greenwashing.

“Greenwashing” is the process of labelling or marketing something as sustainable, green, or eco-friendly when that is not the case. It is the making of superficial statements, pledges or claims which have not been backed by transparent and verifiable data, and is commonly designed to lure purchasers into falsely believing that a commodity is more environmentally beneficial than it actually is (Timmins 2021; Ramakrishnan 2022). Whilst the full extent of this practice is difficult to measure, the European Commission recently found that more than 40% of the ‘seemingly dubious’ green claims made on business websites were incorrect or misleading (European Commission 2021). And a recent study of multinational corporations found that up to 30% of such firms often provide incorrect data about their emissions levels, with the biggest anomalies occurring in fossil fuel industries and involving major global entities such as Exxon Mobil, Imperial Oil and Shell (Kishan 2022).

The practice of greenwashing is already found in businesses in many parts of Southeast Asia, and poses a risk to the successful emergence of bona fide green enterprises. What forms does it take, and what practical steps can consumers, governments, regulators and other businesses take to reduce it?

THE NATURE OF GREENWASHING

A number of characteristics are typical of greenwashing practices. Many claims about particular products are presented in vague, nebulous terms which are hard to quantify, measure or empirically validate. Commonly-used descriptors are words such as “natural,” “organic”, “eco-friendly,” “save the planet,” “sustainable,” “green”, or such similar terms. They are often accompanied by pictures or graphics evoking green sentiments. Together, these terms and images work to imply a sense of environmental responsibility without actually delivering in any real or meaningful way (Timmins 2021). Whilst these claims usually occur in relation to representations made to the general public and consumers, they can also occur within a firm when companies incorrectly make claims to their own staff, shareholders, investors and directors (Oliver 2022).

A less obvious form of greenwashing, but one which is particularly relevant to multinational corporations and large enterprises, is a failure to provide a holistic view of the firm’s overall environmental impact. A business may sell “eco-friendly” products under one label but at the same time continue to engage in high levels of fossil fuel consumption, production of greenhouse gas emissions, or environmental damage through other brands or firms which are ultimately owned by the same corporate parent (Timmins 2021).

Greenwashing poses a number of real and present risks. In the first place, it allows misleading and deceptive conduct to distort consumer patterns of purchasing. Secondly, it penalises legitimate eco-friendly businesses that are bringing real and meaningful innovations to the marketplace. If consumers cannot form an accurate understanding of what truly is a sustainable commodity, then they will often be misled into bypassing genuine offerings and purchasing false ones instead. Green businesses often thus find themselves competing on an unfair basis with firms that have not borne the cost of becoming more sustainable. Both of these factors combine to present a third risk: that new, more sustainable products and services fail to succeed in the marketplace, and are instead replaced by unsustainable rival offerings.

Why do consumers fall for greenwashing? Information asymmetry lies at the heart of the phenomenon. There is a significant imbalance in what different parties know about a firm’s environmental practices, and in their capacity to find out more. Individual purchasers of products rarely know the full background about how an item is produced and do not have the capacity to fully research this, thus relying on the assurances and claims made by the vendor. In effect, they take a business’s claims and advertising at face value.

Complexity is a second but equally important factor. There are many different ways in which a business can act in a greener fashion but what constitutes a green, eco-friendly, or sustainable product is not a straightforward matter. For instance, is the determining factor its level of greenhouse gas emissions? Is it sustainable use and protection of land or water? Is it participation in the circular economy? Is it pollution prevention and control? Or restoration of biodiversity, plant and animal species, and ecosystems? Many different variables are at play, and it is possible for a firm to have strong environmental credentials in one domain whilst simultaneously delivering a poor performance in another (Lucarelli, Mazzoli, Rancan & Severini 2020). Validating claims to greater sustainability is often a complex assessment process beyond the capacity of consumers to make.

There is also the question as to why firms engage in the practice of greenwashing. A principal cause can be businesses seeking to benefit from the increasing number of consumers wanting and being prepared to pay a premium for green products. Another driver may be the competitive advantage of portraying a more environmentally-conscious image (Ramakrishnan 2022). A third factor may be the wish to secure a social license to operate from the community and regulators, especially in industries whose environmental record to date has been questionable. Sometimes greenwashing can occur through inadvertent mistakes, such as those made by firms who genuinely believe their data are correct when they are not, or when an unsustainable supplier or a unit of the company has not been fully compliant with the broader climate strategy of a firm (Pizzetti, Gatti & Seele 2019).

Greenwashing is not a new phenomenon. Almost a decade ago, for example, business press stories in the Asia Pacific were already running about dubious carbon tax claims (Eco-Business 2012). However, many of these were drawn from countries outside of Southeast Asia, such as Australia, the United States, the United Kingdom and the European Union, where green issues had come to public and regulatory prominence far sooner than in this region. Today, though, greenwashing is as much a problem in Southeast Asia as it is anywhere else.

GREENWASHING: UBIQUITUOUS IN MANY INDUSTRIES

A number of greenwashing problems have already surfaced in Southeast Asia.

One sector is in automotive manufacturing, where several Thai, Vietnamese and Indonesian companies are poised to ride the new wave of electric vehicle production. Indeed, electric vehicles on the streets of Southeast Asia often conjure a green image that may, in fact, be misleading. While the electrification of automobiles may reduce carbon emissions, the generation of hydrogen fuel for these electric vehicles often relies heavily on the use of dirty coal. Unless this form of power generation capacity in future is drawn from renewable sources, the use of electric vehicles will remain carbon-intensive and claims made about their contribution to environmental sustainability will likewise remain questionable.

Another problematic area is the use of carbon capture and storage as a way to produce so-called “clean coal.” An intensive producer of greenhouse gas emissions, coal remains a major energy source throughout the region. The effectiveness of carbon capture technology in remediating the overall level of greenhouse emission is still uncertain at best and often highly contested at worst, especially at an industrial scale (Garcia Freites & Jones 2021). Despite this, energy companies – both state-owned and private – rarely acknowledge this in their strategic plans or marketing.

Numerous smaller-scale greenwashing practices can also be found amongst other businesses. These have included cases of manufacturing companies mixing plastics into paper bottles; the use of scientifically unsupported claims about aluminium being greener than plastic; and ambiguous marketing slogans about recycling (Hicks 2021b). Some issues are also cultural: many small-scale retailers in the region profess to subscribe to sustainability, but often wrap consumer products in substantial amounts of plastic and other packaging, a practice which is still usually expected of them by purchasers (Bassett 2019).

Environmental claims in the financial services sector are becoming increasingly significant. Many firms are now pursuing investor funds with bold claims as to their environmental and sustainability credentials, but on a number of occasions, these have been proven to be dubious (Teh 2021). There are also numerous different rating systems claiming to impartially evaluate the environmental, sustainability and governance (ESG) impact of various investment products for investors in Southeast Asia, but they often operate using quite different metrics and are difficult to compare. A number of financial service regulators have become increasingly focused on this area; in November 2021, the Monetary Authority of Singapore announced that it would begin a series of detailed stress tests and impose mandatory sustainability disclosure requirements on banks and firms listed on the Singapore Stock Exchange (Chanjaroen & Amin 2021).

The role of policy and regulation is one area that is developing quickly. Litigation over spurious environmental claims is becoming increasingly common, using not only national laws, but also decisions now provided by multilateral bodies. BP, for example, was obliged to withdraw a major advertising campaign in 2020 after a public interest law firm complained that it breached the OECD’s Guidelines for Multinational Enterprises, creating a misleading impression about its move to renewable energy and away from fossil fuels (Barker & Worthington 2021).

Consumer protection laws in this area, however, are sometimes weak. One examination of the Thai regulatory framework, for example, concluded that “… this study finds that the consumer protection law of Thailand is inadequate to resolve the disputes which may arise over the issue of sustainability claims and labelling” (Tongsup 2016: 1). Other commentators have made similar claims (Hannon 2021).

WHERE NEXT?

Reducing or removing the incidence of greenwashing is important if market dynamics and consumer action are to effectively drive demand for cleaner, greener, more environmentally friendly products and services. To do this, a number of steps are still needed.

At the individual firm level, businesses need to ensure they have the requisite technical and environmental knowledge needed to ensure they genuinely are operating in a green manner. This means investing in staff training, reviewing inhouse processes, and ensuring boards include directors with specialist skills in sustainability, climate change and environmental matters. For smaller firms with limited resources, governments can play a role by providing access to advice and certification schemes which might allow businesses to ensure that their processes and products are operating in a sustainable manner.

The marketing industry also needs to be involved in efforts to deal with this problem. As the enabling mechanism through which businesses typically channel green claims out into public messages, the advertising and promotions profession can play a role in checking and validating claims before they are presented to consumers. Encouragingly, the Public Relations & Communications Association of Southeast Asia announced in June last year that it was establishing a working party to look into the issue, set standards, and raise industry awareness (Hicks 2021a). This is a welcome and positive first step for the industry.

Governments should also encourage their national competition and consumer protection agencies to crack down on misleading and deceptive greenwashing claims. Indeed, a number of competition regulators in the region are already showing an interest in the topic. In late 2021, for example, the Competition and Consumer Commission of Singapore invited researchers to bid for grants investigating sustainability-related issues, including greenwashing. It will be interesting to see what emerges from these studies over time. A more proactive approach might be to adopt the approach taken by regulators in nations such as the Australia and the UK, where clear guidance is often provided and greenwashing claims are frequently prosecuted (Competition and Markets Authority 2021).

In the financial services sector, there is a growing awareness that a consistent set of financial taxonomies (definitions) is required to ensure that all investment products are judged on an equal basis. The current absence of clarity in definitions has been frequently cited by commentators as providing “wiggle room” that allows unsustainable financing ventures to be presented as green ones (European Commission 2019). The use of common definitions and categories, labels and standards will help investors make more informed decisions about where, and to whom, they entrust their money. ASEAN has started to make some initial steps in this direction (including the first iteration of its proposed taxonomic system in November 2021), which is to be encouraged.

Company directors have to be more vigilant in policing their own firms’ claims about environmental impacts, especially those relating to climate change. This is already starting to occur, with a number of national director associations now actively engaging on a range of environmental issues. The Singapore Institute of Directors, for example, has already published articles on greenwashing (Ramakrishnan 2022) and, in February 2022, the ASEAN Climate Governance Network was launched, with the support of the national director associations in each country. As the level of director awareness about sustainability increases, there should be a commensurate raising of corporate standards in their public messaging.

Consumer groups and civil society also have a role to play. Individual customers may not be in a position to call out greenwashing claims, but bodies such as national consumer associations, environmental advocacy bodies and public interest law groups have a greater capacity to do so; they should be encouraged to speak out when they can identify examples of corporate greenwashing. Advertising agencies could also be encouraged to exercise their conscience and decline potential work with business clients that are not offering genuinely green products or services; this is already increasingly becoming a common professional practice in nations such as the UK (Watson 2021).

Finally, industry associations and business groups should also be encouraged to consider developing their own eco-friendly certification systems. If done accurately, they can allow the public to easily identify greener products and services, whilst also encouraging various business sectors to improve their environmental performance. Green standards already exist in numerous industries, but there are many more that could also benefit from such programmes.

CONCLUSION

Markets can be a powerful force for generating social, cultural, economic and environmental reform. Properly informed consumers and investors can, and often do, drive change through the astute use of their purchasing and spending power. However, to be successful, it requires a marketplace in which honest and accurate information is made freely available, and in which decisions are made on a properly informed basis.

Greenwashing is more than just a quirky marketing practice; it has the potential to seriously distort the effective expression of consumer and social concerns about environmental issues. As the push for greater sustainability and climate-friendly practices gathers pace across society, we can expect this topic to become more, not less, important in Southeast Asia.

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Ramakrishnan, Seeram (2022) “Fifty Shades of Greenwashing” SID Directors Bulletin, Quarter 1, pp. 78-81.

Teh, Shi Ning (2021) “Greenwashing Threat Grows With Rise of Sustainable Investing” Straits Times, 24 October [online] https://www.straitstimes.com/business/invest/greenwashing-threat-grows-with-rise-of-sustainable-investing (accessed 08 February 2022). <https://www.straitstimes.com/business/invest/greenwashing-threat-grows-with-rise-of-sustainable-investing>

Timmins, Beth (2021) “Climate Change: Seven Ways to Spot Businesses Greenwashing” BBC News, 8^th November [online] https://www.bbc.com/news/business-59119693.amp (accessed 08 February 2022). <https://www.bbc.com/news/business-59119693.amp>

Tongsup, Wongploi (2016) “Sustainability Claims and Labelling in Thailand”, Masters thesis, Thammasat University, Bangkok.

