Media

2019/9, 28 January 2019

Malaysia joined the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP) in the third round of negotiations in October 2010 and signed the agreement in February 2016 with 11 other founding members. The exit of the US from the TPP-12 is a big loss for Malaysia as it is the main source for Malaysia’s potential export gains in terms of market access since there is no bilateral agreement between the two countries. The new Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP) (or TPP-11) that replaced the TPP-12 is therefore considerably less attractive to Malaysia. Nevertheless, Malaysia did become a signatory to the CPTPP on 8 March 2018 in Santiago due to the changes made in the new agreement while the administration at that point in time was also keen to continue engagement with the other TPP-11 countries. While the negotiated content of the original agreement is basically maintained, 20 articles of the TPP-12 have been temporarily postponed, including the strong commitments on intellectual property that the US had raised before. Specifically, 11 of the 20 articles are on intellectual property. For the dispute solution mechanism between governments and investors (ISDS), the CPTPP has narrowed the mechanisms available for foreign investors to sue the host member state.

2019/8, 25 January 2019

The Communist Party of Vietnam (CPV), into the second half of its 12th Congress term, has started to plan a new leadership for its next term from 2021-26. Since the three-day-long Ninth Plenum in early December 2018, the Politburo has held a few meetings to review a shortlist of 205 potential candidates for the 13th Congress Central Committee to obtain an early sensing of which members of the current Politburo could be named as potential forerunners for the top four positions – General Secretary, Chairperson of National Assembly, President and Prime Minister.

2019/7, 25 January 2019

Buddhist monks are known as world renouncers. In Thailand, the ideal monk has nothing to do with worldly matters, including impure activities like the lust for power or with materialistic concerns like politics. But throughout the past two decades, Thai monks are getting more involved in national politics and in the politics of Buddhism itself. The Thai public usually frowns upon clerics who interfere in such matters. However, political monks enjoy an increasing number of supporters.

The Thai constitution denies to monks the right to vote and thus strips them of the other political rights enjoyed by Thai citizens in general. The Thai state has decided to deny monks these rights with the ideological goal of protecting the purity of Buddhism – a pillar of the national identity and of the society’s moral consciousness. Some monks however have discovered a backdoor through which to play a role in politics.