Watson, Imogen (2021) “Boycott or Not To Boycott: How Agencies Should Work With High-Carbon Clients” Campaign Asia, 2^nd November [online] Boycott or not (accessed 08 March 2022). <https://www.campaignasia.com/article/boycott-or-not-to-boycott-how-agencies-should-work-with-high-carbon-clients/473678>

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).

2022/30 “New Chinese Migrants in Chiang Mai: Parallel Paths for Social Interaction and Cultural Adjustment” by Aranya Siriphon, Fanzura Banu and Pagon Gatchalee

Chinese New Year Celebrations in Chiang Mai, Thailand, on 1 February 2022. Source: FaceBook, Konthaitour in Chiang Mai @konthaitour.

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

New Chinese Migrants (often called xin yimin, 新移民) refer to recent waves of Chinese who move overseas in search of education and business opportunities. Others pursue personal dreams and better quality of life without the intention of settling permanently.

While descendants of older Chinese migrants in Thailand consider themselves Thai, hold Thai citizenship, and speak the language, new Chinese migrants tend to struggle when interacting with the locals due to the language barrier and negative stereotypes about foreign Chinese held by the locals.

Their inability to integrate has led to the growth of a parallel community, where these new Chinese migrants seek each other out for their social needs, instead of mingling with Thais.

Based on qualitative interviews with new Chinese migrants in Chiang Mai, two social groups are prominent within this parallel community: guardian parent groups and religion-based groups.

The former consists of guardians to Chinese students, and their purpose is to respond to issues and queries relating to enrolment in Thai international schools. They also act as support groups for other newcomers into Thai society.

Religion-based groups such as Chinese-language Christian churches and Buddhist spirituality groups provide material and emotional support to new Chinese migrants. These organize bonding activities that facilitate networking and provide social support. They also offer courses to help new Chinese migrants adjust through language classes and lessons on local manners.

*Aranya Siriphon is Visiting Fellow at the Regional Social and Cultural Studies Programme at ISEAS – Yusof Ishak Institute. She is also Associate Professor at the Department of Sociology and Anthropology, Faculty of Social Sciences, Chiang Mai University. Fanzura Banu is Research Officer at the Institute, while Pagon Gatchalee is Lecturer at the Department of Marketing at Chiang Mai University Business School.

ISEAS Perspective 2022/30, 23 March 2022

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INTRODUCTION

Chinese immigration to Thailand has a long history, and until the mid-twentieth century,[1] they left their motherland in search of greener pastures and survival.[2] The descendants of these previous waves of migrants can be differentiated by their spoken dialects,[3] having moved from the southern provinces of China before the 1980s. The total population of Thailand’s Chinese migrants and their descendants today is approximately 7.1 million.[4] The Chinese settlers in Thailand form the oldest and most significant ethnic Chinese community settled in Southeast Asia.

Many studies have been undertaken on how they have been settling in Thailand and merging into Thai society.[5] While those who took Skinner’s assimilation approach illustrated the success of Chinese assimilation through the adopting of Thai ways of life, and integrating into Thai society and identifying themselves as Thai,[6] several scholars have recently argued against what they see as an overemphasis on the degree of Chinese assimilation, and instead propose that more attention be paid to the multiple ways in which ethnic Chinese adapt to changing contexts while retaining their Chineseness.[7]

The world today has seen the dynamic rise of China since the introduction of Deng Xiaoping’s open-door economic policy in 1978. One consequence of China’s economic success is the rise of Chinese emigration, with the migrants being collectively called xin yimin 新移民. Since the 1980s, China has strategically encouraged its citizens to explore opportunities overseas, by creating a “xin yimin” official discourse.[8] Some are encouraged by the state’s call, while others simply wish to pursue their personal dreams. However, the new Chinese migrants do not necessarily aim to settle in the host countries; and may be mainly searching for business opportunities, and to pursue a better quality of life. Thailand became a prime destination for many of them, and since the 2000s, they have moved to its big cities in substantial numbers. By 2020, the number of Chinese migrants in Thailand had reached 77,000, and they can be classified into four clusters: business migrants; education migrants; lifestyle and long-term leisure migrants; and a combination of lifestyle and business migrants.[9] All four received ‘non-immigrant visas’ arranged in several types, such as B, O, A, and ED.[10] Some would have arrived on tourist visas first, and then changed their status after having stayed longer in the country.

This paper addresses how these new Chinese migrants are being socially and culturally integrated, and how they are different from the descendants of earlier Chinese settlers. Under what conditions do the new Chinese migrants engage with Thai communities; and are new Chinese communities being formed? This paper is part of a larger research project utilizing qualitative research methods. It is based on fieldwork conducted in 2019 and interviews done in 2020 with Chinese residents in Chiang Mai.

We argue that these new migrants, who are more transient than the earlier Chinese settlers, consider their social interaction with the local Thais challenging. They cite language barriers and lack of social communication skills on their part as the main reasons, plus the negative stereotypes about foreign Chinese held by the locals. Using case studies of guardian-parent support groups and religion-based communities in Chiang Mai, this paper reveals that new Chinese migrants in Thailand have formed what can be considered ‘parallel communities’.[11] These social groups can be categorized based on their objectives, such as business, religion, parent support, and student affairs. They are organized to support new Chinese members materially and emotionally and create a sense of community via “Chinese-based activities”.

THAI PERSPECTIVES ABOUT NEW CHINESE MIGRANTS

Historically, Thai society’s portrayal of China—through the Jin Thai Pi Nong Kan, or Sino-Thai brotherhood narrative—can be seen from the top-down and ground-up perspectives.[12] The Thai diplomatic discourse utilized the top-down perspective, referring to the deep, historical, and cultural ties both countries had fostered for decades. China was portrayed as a generous big brother. However, this brotherhood narrative is slowly changing, as Thailand gets caught in contemporary China-US rivalries.

Between the 1950s and 1970s, China-Thailandrelations were in fact tense. The Thais suspected China of supporting Thai communist insurgencies. By the late-1970s, the Thai government ended hostility and moved towards peace, in line with the US forging cordial relations with China. The Thai government, including the Thai Royal House, found valid reasons to appease Thai citizens by shifting to a Sino-Thai brotherhood narrative, in order to downplay previous antagonistic connotations. Recently, the Sino-Thai brotherhood narrative has been revived to serve official Thai interests in developing China-Thailand ties, to boost the security of the Mekong region, and to improve Thailand’s economic standing in the region. As China downplays the ‘red threat’ image by developing an image of a ‘good neighbour’ and a ‘responsible leader’, the Thai government seized the opportunity to broaden its engagement with China in trade, economy, military and education.[13] This has heightened scrutiny from among Thailand’s traditional allies in the West.

The ground-up perspective, a multi-layered response to the Sino-Thai brotherhood narrative, is demonstrated by ordinary Thais. On the one hand, Thais welcome China for its economic and humanitarian aid to Thailand, and they consider China one of Thai’s Pi Nong (Pi, the ‘elder brother’ country that helps the Nong, the ‘younger brother’ country). On the other hand, recent negative media reporting and social media comments about Chinese tourism in Thailand and elsewhere have led to negative stereotypes growing about how badly Chinese citizens behave when travelling overseas. In short, Thai sentiments on the ground towards the Chinese is conflicted.

While the initial response was favourable to the inflow of Chinese into Thailand which generates revenue and boosts the Thai economy, negative attitudes have followed, which amplify the stereotyping of Chinese tourists and travellers as ‘fools but rich’[14] and ‘those with uncivilized manners.’[15] These negative portrayals have impacted Chinese tourists and new Chinese migrants residing in Thailand and their interactions with local Thais. Economic partnerships between the Chinese and Thais have also been hit, with potential resident Chinese business partners being perceived as ‘threats’ for Thai business partners. Some Thai businessmen consider the Chinese to be unfaithful business partners due to their ‘selfish’ and ‘cheating’ nature. This image is fuelled by certain incidences of fraud and scams, though most cases are gossip circulated among the locals.

The impact of negative stereotypes has led to new Chinese migrants suffering social ostracization in Thai public spaces, such as international schools and local markets. To illustrate, excluding behaviours occur during social events in schools when Chinese parents interact with both foreign and Thai families. Some Chinese families share that Thai families tend to provide differential treatment to Euro-American families, explicitly and purposefully showing their admiration towards them over the Chinese.[16]

OLD AND NEW CHINESE MIGRANTS IN THAILAND

Under the conditions mentioned above, new Chinese migrants maintain a range of enhanced and distinct social relations. Among Thai locals, they have experienced both being included and excluded. Based on recent migration studies, today’s migration is much more complex where the notion of transience is concerned.[17] Theoretically and empirically, its emphasis has shifted from transnational practices and cross-border network-building to the importance of temporalities and spatialities.[18] Xiang contends that a temporary migrant may settle in a locality, but a transient one does not necessarily do so.[19] The migrant only passes through purposively. Therefore, the subject of contemporary migration should not be limited to the following forms and patterns: permanent rupture, uprooting, and local settlement from a transnational perspective. Rather, the study of international migration should now consider transient migration’s temporariness, ongoing movements and the mechanisms and strategies practised. The behaviours found among the new Chinese migrants in Chiang Mai[20] provide empirical support this new approach. While their social lifestyle in big cities such as Chiang Mai and Bangkok does not necessarily need much any interaction with local Thais, these new migrants have their own longer-term struggles, stemming largely from their inability to freely engage with Thai locals due to language barriers and lack of social communication skills.

Compared to well-established ethnic Chinese communities across Thailand that adopt Thai ways of life and identify themselves as Thai citizens, it is worth considering that for new Chinese migrants, assimilation into Thai society in all its elements is not mandatory. New Chinese migrants are not required to apply for Thai citizenship as they do not aim for permanent residency in Thailand. New Chinese migrants identify themselves as Chinese citizens, Zhongguo ren, 中国人, contrasting themselves from the ethnic Chinese and their descendants residing in Thailand, who consider themselves as Huaren, 華人.

FORMING PARALLEL COMMUNITY: SOCIAL NETWORKS AND ITS FACILITATION

Given the circumstances facing the new Chinese migrants in Thailand, they are selective in their online and offline public participation, and sensitive about where they can best fit in and get emotional and material support. As a result, new social groups have appeared within this transient migration. These social groups that actively engage with the new Chinese migrants reflect the existence of ‘parallel communities’. In Chiang Mai, it is guardian-parent groups and religious-based groups which are an attraction for new Chinese residents of all types, ranging from employees of large and small-scale enterprises to individual entrepreneurs, governmental staff and experts, international students and accompanying family members, and long-term stay residents (Chinese seniors, retirees, political refugees etc.).

Guardian-Parent Groups

In Chiang Mai, informal Chinese guardian-parent clubs that connect Chinese families with children attending international schools and universities exemplify a parallel community. The largest informal guardian-parent group in Chiang Mai is the ‘Studying in Thailand Consultation Group’ (泰国留学咨询群), a nonprofit counselling platform initiated in 2016 by a “Mr. Potato”. The founder is a Chinese father who worked in a transnational computer company. He speaks fluent English, and approximately 1,000 members are registered and connected via a WeChat group, from which they acquire information and social interactions as well.

Chinese guardian-parent groups do tend to utilize WeChat platforms. The daily discussions in this WeChat group include issues on non-ED, accompanying visa, and retirement visa, educational choices, guidance for living, driver’s licenses, international hospitals, bank accounts, international logistic services, shopping, and other survival skills. Moreover, blogs, essays, instructions, official files, and others are used and shared to help group members have a smoother lifestyle in Chiang Mai.

Chinese families, especially newcomers, rely on such online platforms to overcome challenges in their new living environment. These mutual assistance communities naturally offer the possibility of conversations continuing offline whenever actual assistance is needed. For example, the group has taken on a major role in negotiating with international schools, helping to organize a committee to solve conflicts between students.

However, by utilizing WeChat, new Chinese residents tend to sidestep the need to interact with local Thais, or parents of other foreign nationalities.

Religious-based Groups

Religious organizations (e.g., temples or churches) provide another social space where new Chinese migrants are able to congregate around their sense of identity. These groups also fulfill their religious needs in some cases, which could not be easily done in China due to strict regime control over religious issues. The two religion-based organizations in Chiang Mai—the two Chinese Christian churches, and the Buddhism-styled spiritual place—are prime examples of this.

The Chinese Christian church named ‘Home of Love’ (爱之家), was established in 2009 by American-Chinese Christian leaders and pastors from Singapore. Approximately 150 Chinese members, including students, parents and businesspeople, regularly visit the church. The second such church is the Chiang Mai Chinese Christian Church (CMCCC, 清迈华人基督教), established in 2015 as a Chinese branch of the Chiang Mai Grace Church. Approximately 100 Chinese members attend the church, primarily students. It was this fast increase in the number of attendees that prompted its leaders to identify a new location in Hang Dong district and to set up a separate church there in 2017.[21]

The two Chinese Christian churches operate all their activities in the Chinese language, and provide newcomers with a sense of home and belonging. Apart from bible study, they organize social activities related to Chinese culture (e.g., Chinese food and joint cooking, singing worship songs in Chinese, and throwing parties during Chinese festivals such as Spring holiday, Mid-Autumn Festival and the dragon boat festival). Sometimes, these churches modify bible stories to closely mirror Chinese life and teach them how to find peace and comfort in a strange place and battle loneliness and homesickness.

Although most activities are geared towards supporting members spiritually, the churches have also helped those facing monetary difficulties. This assistance includes picking new migrants up from the airport, finding accommodation, and warmly welcoming new students at the church. Some courses are also taught: such as learning the English language, understanding Western-style manners, and being acquainted with Thai cultures and taboos. These are meant to assist Chinese students and parents adjusting to Thailand.

Chinese parents and families also visit these churches every Sunday and during their free time on weekdays when their children are at school or when they themselves are not working. Bible courses for children are taught in Chinese by volunteer mothers or fathers. Some Chinese families also attend prayer meetings, consultations or group meetings before having lunch together at the church.

Various groups of new Chinese migrants rely on these churches as a good default venue for their own aims. For example, businesspeople attend church for business networking and information sharing. In the same vein, students come to the churches to meet new Chinese friends and absorb new moral knowledge. Whether conversion subsequently happens or not, the churches provide a common space where these migrants can experience the comfort of Chinese identity.

Anotherexample is the Buddhist spirituality group in Chiang Mai city, named ‘Compassion Foundation’, 妙觉寺, or Miaojuesi for short. It was established in 2016 by a Shifu, 师父, a leading Taiwanese Buddhist monk. This group is financially supported by a wealthy Thai-Yunnanese leader in Chiang Mai, who donated land for the building, and it was the Taiwanese philanthropy network that then continued to donate to the organization.

After setting up the organization, the Shifu met with a pioneer guardian mother from China who bemoaned the difficulties of residing in a foreign land as a newcomer. Thus, he ensured that the Miaojuesi provided free Thai language classes to Chinese residents. Soon, hundreds of Chinese newcomers were attended these classes, and other social and cultural courses, including flower decoration classes or food-making courses. At Miaojuesi, Chinese mothers and children could now find a calm and relaxed place to participate in spiritual, cultural and linguistic learning activities. Before the courses begin, everyone is required to chant ‘The Heart Sutra’, 心经, xīn jīng.

Miaojuesi is neither a traditional Buddhism temple that practices and spreads Mahayana Buddhism (大乘佛教), nor simply an overseas Chinese association. As the founder is a Taiwanese foreign monk, Miaojuesi could not register according to Thai Buddhism laws. By registering the organization as a foreign charity, it becomes a cosmopolitan Buddhist education and charity association that connects new Chinese migrants to other Chinese-cultural circles, either those from Taiwan or Thailand.

Alongside its spiritual and worldly activities, Miaojuesi also organizes a dharma assembly, operating offline and online (WeChat account). Some participants make large donations. For example, a mother donated US$ 2,500 to eliminate her sin felt from an abortion she went through several years back. In 2019, Miaojuesi raised enough money to purchase 24,749 square meters of land for US$ 1.8 million on which to build a larger meditation centre.

CONCLUSION

It is worth noting that new Chinese migrants in general, while residing in Thailand, tend to be do so within Chinese-associated circles consisting of both ethnic Chinese and new Chinese migrants. The variety of social groups reflects the emergence of a parallel community that does not necessarily intersect with local Thai communities. The lack of a need to apply for Thai citizenship compared to Sino-Thais means that new Chinese migrants do not have to sink their roots. At the same time, negative myths and stereotypes about Chinese people held by the locals dilute friendly interaction and partnership between the two sides. Under such circumstances, new Chinese migrants have been prone to seek connections with fellow Chinese.

More cultural education and opportunities for interaction between new Chinese migrants and Thai locals are needed, to dispel negativity and reverse this social division.

ENDNOTES

[1] Phuwadol Songprasert. Chin Phon Thale Samai Mai. (The Overseas Chinese Today). Bangkok: Higher Press, 2004.

[2] Kuhn, P. Chinese Among others: Emigration in Modern Times. (Singapore: NUS Press, 2008), pp. 321–33.

[3] Chinese who migrated into Thailand and their descendants can be classified into five main groups based on their dialects: Teochew, Hakka, Hainanese, Cantonese, and Hokkien. Teochew is the largest ethnic Chinese group in Thailand and has played a significant role in political and economic life, and mostly live in Bangkok and urban cities along the Thai coast. Hakka is the second largest group to be engaged in trade and politics. The Hainanese, Cantonese and Hokkien play less important role, and usually follow the lead of the Teochew group. The relationship between the Chinese and the Thais gradually shifted from exclusion of the Chinese from the Thai social structure in the early Bangkok period to inclusion via intermarriages and the incorporation of the Chinese into the Thai school system and government offices that were traditionally dominated by Thais. For more details, see Amara Pongsapich’s Chinese Settlers and Their Role in Modern Thailand. Asian Journal of Social Science 23, pp. 13–28, 1995.

[4] The figures are published by the Overseas Community Affairs Council (OCAC), Taiwan, and include first and second generation migrants, as well as the latter-generations born in the host country, who identify as Chinese. Noticably, the given figures are higher than figures published by other sources such as the UN and OECD. Please see more details at the data source https://www.statista.com/statistics/279530/countries-with-the-largest-number-of-overseas-chinese/ (retrieved on 2 December 2021).

[5] See the central argument in Kornphanat Tungkeunkunt. Report on Major English- and Thai- Language scholarship on Thailand’s ethnic Chinese in the post-1945 Era: Themes, Approaches, and Shortcomings. The Thai Journal of East Asian Studies (TJEAS), 14, (2), pp.74-95,2010.

[6] See Skinner, William. Chinese society in Thailand: an Analytical History (Ithaca, N.Y.:Cornell University Press, 1957), Guskin, Alan. Changing Identity: the Assimilation of Chinese in Thailand. Ph.D. dissertation, University of Michigan,1968, Galaska, Chester. Continuity and Change in Dalat Plu: a Chinese Middle Class Business Community in Thailand. Ph.D. dissertation, Syracuse University, 1969, Boonsanong Punyodyana. Chinese-Thai Differential Assimilation in Bangkok: an Exploratory Study. (Ithaca: Cornell University, 1971), Disaphol Chansiri. The Chinese émigrés of Thailand in the Twentieth Century (Youngstown,N.Y. : Cambria Press, 2008).

[7] For example, Cushman, Jennifer. The Chinese in Thailand. In Suryadinata, Leo. (ed.) The ethnic Chinese in the ASEAN states: Bibliographical Essays, pp. 221-259. (Singapore: ISEAS, 1989), Tong Chee Kiong and Chan Kwok Bun. (eds.). Alternate Identities: The Chinese of Contemporary Thailand. (Leiden: Brill Academic Publishers, 2001), Montesano, Michael. Beyond the Assimilation Fixation: Skinner and the Possibility of a Spatial Approach to Twentieth-Century Thai History. Journal of Chinese Overseas, 1 (2), 184-216, 2005, Callahan, William. Beyond Cosmopolitanism and Nationalism: Diasporic Chinese and Neo-Nationalism in China and Thailand. International Organization, 57, 481-517, 2003)

[8] Nyiri, Pal, and Saveliev, Igor (eds). Globalizing Chinese Migration: Trends in Europe and Asia (Burlington: Ashgate, 2002)

[9]Aranya Siriphon and Banu, Fanzura. The Nature of Recent Chinese Migration to Thailand. Perspective, 168, pp. 1-11, 2021.

[10] Royal Thai Embassies and Royal Thai Consulates-General may issue the following types of visas regarding their objective of arrival: Transit Visa, Tourist Visa, Non-Immigrant Visa, Diplomatic Visa, Official Visa,and Courtesy Visa. Non-Immigrant Visa B refers to business and work, O means visiting friends and family, O-A refers to Long-stay visitation, and ED means visitation for study. https://consular.mfa.go.th/th/page/cate-7393-general-information?menu=5d68c88b15e39c160c0081e0

[11] The notion of ‘parallel communities’ is coined by the sociologist Wilhelm Heitmeyer with respect to the integration deficits of immigrants in Germany. It has then been applied in other West-European countries with immigration. Please see more debate in Gorchakova, Nadezda. The Concept of Parallel Societies and its Use in the Immigration and Multiculturalism Discourse. (MA. University of Helsinki, 2011); Gomes, C., Leong, S., Yang, P. Editorial: Why Transitions? Transitions: Journal of Transient Migration, 1 (1), pp. 7-11, 2017.

[12] Cited in Kornphanat Tungkeunkunt and Kanya Phuphakdi. Blood Is Thicker Than Water: A History of the Diplomatic Discourse “China and Thailand Are Brothers”. Asian Perspective 42, (4), pp. 597-621, 2018.

[13] Chulacheep Chinwanno. Thai-Chinese Relation: Security and Strategic Partnership: Working paper. (Singapore: S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies, 2008); Kornphanat Tungkeunkunt and Kanya Phuphakdi. Blood Is Thicker Than Water: A History of the Diplomatic Discourse “China and Thailand Are Brothers”. Asian Perspective 42, (4), pp. 597-621, 2018.

[14] Chinese consumers who could make casual purchases of extremely expensive items or some materialistic Chinese who attach the meaning of life to material possessions.

[15] Uncivilized manners” refer to those Chinese who adopt unruly behaviours, for example, breaking legal and civil regulations, littering, queue-jumping, and flouting traffic laws. This stereotype also includes narratives claimed by Thai commoners depicting Chinese as acting violently, committing offensive acts, speaking loudly, and displaying fussy and highly demanding personalities. The two negative portrayals have impacted Chinese tourists and Chinese residents when interacting in Thai locales.

[16] Information gathered from online survey and interviewed 3 Chinese guardians during fieldwork (interviewed May 1, 2019)

[17] Please see Gomes, C. Negotiating Everyday Life in Australia: Unpacking the Parallel Society Inhabited by Asian International Students through their Social Networks and Entertainment Media Use. Journal of Youth Studies 18 (4), pp. 515-536, 2015.

[18] Yeoh, B.S.A. Afterword: Transient Migrations: Intersectionalities, Mobilities and Temporalities. Transitions: Journal of Transient Migration 1, (1), pp. 143-146, 2017.

[19] Xiang, B. Preface: Hundreds of Millions in Suspension. Transitions: Journal of Transient Migration 1, (1), 3-5, 2017.

[20] Cited in Aranya Siriphon and Li Jiangyu. Final Report on Chinese Diaspora and Transnational Mobile Practices in Chiang Mai, Thailand (Thailand: Chiang Mai University and Thailand Research Fund, 2020).

[21] Lan, Xiaoxia. New Chinese Mobility and Religious Enchantment: Case study in Chiang Mai Province. Asian Review, 33 (1), pp. 24-55, 2020; Ping, Yanqing. The Social Life of the Mobility of the Chinese Family and their Children for Education. MA. Thesis, Faculty of Social Sciences, Chiang Mai University, 2020.

Editorial Chairman: Choi Shing Kwok
Editorial Advisor: Tan Chin Tiong
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).

Temasek Working Paper No. 4: 2022 – The Temasek Wreck (mid-14th Century), Singapore. Preliminary Report by Michael Flecker

2022/29 “The Race to Produce Covid-19 Vaccines in Southeast Asia” by Tham Siew Yean

People scan QR codes using the Trace Together contact tracing app on their smartphones before entering a building at the Raffles Place financial business district in Singapore on 14 February 2022. Picture: Roslan RAHMAN, AFP.

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

The race to produce Covid-19 vaccines in SEA is triggered by a general reluctance to be dependent on the vagaries of global supply, imports and donations as well as uncertainty over the duration of the pandemic.
Joining the exclusive vaccine production club will require Southeast Asian countries to enter the vaccine value chain of one of the key producers as contract manufacturers. Indonesia and Malaysia have collaborated with Sinovac, while Thailand has teamed up with AstraZeneca, with more partnerships in the offing.
Some Southeast Asian countries such as Indonesia, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam are also venturing into the production of home-made vaccines and these have already advanced to clinical trials with plans for these vaccines to be rolled out in 2022.

But, there are numerous other vaccines that are being developed around the world that are also undergoing clinical trials. It remains to be seen whether Southeast Asia’s home-made vaccines can compete with the new vaccines that are also coming on board as well as established vaccines, especially when trust in home-made vaccines remains low.

It also remains an open question whether the future course of the pandemic may render vaccination and the use of home-made vaccines in Southeast Asia redundant or if the vaccines made in the region can combat new variants effectively.

Be that as it may, the technology acquired in the vaccine development process in Southeast Asia can be used to prepare these countries for future pandemics.

* Tham Siew Yean is Visiting Senior Fellow at ISEAS – Yusof Ishak Institute and Emeritus Professor, Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia. She thanks Siwage D. Negara and Jayant Menon for useful comments. The usual caveat remains.

ISEAS Perspective 2022/29, 21 March 2022

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INTRODUCTION

Vaccine inequity and protectionism continue to prevail despite the World Health Organisation (WHO)’s calls to the contrary. While high income countries may have seen 73 percent of their population completing their first protocol, lower middle-income countries have only attained 46 percent.[1] Low-income countries have a mere 7.9 percent, which is a far cry from WHO’s targets of vaccinating 40 percent of the population of every country by the end of 2021 and 70 percent by the middle of 2022.[2]

One way of meeting vaccine inequity is to enable developing countries to produce their own vaccines. Sharing patented technology and knowledge with drug manufacturers can help to increase supply. However, this would require the current vaccine producers to temporarily waive their intellectual property right on the Covid-19 vaccines that they have developed. This has in fact been proposed by India and South Africa at a World Trade Organization meeting in October 2020, but unfortunately, action on this has since stalled.[3]

Nonetheless, the scramble for vaccines, in the face of uncertain supplies and uncertainty about the efficacy and longevity of current vaccines against new variants, has led some countries in Southeast Asia (SEA) to forge domestic production, be it with existing producers as sub-contractors, or independently. This is to ensure adequate supply for their own needs, reduce their dependency on imports as well as enhance their learning and capabilities to cope with future health pandemics.

PRODUCTION OF COVID-19 VACCINES IN SOUTHEAST ASIA

There are five stages in vaccine development and manufacturing (Table 1), with each step involving separate fixed costs. The exact cost of research and development (R&D) and the manufacture of vaccines are unknown due to lack of transparency among pharmaceutical companies.[4] The Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations, however, has estimated that the cost of developing a single epidemic infectious disease vaccine to be around USD 31 to 68 million, assuming no risk of failure.[5] Existing Covid-19 vaccine developers such as Pfizer/BioNTech and Moderna have reportedly received USD8.25 million in support in the form of public funding as well as guaranteed government pre-orders.

Besides funding, vaccine development and manufacturing also require R&D capabilities and capacities to develop vaccines from scratch. Thus, most developing countries may not have the research capacities as well as public/private financial support needed for Stage 1 of vaccine development.

The vaccines are then tested in three separate phases in clinical trials to ensure that they are safe and effective.

Manufacturing production is divided into three other stages, from drug substance and drug product formulation, to fill and finish, and later to distribution. Pharmaceutical companies have been shifting towards fragmentation due to the separability of fixed costs in each stage of vaccine development and manufacturing. Developing countries without R&D capabilities can therefore participate in vaccine manufacturing through contract manufacturing for Stages 3 to 5. In particular, scaling up production to meet with demands during the Covid-19 pandemic has led to the outsourcing of production in these three stages. For developing countries, manufacturing can facilitate technology transfer because the technology involved is not confined to the R&D stage alone but includes management of the entire production process. Manufacturing vaccines, including Covid-19 vaccines, require stringent regulatory oversight in the manufacturing process for safety reasons since these vaccines are provided for healthy individuals. Manufacturers have to demonstrate the ability to manufacture according to clear and documented procedures with reliable equipment and personnel, for an extended period of time, without failure or interruptions.

Table 1. Five Stages of Vaccine Development and Manufacturing

	Stages	Requirements
1	Research and Development (R&D)	R&D Capabilities
2	Clinical Trials	National Regulatory Agencies with approved protocols and ethics committee
3	Drug Substance and Formulation	Capital equipment, raw and single-use materials, and other pharmaceutical ingredients
4	Fill and Finish	Capital equipment and other inputs
5	Distribution	Range of equipment

Source: Adapted from Bown and Bollyky, 2021[6]

SEA Countries with Existing Vaccine Production Facilities

The ASEAN Vaccine Baseline Survey (AVBS) was conducted as part of the ASEAN Vaccine Security and Self-Reliance (AVSSR) initiative.[7] The Survey aimed to describe the current capacity, gap and/or challenges in relation to the whole vaccine value chain, i.e. research and development (R&D), production, regulation and immunisation, at regional and country levels within ASEAN.[8]

The Survey results were published in 2019, just before the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic and serve as a useful guide on the capacity of SEA countries in vaccine production in general. Based on the survey, SEA can be divided into two groups, namely vaccine-producing countries and non-vaccine producing countries. The former includes Indonesia, Myanmar, Thailand and Vietnam (Table 2), thereby indicating the possibility of these countries venturing into the production of Covid-19 vaccines.

Table 2. Current capacity on vaccine research and development in vaccine-producing AMS, as at 2019

Country	Capacity on R&D Research	Research Institute/Organisations
Indonesia	Yes	PT BioFarma
Myanmar	Yes	Department of Medical Research, Ministry of Health
Thailand	Yes	Government Pharmaceutical Organisation (GPO); Centre for Vaccine Development (CVD), Mahidol University Chiangmai University Vaccine Research Center, Chulalongkorn University National Science and Technology Development Agency (NSTA), Ministry of Science and Technology BioNet ASIA CVD and GPO Department of Medical Science (DOMS), Ministry of Public Health Siridhorn Institute of Technology (SIIT) National Biopharmaceutical Facility (NBF) and DOMS
Vietnam	Yes	VABIOTECH* The Centre for Research and Production of Vaccines and Biologicals (POLYVAC) Institute of Vaccines and Biological Medical (IVAC)

Note: * Name of State-Owned Company which used to belong to The National Institute of Hygiene and Epidemiology (NIHE);

Source: https://asean.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/Agd-6.3.a.i_AVBS_Final_23082019.pdf

Production with Existing Vaccine Producers

Given the facilities available for vaccine production as shown in Table 2, it is not surprising that Indonesia and Thailand moved quickly to collaborate with existing Covid-19 vaccine developers when the pandemic broke out in early 2020.[9] The Indonesian embassy in Beijing had sought to establish contact with Sinovac in March 2020. Three months after that, Sinovac agreed to cooperate with Bio Farma in conducting clinical trials as well as vaccine manufacturing. In August 2020, a phase-three clinical trial was carried out for Sinovac’s vaccine. Under the agreement with China, Bio Farma of Indonesia acquired the license to produce CoronaVac and has been designated a production hub for the region. The company started to “fill and finish” 15 million CoronaVac doses for distribution from mid-January 2021, while Brazil is the other production site for the vaccine.

Thailand also negotiated for vaccine production, signing an advance agreement in November of 2020 to secure an undisclosed number of doses of the AstraZeneca/Oxford vaccine and authorization for local production by the Thai drug manufacturer Siam Bioscience, which had no prior experience in vaccine production.[10] It was then considered to be strategically important for Thailand to gain from technology transfer and to make the country self-reliant in vaccine production besides promoting and pushing the Thai pharmaceutical industry to the forefront in ASEAN.[11]

The deal was for Thailand to produce up to 200 million doses a year as the sole SEA production hub for this vaccine.[12] The Thai government had reserved about a third of those doses, with the rest bound for export to Indonesia, the Philippines, Vietnam and other neighbours.[13]

In June 2021, Siam Bioscience started the country’s first production of a COVID-19 vaccine, using AstraZeneca’s technology. However, teething problems led to a shortfall in the projected production, which affected the projected number of doses available for Thailand as well as the country’s exports. The country has since emerged as a major manufacturer of the Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine, producing 52.5 million doses in September 2021, compared with just 8.4 million in August of the same year.[14]

Malaysia also signed a deal in January 2021 with Sinovac to “fill and finish” the vaccines in Malaysia with Pharmaniaga, a government-linked pharmaceutical company.[15] Pharmaniaga imports the bulk material from Sinovac and performs the fill and finish process at the Pharmaniaga LifeScience plant. This also involves transfer of technology and required testing. Subsequently, Pharmaniaga reported that it had supplied 12 million doses of the vaccine to the National COVID-19 Immunisation Programme (PICK) and with the final batch supplied on 21 July 2021. There are subsequently two media reports of further collaboration with China on vaccine R&D and production, although the partners are not named. Moderna is reportedly moving into vaccine production in Malaysia in 2022.

Vietnamese conglomerate Vingroup has teamed up with a US vaccine maker to begin production of its COVID-19 vaccine in Vietnam early next year. On 2 Aug 2021, it was reported that Vingroup began Phase 1 trials of a vaccine developed by Arcturus Therapeutics Holdings, based in the US city of San Diego.[16] Arcturus has agreed to provide the Vietnamese company with an exclusive license to make its mRNA COVID-19 vaccine candidate — the same type as those developed by Pfizer and Moderna — solely for sale and use in the country. Arcturus is preparing to start production in March 2022 with a production facility in Hanoi which is capable of producing 200 million doses annually.[17]

Producing Home-Made Covid-19 Vaccines

The desire to produce home-made vaccines is to achieve self-sufficiency, improve coordination among research and development agencies and enhance national capability in Covid-19 vaccine production. There are four countries in SEA that are actively developing home-made vaccines.

Table 3 shows the home-made vaccines that have advanced to clinical trials. Vietnam’s Nanocovax, that is being developed by the Nanogen Pharmaceutical Biology Joint Stock Company in cooperation with Military Medical Academy has progressed to Phase 3 trial. But the debut of the first Vietnamese vaccine has been pushed back to 2022, with health authorities taking extra care to ensure the safety and effectiveness of the vaccines.[18]

The ART-021 vaccine that is being developed in Singapore, and the Merah-Putih vaccine in Indonesia are both at Phase 2 trials. Indonesia is pressing to launch the latter’s vaccine in the third quarter of 2022.[19] The Nusantara vaccine is however mired in domestic debates as it is being developed by an American company, Aivita Bio Medical Inc., and its choice of vaccine technology is based on dendritic cells, which are components of blood cells that are a part of the immune system. But there are as yet no dendritic cell-based Covid-19 vaccines that have entered Phase 3 clinical trials in the world, or any that have been approved by any drug regulatory authority.[20]

Thailand’s two home-grown vaccines are still in Phase 2 trials, with the Chula-Baiya vaccine being plant-based, while its developer Baiya is the first Thai company to enter the university’s CU Innovation Hub, a research centre for start-ups, to develop the technology to manufacture recombinant proteins that can produce medicines and vaccines. Mass production of the vaccine Chula Cov-19 is estimated to be in June-September 2022, while the Chula-Baiya vaccine is also expected to be approved for use in the 3^rd or 4^th quarter of 2022.[21]

Table 3. Vaccine candidates in development in Southeast Asia, as at 26 February 2022

	Candidate	Mechanism	Sponsor	Trial Phase	Institution
1	Nanocovax	Recombinant vaccine (Spike protein)	Nanogen Biopharmacuetical	3	Military Medical Academy, (Vietnam)
2	ART-021	RNA vaccine	Artucus Therapeutics and Duke Medical School	2	Duke-NUS Medical School, Singapore
3	Merah-Putih	Inactivated Vaccine	Indonesia-MoH; Airlangga University; Biotis Pharmaceuticals	2	Dr. Soetomo General Hospital, Indonesia
4	Nusantara*	Dendritic cell vaccine, AV Covid-19	Aivita Bio Medical Inc.	2	National Institute of Health and Development, Ministry of Health, Republic of Indonesia
5	ChulaCov19	mRNA-based vaccine	Chulalongkorn University’s Center of Excellence in Vaccine Research and Development	2	Chula Vaccine Research Center (ChulaCRC), Faculty of Tropical Medicine, Mahidol University
6	Chula-Baiya	Protein sub-unit	Baiya Phytopharm Co. Ltd., National Vaccine Institute, Thailand	2	Chula Clinical Research Center; Queen Saovabha Memorial Institute

Source: https://www.raps.org/news-and-articles/news-articles/2020/3/covid-19-vaccine-tracker, * https://www.who.int/publications/m/item/draft-landscape-of-covid-19-candidate-vaccines

In January 2022, it was announced that two types of Covid-19 vaccines are being developed in Malaysia. The Institute of Medical Research (IMR), a biomedical research arm of the Ministry of Health, Universiti Putra Malaysia, and the Veterinary Research Institute are collaborating for the development of the first vaccine.[22] This is an inactivated vaccine similar to the Sinovac-CoronaVac vaccine. The second is an mRNA (messenger RNA) vaccine, which is solely an IMR initiative for now. The latter is scheduled for clinical trials in 2024.

CHALLENGES GOING FORWARD

Competing New Vaccines

Home-made vaccines have to struggle to meet stringent regulatory requirements, as well as viable economies of scale for commercial production. The active ingredients needed for making the vaccines as well as other materials have to be imported. This means that new vaccine-producing countries are just shifting from importing final goods (or the vaccines itself) to importing intermediate goods.[23]

At the same time, according to WHO’s Covid-19 vaccine tracker, as at February 2022, globally, there are a total of 146 Covid-19 vaccines at the clinical development stage. There is therefore stiff competition with existing vaccines as well as next-generation vaccines that are being developed globally in other countries. In particular, Corbevax, a protein subunit that is being developed by Texas Children’s Hospital for Vaccine Development and Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, Texas and Dynavax technologies, is aimed at improving vaccine equity since it carries no patents and uses old recombinant technology for manufacture.[24] Other drug makers are free to use its formulation to reproduce the vaccine, without any payment or complex licensing arrangements. Corbevax is therefore much cheaper and more stable than mRNA vaccines, making it easier to manufacture and distribute on a large scale in developing nations. India has already granted approval for use on people who are above 12 years old and plans to co-produce with the vaccine developers for internal use as well as in the Quad countries.

Trust in Home-made Vaccines

ISEAS’s “The State of Southeast Asia’s 2022 Survey Report” indicates that trust in home-made vaccines is rather low.[25] The most trusted vaccine brands among Southeast Asians – selected by 54.8% of all respondents – are mRNA vaccines Pfizer and Moderna. Domestic vaccine brands are the second lowest to be trusted, at 0.9 %, which is only slightly higher than the Russian-made vaccine, Sputnik-V.

This implies that even if home-made brands are accepted by national regulatory authorities for emergency use in their own countries, they may not be popular and citizens may still prefer to use other established brands, unless these are prohibited from being imported or they are priced too high and made unaffordable, through some kind of domestic taxes imposed on imported drugs. The latter policy options even if enforced are highly distortionary and will lead to inefficient resource allocations in the vaccine-producing country. The lack of trust will also stand in the way of exports. Even if these new vaccine-producing countries are to temporarily waive their intellectual property rights to allow less developed countries to produce these vaccines for their own use, as attempted at the WTO level by India and other supporters, demand may again be limited by the lack of trust.

End of the Covid-19 Pandemic and the Need for Booster Shots

At time of writing, the most optimistic scenario is that the end of the current Omicron wave may lead to an end of the pandemic, with natural immunity emerging for a larger share of the population due to the higher numbers infected by this wave. The optimistic scenario renders the manufacturing of new vaccines redundant in the new vaccine-developing countries, unless it is for export to the low-income countries that still need vaccinations to achieve the WHO targets.

The less optimistic scenario is the emergence of new variants, after Omicron. Whether this will lead to a need for more doses of vaccination remains uncertain as there are also recent discussions that three doses of a Covid vaccine — or even just two — are enough to protect most people from serious illness and death for a long time, with diminishing returns on the number of additional doses.[26] Even if additional doses of vaccinations are required, will the newly developed vaccines in SEA be able to provide protection from these new variants? This remains an open question.

CONCLUSION

The race to produce Covid-19 vaccines in SEA is triggered by a general reluctance to be dependent on the vagaries of global supply, imports and donations, and uncertainty over the duration of the pandemic. Joining the exclusive vaccine production club will require SEA countries to enter the vaccine value chain of one of the key producers as a contract manufacturer. While Indonesia and Malaysia have established partnerships with Sinovac, Thailand has teamed up with Astrazeneca, with more partnerships in the offing.

Some SEA countries are also venturing into the production of home-made vaccines. Notably Indonesia, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam have potential vaccines that have advanced to clinical trials, and they plan to roll out these vaccines in 2022. But, there are numerous other vaccines that are being developed around the world that are also undergoing clinical trials. In particular, Cobervax is touted to be a better candidate for vaccine equity because it carries no patents, relies on long-established recombinant technology for manufacture and has the support of the US and Indian governments.

It remains to be seen whether SEA’s home-made vaccines can compete with the new vaccines that are also coming on board as well as the established vaccines, especially when trust in home-made vaccines in SEA is low. It also remains an open question whether future developments in the pandemic may render vaccination and the use of home-made vaccines in SEA redundant or if the new vaccines can combat new variants effectively, given the efficacy record of current vaccines against new variants. Whichever the case, the technology acquired in the vaccine development process can be used to prepare these SEA countries for future pandemics.

ENDNOTES

[1] See https://ourworldindata.org/covid-vaccinations, as at 26 February 2022.

[2] See https://www.who.int/campaigns/vaccine-equity

[3] https://www.reuters.com/business/healthcare-pharmaceuticals/year-after-covid-vaccine-waiver-proposal-wto-talks-are-deadlocked-2021-10-04/

[4] https://www.oxfam.org/en/press-releases/vaccine-monopolies-make-cost-vaccinating-world-against-covid-least-5-times-more

[5] https://www.thelancet.com/journals/langlo/article/PIIS2214-109X(18)30346-2/fulltext

[6] Chad P. Bown and Thomas J. Bollyky, 2021. “How COVID-19 vaccine supply chains emerged in the midst of a pandemic”, Peterson Institute of International Economics, Working Paper 21-12, August. https://www.piie.com/sites/default/files/documents/wp21-12.pdf

[7] https://asean.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/Agd-6.3.a.i_AVBS_Final_23082019.pdf

[8] https://asean.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/Agd-6.3.a.i_AVBS_Final_23082019.pdf

[9] https://www.scmp.com/news/china/science/article/3116707/mass-sinovac-vaccination-programme-set-begin-indonesia-followed

[10] https://www.lexology.com/library/detail.aspx?g=b1b1e2ac-a0cf-4f8f-9a3a-8e212ba05279

[11] Somkid Puttasari 2021. “The failure of vaccine policy pushed Thailand from the best recovering country to the worst.” Observer Research Foundation (ORF), 19 August 2021. https://www.orfonline.org/expert-speak/failure-of-vaccine-policy-pushed-thailand/

[12] https://www.ft.com/content/aaa8b820-68c7-408d-9486-222fe2d65634

[13] https://www.voanews.com/a/covid-19-pandemic_thailand-considers-cap-vaccine-exports-covid-cases-surge/6208775.html.

[14] https://globalcommissionforpostpandemicpolicy.org/covid-19-vaccine-production-to-september-30th-2021/

[15] http://www.insage.com.my/Upload/MediaNews/PHARMA/PHARMA-TheSunDaily-13012021.pdf

[16] https://www.biopharma-reporter.com/Article/2021/08/02/Arcturus-Therapeutics-lines-up-clinical-trials-for-next-generation-mRNA-vaccine

[17] https://newsdirect.com/news/vingroup-collaborates-with-arcturus-therapeutics-to-establish-a-manufacturing-facility-in-vietnam-for-arcturus-mrna-covid-19-vaccine-866699795?category=Healthcare

[18] https://asia.nikkei.com/Spotlight/Coronavirus/COVID-vaccines/Vietnam-s-homemade-vaccines-struggle-to-debut-as-COVID-rages2

[19] Indonesia seeks to launch home-grown Covid-19 vaccine in third quarter | The Star

[20] https://en.tempo.co/read/1441394/questioning-nusantara-vaccine

[21] https://www.newswise.com/coronavirus/chula-expects-the-chulacov19-mrna-vaccine-and-chula-baiya-protein-subunit-vaccine-to-be-ready-in-2022/?article_id=761704

[22] https://www.newswise.com/coronavirus/chula-expects-the-chulacov19-mrna-vaccine-and-chula-baiya-protein-subunit-vaccine-to-be-ready-in-2022/?article_id=761704

[23] https://www.oecd.org/coronavirus/policy-responses/using-trade-to-fight-covid-19-manufacturing-and-distributing-vaccines-dc0d37fc/

[24] Could a patent-free vaccine offer a COVID solution that stands up against Alpha, Delta, Omicron, and future variants? – ABC News

[25] /articles-commentaries/state-of-southeast-asia-survey/the-state-of-southeast-asia-2022-survey-report/

[26] Got a Covid booster? You probably won’t need another for a long time. – TODAY (todayonline.com)

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Editors: William Choong, Lee Poh Onn, Lee Sue-Ann, and Ng Kah Meng Comments are welcome and may be sent to the author(s).

“Cyber Troops, Online Manipulation of Public Opinion and Co-optation of Indonesia’s Cybersphere” by Yatun Sastramidjaja and Wijayanto

2022/28 “Myanmar’s Quest for a Federal and Democratic Future: Considerations, Constraints and Compromises” by Su Mon Thazin Aung

This general view shows the Shwedagon Pagoda in Yangon taken on 1 February 2022. STR / AFP.

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

Political stakeholders tend to view the National Unity Consultative Council (NUCC) as key towards achieving a parallel governance system in the medium term, and as part of a solid foundation for a long-term federal democratic solution to Myanmar’s problems.

The strong commitment shown by the NUCC stakeholders has allowed for compromises and incremental and workable solutions and for it to function as a unifying force to challenge the military.

In principle, a qualitative and quantitative content analysis of Federal Democratic Charter I and II show that the NUCC has been able to reach a consensus in support of ethnic minorities’ struggle for equality and over identity issues.

However, the sequencing problem in the NUCC stakeholder dialogue including the formation of NUG before the completion of FDC Part II, and the lack of clarity on the check-and-balance function of the NUCC, worry some stakeholders where the CRPH’s and NUG’s priorities are concerned.

Going forward, stakeholders’ continuous strong commitment in the fight against the military, in building a solid foundation for a federal and democratic union, and in making incremental compromises would make political coalition long-lasting.

* Su Mon Thazin Aung is Associate Fellow with the Myanmar Studies Programme at the ISEAS – Yusof Ishak Institute. She also works as Director of Capacity-Building at the Institute for Strategy and Policy- Myanmar, an independent, non-partisan and non-governmental think tank in Myanmar.

ISEAS Perspective 2022/28, 18 March 2022

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INTRODUCTION

A week before the one-year mark of the 1 February 2021 military coup in Myanmar, the National Unity Consultative Council (NUCC) organized an online “People’s Assembly”. The NUCC is a political alliance of pro-democracy forces and ethnic armed organizations serving as a decision-making body in the parallel governance system. Joined by nearly 400 representatives from different political groups, the assembly ratified the Federal Democracy Charter (FDC), reaffirmed the formation of the interim National Unity Government (NUG), and rejected military rule in Myanmar. This assembly thus ushered in a new era of unchallenged political legitimacy for the NUCC and NUG and accepted federal democracy as a foundational principle for the country’s future.

Myanmar’s real struggle, however, is not what international media commonly portrays as the story of fighting between the military and anti-military forces. The conflicts are more than that, and are instead reflective not merely of state-society democratic contention but also of nation-building failure. In one of the world’s most ethnically diverse countries since its independence, minority groups in Myanmar have since its independence in 1948 suffered from suppression of their participation in (1) the political process (and even large-scale disenfranchisement in the 2020 elections), (2) the distribution of resources and economic goods, and (3) their social, cultural, and religious rights under Bamar majoritarian rule. The Bamar-dominated autocratic state and nation-building failure are persistent reasons for ethnic groups to take up arms against the central government and seek greater autonomy.[1] Therefore, viewing the emergence of the NUCC as a mere attempt to topple the junta falls short of appreciating the underlying cause of Myanmar’s crisis. Moreover, this snapshot view discounts the struggles and challenges that have been occurring within the NUCC in its effort to create a federal and democratic future. The road to the federal democratic vision of NUCC is not without its challenges. While most of the political forces within the NUCC share similar sentiments about the country’s federal and democratic values and goals, they face a number of serious challenges. Nonetheless, stakeholders have demonstrated their strong commitment to fight against the military through their incremental solutions to resolve such constraints and avoid the potential pitfalls from practical constraints.

THE EMERGENCE OF A MULTI-ETHNIC PARALLEL GOVERNANCE SYSTEM

The origin of NUCC can be traced to the days following the 2021 military coup. Representatives who had won seats in the November 2020 election formed the Committee Representing Pyidaungsu Hluttaw (CRPH) on 5 February 2021 to serve as an elected legislative body.[2] It then quickly established an interim government with four acting ministers [3] and an acting vice-president.[4] The CRPH then abolished the military-drafted 2008 Constitution and published the first part of the Federal Democratic Charter (FDC) on 31 March 2021.[5] This part of the FDC spells out shared values and principles, the formation of the interim NUG, and the establishment of the NUCC to coordinate different political forces and to work with the NUG. As declared in FDC I, the NUG was formed on 16 April 2021 with one vice president, one prime minister and 11 cabinet ministers.[6]

Though formed in early March 2021, the NUCC was officially launched only in November 2021.[7] FDC I indicates that NUCC members include CRPH representatives who are overwhelmingly from the NLD, ethnic armed organizations (EAOs), civil society organizations and groups affiliated with the Civil Disobedience Movement[8] and ethnic resistance organizations, and ethnic political parties—many of which had had troublesome relations with the NLD while the latter was in power. NUCC members went through different rounds of discussions over the contents of FDC II, which serve as the basis for the formation of the Interim NUG, and lays out the political road map outlined in FDC I. The People’s Assembly in January 2021 ratified FDC I and II, and formalized the NUCC as a multi-ethnic and pro-democratic alliance to govern the country’s political transition, while recognizing the NUG as the interim government.

In Myanmar’s history of resistance, the alliance of EAOs and pro-democratic forces is not unusual. The Democratic Alliance of Burma (DAB)[9] and the National Council Union of Burma (NCUB)[10] are examples of such struggles against the military in the past. However, the multi-ethnic and pro-democracy forces alliance in the NUCC are significantly different. Support for ethnic minorities’ struggle for equality and identity issues, as well as the Bamar majority’s sensitivity to minority concerns are presently unprecedentedly high. The following section explains these issues as setting the federal democratic principles and discusses how the NUCC has managed to pull together diverse interests and to move forward despite practical constraints.

PRINCIPLE CONSIDERATIONS: FEDERAL AND DEMOCRATIC FUNDAMENTALS

This section of the paper employs content analysis to identify the outcomes of the NUCC’s discussions. Its primary focus is to identify the extent to which fundamentals of federal and democratic principles are reflected in FDC I and II against the backdrop of the military-drafted 2008 Constitution, and provides a better understanding of how NUCC’s stakeholders perceive federal and democratic principles against the military’s old textbook, the 2008 Constitution.

The analysis uses words and phrases as units of study. The quantitative content analysis first counts specific words in FDC I and II. It also examines these words in phrases, since understanding the significance of these words depends on their specific contexts. It particularly identifies words and phrases that fall under five categories of federal principles: (1) Federal and Democratic Visions, reflecting federal and democratic values; (2) Identity, Diversity and Inclusiveness Issues, or the degree of openness to and acceptance of the unique characters and identities of ethnic groups, diversity in religion, culture and language; (3) Shared Rule/ Self Rule, indicating shared rule and a high degree of autonomy for regional governments; (4) Separation of Powers, in which power is distributed among three branches of government to maintain checks and balances; and (5) Conflict Resolution, which focuses on the means to topple the military dictatorship while building a federal democratic union as the ultimate goal. These categories help interpret the NUCC’s application of federal principles in its discussions in order to produce FDC I and II. They also highlight the degree of difference these documents attempt to make in comparison with the 2008 Constitution.

Table 1. Words and Phrases in the Federal Democracy Charter

The content analysis was performed on the Burmese text of the original documents since official English translations of FDC I and II are yet to be produced.

A quantitative content analysis of the documents reveals that the NUCC’s discussions, though contentious and heated, produced meaningful and fundamental sets of federal and democratic principles albeit that some elements reflected features of the 2008 Constitution. “Federal” is the most used term among those studied in both documents, 77 times in FDC I and 63 times in FDC II respectively. The second most frequent word is “democracy/democratic”, used 46 and 47 times in FDC I and II, respectively. Third most used word is “right(s)”, appearing 44 and 4 times in the respective documents. The words “Charter” and “NUCC” are the fourth and fifth words of highest use, appearing 50 and 46 times. In terms of individual documents, the word “rights” has the second-highest number of uses, 54 times, in Charter I; “NUCC” appears 46 times in FDC 2. The words, “self-determination” and “equality” appear 10 and 9 times in FDC I, but are mentioned only three times each in FDC II. The phrase, “eradicating military dictatorship” appears 8 and 13 times in FDC I and II, respectively. These are significant departures from the 2008 Constitution. Although that document used the word “democratic/democracy” 8 times in the entire document, there is nothing in its text that is fundamental to federal and democratic principles, as expressed through terms such as “federal”, “human rights”, “democratic rights”, “self-determination”, “minority”, or identity”.

The qualitative content analysis also offers a similar perspective to the quantitative content analysis. FDC I offers fundamentals of federal and democratic principles with the objectives of establishing a federal and democratic nation. It aims to implement four main processes: eradicate all kinds of dictatorship including military rule; abolish the 2008 Constitution; build a federal and democratic union; and call for the emergence of a civilian government. Part I differentiates itself from the 2008 Constitution by emphasizing its commitments to federalism in three components. It includes (1) the role of the state constitution in reflecting the shared rules/ shared sovereign aspects in federal principles, (2) the role of inter-governmental committees to settle disputes between states and between the federal government and the states, and (3) the relatively higher de jure power of state leaders, placed above union ministers in the official protocol.

FDC II also demonstrates considerable commitment to federal and democratic principles, highlighting the role of the NUCC and the People’s Assembly. It acknowledges the NUCC, composed of different political groups, as the body to provide policy leadership, and to oversee and coordinate different political groups in the period following the abolition of the 2008 Constitution. Where check-and-balance mechanisms are concerned, the NUCC is therefore accountable to the People’s Assembly. However, FDC II includes the role of a powerful state counsellor in the interim administration. The National League for Democracy (NLD) government first created this position to bypass the provision in the 2008 Constitution barring Daw Aung San Suu Kyi from becoming president of the country. Overall analysis of FDC I and II points to civilian authority over the military under a parliamentary system led by a prime minister. States are to enjoy significant powers and resources, shared with the union government.

PRACTICAL CONSTRAINTS: SEQUENCING PRIORITIES AND THE NATURE OF LEGITIMACY

Despite agreement on the fundamental federal and democratic values, there are different perceptions of how these values would translate into actual implementation plans. This section of the paper analyses two practical constraints faced in stakeholder dialogues within the NUCC.

Being a group with diverse stakeholders, the different sequencing priorities and different understandings of legitimacy in particular have slowed down the NUCC’s political development. As much as both parts of the FDC have become the backbone of the dialogue, they have also become the source of increasing disagreements. The rushed formation of the NUG before the completion of FDC II and the lack of clarity on the check-and-balance role of the NUCC caused concern in some stakeholders about the NLD-majority CRPH’s and NUG’s priorities for the NUCC.

In addition, some participants in the NUCC perceive legitimacy to be drawn from the landslide electoral victories gained by pro-democratic forces. These forces include representatives from the CRPH, the NUG, and the NLD and its supporters. At the same time, the long struggles for self-determination carried out by the ethnic resistance forces and ethnic political parties are considered by them to have won for them significant legitimacy from the ethnic communities they represent, as Finnigan (2019) once mentioned.[11] Other stakeholders, such as some leaders from civil society organizations and activist networks, who witnessed the conflicts between Bamar majority and ethnic minorities in the past decades tend to support such views.

Against this background, some stakeholders suggest that electoral representation be considered differently from political legitimacy, as some ethnic nationalities still support ethnic groups/leaders in their areas regardless of electoral representation. Likewise, there exists a strong view among NUCC stakeholders that the CRPH is made up of elected and legitimate representatives and should not be controlled by the NUCC.[12] These diverse perceptions of the nature of legitimacy complicate the discussion on the roles of the NUCC, the NLD-dominated CRPH and the NUG. Some view the NUCC dialogue process as being dominated by NLD members and their supporters rather than being an all-inclusive political dialogue and decision-making platform. These sequencing problems and different perceptions about legitimacy led to the withdrawal of some stakeholders from participation in the NUCC dialogue in October 2021. Although members have shared understandings of federal and democratic values, these setbacks became practical constraints hindering the NUCC dialogues from moving forward and putting these values into action for the interim governance arrangement.

SEEKING COMMON GROUND AND MAKING COMPROMISES

Despite hurdles, the NUCC has proven to be one of the significant achievements in the recent history of political alliances in Myanmar. Given the prolonged struggles against the military, failure by an emerging political platform such as the NUCC would cost the country its potential future political development. It is therefore a common understanding that preventing the NUCC from failing is critical.[13] In order to avoid the potential pitfalls arising from practical constraints, key stakeholders have demonstrated strong commitment to fight against the military through their incremental solutions. They have therefore reconsidered their approaches and revised their steps. In order to settle the issue of NLD overrepresentation in the NUCC, it has broadened its membership to include more political forces from diverse backgrounds[14] and limited the level of participation of the NUG in NUCC dialogues. It also seeks the role of providing policy guidance to the NUG as an attempt to solve the check-and-balance issue. These reforms within the NUCC have led to a gradual thaw in relations among its members.

CONCLUSION

Myanmar’s unpleasant history of incomplete nation- and state-building means that fighting the military and designing a federal and democratic system for Myanmar require tremendous efforts from all parties concerned. It is also a long-term undertaking. To be sure, just a year after the military coup, it is encouraging that shared values and visions have been established in principle by key stakeholders who enjoy political legitimacy and electoral representation within the NUCC. The newly released FDC I and II ratified by the NUCC reflect the commitment of stakeholders to federal and democratic principles, including acknowledging identity issues, shared rule, shared sovereign arrangements, separation of powers and the construction of a federal-based conflict management mechanism.

Nonetheless, it is at times worrisome to see that practical constraints often arise when it comes to implementing this federal and democratic vision within an interim governance arrangement. Indeed, building unity among stakeholders who share diverse interests and grievances is no easy task. The NUCC is currently drafting an interim constitution based on the FDC I and II. Stakeholders’ continuous strong commitment in the fight against the military in the immediate and mid-term and in building a solid foundation for a federal and democratic nation in the long term, and in making incremental compromises, would make this political coalition long-lasting.

ENDNOTES

[1] Bertil Lintner (1999). Burma in Revolt: Opium And Insurgency Since 1948, Routledge, pg. 210.

[2] As the NLD was the winning party, gaining 86% of civilian seats in both Pyithu Hluttaw and Amyotha Hluttaw, it representatives naturally holds the largest numbers in the CRPH. Likewise, three out of four ministers and an acting vice president of the interim government are NLD members.

[3] The Irrawaddy. (2 March 2021).Defying Military Regime, Myanmar’s CRPH Names Four Acting Ministers”, URL https://www.irrawaddy.com/news/defying-military-regime-myanmars-crph-names-four-acting-ministers.html.

[4] Reuters (13 March 2021). Vice-president of Myanmar civilian government vows resistance to junta rule. URL https://www.reuters.com/article/us-myanmar-politics-crph-idUSKBN2B50I0

[5] FDC 1 was drafted with reference to interim constitutional documents drafted in 1990 by NLD lawmakers and ethnic armed forces. FDC 2 was drafted in 2021 and ratified by the People’s Assembly in January 2022.

[6] Myanmar Now (16 April 2021). CRPH announces lineup of interim ‘national unity government’. URL https://www.myanmar-now.org/en/news/crph-announces-lineup-of-interim-national-unity-government

[7] Moe Thuzar & Htet Myet Min Tun (28 January 2022). “Myanmar’s National Unity Government: A Radical Arrangement to Counteract the Coup”. ISEAS Perspective 2022/8, URL /articles-commentaries/iseas-perspective/2022-8-myanmars-national-unity-government-a-radical-arrangement-to-counteract-the-coup-by-moe-thuzar-and-htet-myet-min-tun/

[8] CDM refers to a group of people who walked off their jobs to join the anti-junta movement.

[9] DAB is a multi-ethnic political alliance formed in border areas of the country in November 1988. It consists of most of the earlier alliance of EAOs, together with pro-democracy forces that took up arms against the military. This was one of the first alliances in which ethnic armed groups worked together with pro-democracy forces against military rule. Seekins, Donald M. Historical Dictionary of Burma (Myanmar). Rowman & Littlefield, 2017.

[10] NCUB is a group comprised of National Democratic Front (formed in 1976), DAB (1988), National League for Democracy Liberated Area (NLD-LA) (1991), and National Coalition Government of the Union of Burma -NCGUB (1996). Thawnghmung, Ardeth Maung. “The Karen Revolution in Burma: Diverse Voices.” In Uncertain Ends, Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, Singapore (2008).

[11] Finnigan, Christopher, 2019.Long Read: The politics of legitimacy in the Myanmar Peace Process, LSE South Asia Centre, URL: https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/southasia/2019/01/18/long-read-the-politics-of-legitimacy-in-the-myanmar-peace-process/

[12] Aye Chan, & Ford, B. (2021). A New Myanmar Forum Aims to Unite Democratic Forces. The USIP. URL https://www.usip.org/publications/2021/11/new-myanmar-forum-aims-unite-democratic-forces.

[13] Online Interviews with three individual members involved in NUCC stakeholder dialogue in different capacities (15-29 Janurary 2022).

[14] Nyan Hlaing Linn, (21, November, 2021). NUCC outlines goals as it seeks to widen membership, Myanmar Now, URL https://www.myanmar-now.org/en/news/nucc-outlines-goals-as-it-seeks-to-widen-membership

2022/27 “Thai PM Must Act Sooner To Defend His Fragile Premiership” by Termsak Chalermpalanupap

Thailand’s Prime Minister Prayut Chan-O-Cha gestures as he attends a groundbreaking ceremony for a monument of Thailand’s late king Bhumibol Adulyadej at a memorial park in Bangkok on 5 December 2021. Picture: Jack TAYLOR, AFP.

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

Thai Prime Minister General Prayut Chan-ocha has until the third week of May to decide how to defend his fragile premiership.

Once the parliament re-opens on 22 May, the opposition plans to submit a no-confidence motion to try once again to oust General Prayut.

The ruling coalition shoring up General Prayut’s premiership is falling apart, with each government party trying to score political points in anticipation of an early general election.

If General Prayut wishes only to complete his four-year term until March 2023, he can strengthen that possibility by reshuffling the cabinet in the near future to pacify and shore up the ruling coalition.

But if he entertains thoughts of staying in power for another term after the next general election, he will have to do much more—including assuming the leadership of a political party.

General Prayut cannot continue his precarious reliance on his “Big Brother” General Prawit Wongsuwan, leader of the Phalang Pracharat Party. This is partly because Prawit’s influence is waning and because his party, the largest in the governing coalition, is growing weaker.

* Termsak Chalermpalanupap is Visiting Fellow in the Thailand Studies Programme, ISEAS – Yusof Ishak Institute.

ISEAS Perspective 2022/27, 17 March 2022

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INTRODUCTION

General Prayut Chan-ocha’s days as Thailand’s prime minister are clearly numbered. The premier has until the third week of May to decide what to do. Inaction is not a viable option—especially if he hopes to complete his four-year term until March 2023. And if he really wishes to stay in power after the country’s next general election, his options are diminishing and his time is running out.

By 22 May, the Thai parliament will re-open for its 2022-2023 session. At the first opportunity, the opposition plans to submit a motion of no-confidence against General Prayut.[1]

Once this is done, the prime minister cannot avoid a no-confidence debate by dissolving the House and calling an early general election. He could resign instead, but he has persistently ruled that out as an option.

RULING COALITION IN DISARRAY

When the parliament went into recess at the end of February, the 17 parties in the ruling coalition still had a comfortable majority of 257 MPs in the 487-member House of Representatives.[2] The seven parties in the opposition had only 212 MPs. In order to defeat General Prayut in a no-confidence vote, the opposition needs at least 244 MPs.

The Thai Economic Party accounts for 18 seats in the House. It is now under the leadership of Captain Thammanat Prompao, the former secretary-general of the Phalang Pracharat Party (PPP), the leading component of the coalition. Thammanat was expelled from the PPP on 19 January. As de facto leader of the Thai Economic Party, he has maintained that he and his party colleagues will stand for the people’s interest. And he has cautioned that nobody can assume that all of his new party’s MPs will blindly support General Prayut’s premiership.[3]

Captain Thammanat remains a serious threat to the prime minister. He has strong ties to a large number of MPs in the PPP and to the eight micro-parties, each with a single MP, in the ruling coalition. If he wishes to, the flamboyant MP from Phayao can try to instigate government MPs to join him in voting with the opposition to topple General Prayut in the next no-confidence debate, as he did last September. The secret scheme that he undertook at that time fell apart after his plans were leaked and General Prayut responded forcefully to save his premiership. Captain Thammanat, who was also a deputy agriculture minister, was quickly fired from the cabinet.[4]

Since the expulsion of Captain Thammanat and his faction from the PPP, the largest government party has suffered another serious setback in the unexpected defeat of Paiboon Nittitawan, its nominee for the chairmanship of the parliamentary ad hoc committee on amendment of the election law and the political party law. At first, there was a tacit agreement in the ruling coalition that Paiboon, a deputy leader of the PPP and a man well-versed in constitutional law, would be elected to chair the committee.[5]

However, when the committee convened for its first meeting on 1 March, an MP from the Bhumjaithai Party, the second largest in the ruling coalition, unexpectedly nominated Deputy Health Minister Satit Pitutacha, a deputy leader of the Democrat Party, to contest its chairmanship with Paiboon. The Democrats are the third largest party in the ruling coalition. While Satit failed to attend the committee’s meeting because he was at a cabinet meeting, he won the chairmanship with a vote of 22 versus 21. Although the voting was conducted in secret, it is widely believed that several opposition MPs voted for Satit.

Satit is considered a flexible politician, and his Democrat Party is an advocate for the amendment of Thailand’s 2017 Constitution to allow voters to cast separate ballots for constituency candidates and for party lists. In fact, the only one of 13 proposed draft bills on constitutional amendment to be adopted by the parliament last September was proposed by the Democrat Party, with the support of the Bhumjaithai Party and the Chatthai Phattana Party—the fourth largest party in the ruling coalition.

On the other hand, the PPP leadership seems to have second thoughts on restoring the two-ballot voting system. Paiboon was intended to serve as the “fixer”, whom the PPP leadership wanted to put in place to control the ad hoc committee in amending the election law. His mission was to steer the process to prevent Phuea Thai (PT), the largest opposition party, from winning a “landslide victory” in the next general election.[6] That election will see parties being allocated the 100 party-list House seats in proportion to the number of second ballot votes that each party wins. One of the crucial tasks of the ad hoc committee is to propose the formula to be used in the allocation of those seats.[7]

GEARING UP FOR AN EARLY ELECTION

The unexpected defeat of the PPP’s Paiboon can be considered a direct affront to PPP leader General Prawit, a deputy prime minister and the much-respected “Big Brother” of the prime minister. One conclusion is that without Captain Thammanat at his side, General Prawit’s influence is waning. This would explain the fact that the PPP’s three key allies in the ruling coalition dared to upset General Prawit by supporting the Democrat Party’s Satit in edging out Paiboon as the ad hoc committee’s chairman.

These government parties are already gearing up for an early general election. One of the Democrat Party’s key election promises in 2019 was to amend the 2017 Constitution. It therefore had no qualms about nominating Satit to compete with the PPP’s Paiboon. Unlike the latter party, the Democrats do not wish to sabotage amendment of the election law just to thwart a possible political windfall for the PT.

A more serious rift in the ruling coalition involves the Bhumjaithai Party. All of its seven ministers boycotted a cabinet meeting on 8 February to emphasise the party’s opposition to a proposal from Interior Minister General Anupong Paochinda to extend by 30 years the operating concession for the problematic “Green Line” of Bangkok’s mass transit rail service.[8] Consequently, the prime minister postponed further consideration of the proposal.

The Bhumjaithai Party dropped another bombshell on 20 February. A senior MP of the party, Second Deputy House Speaker Supachai Posu, openly threatened the party’s withdrawal from the ruling coalition if the prime minister did not more actively support the party’s draft bill to decriminalise marijuana.[9] The party had campaigned during the 2019 general election to remove marijuana from the coverage of the narcotic control law, and to allow households to grow up to six marijuana plants for medicinal and personal use.

Without support of the second largest government party, which has 64 MPs, the ruling coalition will lose its majority control of the House. Supachai’s threat thus worked like magic. Within two days, General Prayut gave his approval for formal submission to the House of the Bhumjaithai Party’s draft bill as a proposed new law from the cabinet.[10]

Consequently, Bhumjaithai party leader Anutin Charnvirakul quickly offered a climb-down from Supachai’s threat that the party would leave the ruling coalition, explaining that it reflected only a personal opinion offered in the heat of a public speech to the MP’s supporters.[11]

Nevertheless, Anutin offered a cryptic remark, saying that the most formidable threat to General Prayut’s premiership came from “those inside the government” – but not from his Bhumjaithai Party. His party, he said, wants to help General Prayut complete his four-year term.[12]

RESHUFFLING THE CABINET

How much longer can the prime minister rely on support from his “Big Brother”, whose influence seems to be waning, and from the ruling coalition, which seems to be falling apart?

If General Prayut just hopes to host the APEC Economic Leaders’ Meeting, bringing together heads of member governments in Thailand in November and to complete his four-year term ending in March 2023, he can reshuffle his cabinet by offering one or two ministerial posts to Captain Thammanat’s Thai Economic Party. This is a risk-free option for General Prayut to defend his premiership.

Captain Thammanat has dismissed any thought of rejoining the Prayut cabinet himself, but his party-mates, especially incoming party leader General Wich Thephassadin, may welcome the political advantage of belonging to the government side as the next general election approaches.

General Wich was the PPP’s chief strategist before his resignation to join Captain Thammanat’s Thai Economic Party. His close ties to General Prawit convinced the latter that Thai Economic Party will support General Prayut’s premiership.

In that case, the Thai Economic Party, with 18 MPs, deserves to have at least two cabinet posts in return for its support. After all, Chatthai Phattana, with only 12 MPs, has two cabinet posts.[13] Granting posts to the Thai Economic Party will allow General Prayut and his ministers to face the next no-confidence debate without any fear of scheming on the part of Captain Thammanat.

Another advantage to this option is that it will enable the Prayut cabinet to pass the next budget bill in the new parliamentary session without much trouble.

THE EIGHT-YEAR LIMIT

If General Prayut entertains thoughts of continuing his premiership beyond the next general election, he will have to do much more to improve his political standing. And crucially, he needs a favourable ruling from Thailand’s Constitutional Court that he can hold on to his premiership beyond 23 August.

On 24 August 2014, three months after seizing power in a coup, General Prayut became prime minister at the head of a military government. Under Section 158 of the 2017 Constitution drafted under the auspices of that government, no one can serve as Thailand’s premier for more than eight years in total, whether holding the office continuously or not.

Several opposition parties intend to request a Constitutional Court ruling on when General Prayut will have reached the eight-year limit.

Constitutional law experts in Thailand have different opinions on this question. Those who are close to General Prayut believe that the 2017 Constitution has no retroactive effect, and that General Prayut’s premiership under the current constitution started only in June 2019; this means he can serve a second four-year term after the next general election.[14]

TAKING OVER THE PPP

If the Constitutional Court clears General Prayut to move on, he can become a full-fledged politician by taking the leadership of a political party, the PPP, and actively leading it into the next general election. This will require the consent of his “Big Brother” General Prawit.

The 77-year-old incumbent PPP leader is frail and seems to have some health issues. He may welcome passing on the political baton to his beloved younger “brother”, General Prayut.

How successful General Prayut would be in managing MPs and other veteran politicians in the PPP’s different factions remains in doubt. He would not take kindly to being held hostage by self-centred politicians over whom he has little or no control. Moreover, he will have to compete head on with his nemesis Captain Thammanat in wooing veteran politicians whose support he will need to win the next general election.

Since the expulsion of Captain Thammanat, the PPP appears to have grown considerably weaker. Infighting has damaged its reputation. It failed to defend its House seat in the by-election in Bangkok’s Constituency No. 9, covering Laksi and Chatujak districts, on 30 January. And now even the influence of its leader, General Prawit, is waning.

Will General Prayut be able to do better than his “Big Brother” in rebranding and rebuilding the PPP? The thought of dealing with greedy and unruly politicians, which Captain Thammanat once compared to feeding monkeys with bananas, cannot fill General Prayut with enthusiasm. He has, after all, tried to stay away from MPs, including those in government parties.[15]

The PPP is scheduled to hold a party congress in Nakhon Ratchasima on 3 April. All eyes will be on the new leadership line-up. If it includes those who are pro-General Prayut, such as the influential Pirapan Salirathaviphag,[16] the likelihood that General Prayut helms the PPP as party leader will be strong.

GOING FOR A NEW PARTY

If he really wants to try his hand in parliamentary politics, another option for General Prayut is to head a new party of like-minded supporters. One such party, Ruamthai Sangchat (Uniting Thais in Nation Building), has been set up by one of General Prayut’s political aides in the Prime Minister’s Office, Dr Seksakon Atthawong.

With a professed mission to support General Prayut’s premiership, the new party has been recruiting members to join its growing ranks. Two notable new recruits are Porapol Adireksarn and his 80-year-old father Pongpol, who both formerly belonged to the PPP. Pongpol is a famous veteran politician whose father Pol Gen Pramarn Adireksarn was a brother-in-law of the late Prime Minister Chatchai Choonhavan and once led the now-defunct Chat Thai Party. The Adireksarn family is influential in Saraburi, a central province about 100 kms north of Bangkok.

However, Ruamthai Sangchat’s membership drive is facing stiff competition from several other new parties, notably the Thai Economic Party of Captain Thammanat; the Kla (Courage) Party of Korn Chatikavanij, a former finance minister and former deputy leader of the Democrat Party; the Thai Sang Thai (Thais Build Thailand) Party of Sudarat Keyuraphan, a former health minister who was PT’s lead nominee for the premiership in the 2019 general election; and the Sang Anakot Thai (Build the Thai Future) Party of Uttama Saowanayon and Sonthirat Sonthijirawong. Uttama is a former finance minister and a former leader of the PPP; while Sonthirat is a former energy minister and a former secretary-general of the PPP.

These new parties face an uphill struggle to find viable candidates to contest in 400 single-seat constituencies nationwide in the next general election. Moreover, their candidates will run into fierce competition from veteran incumbents from wealthy and well-established parties.

The chances of new parties winning sizeable numbers of House seats in the next general election are not good, especially if they cannot recruit veteran politicians. Will General Prayut take the risk of heading a new party and relying mostly on political greenhorns to combat influential veteran MPs at the polls?

DOING NOTHING?

General Prayut has so far maintained that he will neither reshuffle his cabinet nor call it quits any time soon. However, by doing nothing new or proactive, he remains on the defensive, waiting for his opponents to make their move and then respond. This is not a sustainable strategy. Sooner or later, some of his day-to-day responses will be ineffective, and his premiership will begin to crumble.

Without a political party of his own, General Prayut precariously relies on the goodwill of General Prawit and the PPP, and on the leaders of other government parties, to shore up his premiership and to defend him in the House.

Among those leaders, to date only General Prawit has pledged the PPP’s continuing support for General Prayut remaining in office not only until the end of his four-year term but also after in the next general election.[17]

The other parties in the ruling coalition have remained non-committal. By keeping their options open, they will have more room for manoeuvring after the next general election.

CONCLUSION

The PPP’s weakening has a direct adverse impact on the prime minister’s grip on power. If his ambition is merely to complete his four-year term in March 2023, then he can choose the easy solution of reshuffling the cabinet and offering two ministerial posts to the Thai Economic Party of his nemesis Captain Thammanat.

However, if he chooses to do nothing, then he will face yet another ordeal of a no-confidence debate in the House soon after the parliament reconvenes on 22 May. The position of Thammanat, his party and MPs over whom he has influence in the vote following that debate will be uncertain.

Even if General Prayut survives the no-confidence vote, he will still need to defend and pass the next budget bill. After that, he will in August face the Constitutional Court’s ruling on whether he is approaching the eight-year constitutional limit on holding the premiership.

Before he gets to host APEC leaders in Thailand in November, General Prayut will have to decide on his political future. If he wants to serve a second term after the next general election, he will need a party of his own. He cannot continue to rely on his “Big Brother” General Prawit and the weakened PPP much longer.

ENDNOTES

[1] This will be the fourth time that General Prayut faces grilling by the opposition in a no-confidence debate. He survived three earlier such ordeals during 31 August–3 September 2021 by winning with 264 votes versus 208 votes; 16-19 February 2021 by winning with 272 votes versus 206 votes; and 24-27 February 2020 by winning with 272 votes versus 49 votes.

[2] The House of Representatives originally had 500 MPs. But 13 MPs were subsequently disqualified from House membership, and their vacancies remain unfilled. The vacancies include those due to the disqualification of 11 MPs on the executive committee of the Future Forward Party, including party leader Thanathorn Juangroongruerngkit, as a result of the dissolution of their party in February 2020.

[3] “‘ธรรมนัส’ เย้ย 260 เสียงหนุน ‘บิ๊กตู่’ ฝันไปหรือเปล่า ลั่นไม่มีเศรษฐกิจไทยอยู่ในนั้นแน่” [“Thammanat” questions whether it is a dream that there are 260 votes in support of “Big Tu”, he insists that Thai Economic Party MPs are not part of that number], Thai Post, 1 March 2022 (www.thaipost.net/politics-news/95049, accessed 3 March 2022). “Big Tu” is the nickname of General Prayut used in the Thai media.

[4] See the author’s “Thai PM Remains Vulnerable Without a Party of His Own”, ISEAS Perspective 2021/127, 28 September 2021 (www. /wp-content/uploads/2021/09/ISEAS_Perspective_2021_127.pdf).

[5] The 49-member ad hoc committee consists of 14 MPs from government parties, 13 MPs from opposition parties, 14 senators, and 8 cabinet members. Selection of its chairman is done through a secret ballot.

[6] The Thai parliament already agreed in last September to increase the number of electoral constituencies from 350 to 400, and to reduce the number of party-list House seats from 150 to 100. In addition, it agreed to revert to using the two-ballot voting system in which each voter casts one ballot to choose a constituency candidate and another to choose a political party. The second ballot vote will go towards determining how many of the 100 party-list House seats a party shall have. The parliamentary ad hoc committee will propose a formula for the allocation of party-list House seats.

[7] Under the existing “mixed member proportional system”, the total number of votes that all constituency candidates of a party receive determines how many MPs the party “deserves” to have in the House of Representatives. In the March 2019 general election, the Phuea Thai Party’s candidates received about 7.881 million votes, or about 22.16 per cent of the total. With about 22 per cent of the votes, the PT “deserved” to have 111 MPs in the 500-member House. But, since the PT’s candidates had won in 136 constituencies, the party did not get any share of the 150 party-list House seats on top of its 136 elected House seats. If the next general election uses the two-ballot system, then the PT stands to gain the lion’s share of the party-list House seats – if the allocation is based on simple proportion, without taking into account how many MPs a party “deserves” to have.

[8] “ส.ส. ภูมิใจไทยหนุน 7 รมต. ของพรรคลาประชุม ครม. ค้านขยายสัมปทานรถไฟฟ้าสีเขียว รับไม่ได้ค่าโดยสารมหาโหด” [Bhumjaithai MPs support the party’s seven ministers in not attending a cabinet meeting to show opposition to any extension of the operating concession of the MRT Green Line, cannot accept cruel fare], Manager Online, 8 February 2022 (www.mgronline.com/politics/detail/9650000012861, accessed 5 March 2022).

[9] “ฟังชัดๆ ‘สหายแสง’ ประกาศภูมิใจไทยพร้อมถอนตัวออกจากการร่วมรัฐบาล…” [Listen clearly to “Comrade Saeng” declare: Bhumjaithai is ready to withdraw from the ruling coalition …]. Youtube, 20 February 2022, (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LTp3hniXsgY). “Comrade Saeng” was the code name of Supachai Posu, a senior MP of the Bhumjaithai Party from Nakhon Phanom, when he was a communist activist in the 1970s.

[10] “‘บิ๊กตู่’ เซ็นลงนามร่าง พ.ร.บ. กัญชา กัญชง ที่ ‘อนุทิน’ กับคณะ เสนอแล้ว” [“Big Tu” has already signed the draft bill on marijuana and hemp proposed by “Anutin” and his group], Thai Rat Online, 22 February 2022 (www.thairath.co.th/news/politic/2322715, accessed 5 March 2022). Anutin Charnvirakul is leader of the Bhumjaithai Party as well as deputy prime minister and minister of health.

[11] “อย่าคิดมาก! อนุทิน ลั่นท่าทีร่วมรัฐบาล ให้ฟังหัวหน้าพรรค … ” [Don’t think too much! Anutin says just listen to party leader on its stance in the ruling coalition …], Khaosod Online, 22 February 2022 ( www.khaosod.co.th/politics/news_6902144, accessed 5 March 2022).

[12] “‘อนุทิน’ ให้ข้อคิด คนทำร้ายรัฐบาลที่น่ากลัวที่สุด ก็คือ ‘คนในรัฐบาล’”[ “Anutin” offers his view that the ones who can hurt the government the most are “those inside the government”], Thai Post, 6 March 2022 (www.thaipost.net/hi-light/98450, accessed 6 March 2022).

[13] The two cabinet posts held by the Chatthai Phattana Party are those of minister of natural resources (Varawut Silapa-archa) and deputy minister of agriculture (Praphat Phothasoothon). The number of Thai cabinet members is limited to 36, including the prime minister. At present two seats are vacant following the dismissals last September of Captain Thammanat from the post of deputy minister of agriculture and Dr Narumon Pinyosinwat from the post of deputy labour minister.

[14] See author’s article “How Much Longer can Thailand’s Prime Minister Rule Before Reaching the Eight-Year Limit”, ISEAS Perspective 2021/139, 27 October 2021 (/articles-commentaries/iseas-perspective/2021-139, accessed 5 March 2022).

[15] One rare exception happened on 2 September 2021 in the parliament building, where General Prayut received a number of government MPs in person to accept their pledges of support before the vote in the no-confidence debate.

[16] Pirapan is officially an advisor to the prime minister. But he has joined the PPP and been given the titular post of an advisor to the party leader. One of his close friends is former Army chief General Apirat Kongsompong, who is now a deputy director of the Crown Property Bureau. During the Abhisit Vejjajiva premiership of 2011-2014, Pirapan—then a senior Democrat MP—served as justice minister.

[17] In the 2019 general election, the PPP nominated General Prayut for the premiership. Each party can nominate up to three individuals for the post, but each individual can be nominated by only one party.