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Thank you for subscribing to the Southeast Asia Insider, showcasing the best of Asia Times’ latest reporting, commentary and analysis from across Southeast Asia.
This week’s edition includes:
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Is China a winner
in Timor-Leste’s polls?
Jose Ramos-Horta scored a decisive victory in Timor-Leste’s presidential election this week, returning the independence leader to office for the second time to pursue ambitious plans to rescue the country's ailing economy. Some believe he is bound to turn to China for help in achieving that aim, particularly by seeking much-needed foreign investment.
Observers believe Southeast Asia's youngest nation could become more vulnerable to Western pressure if the country tilts toward Beijing. But Ramos-Horta has brushed off questions of a pro-China turn and said his "absolute priority" would be bringing Timor-Leste into the 10-member Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN).
Asia Times’ correspondent David Hutt, who is a research fellow at the Central European Institute of Asian Studies (CEIAS), reported on this week’s elections in Timor-Leste and expectations Beijing is poised to make big new oil and gas-related investments in the country. Hutt shared his views on the situation in this week’s Q&A.
What happened at the ballot?
The Nobel prize winner José Ramos-Horta won a landslide in the second-round runoff: he took 62% of the vote compared to 37% for the incumbent, Francisco “Lu-Olo” Guterres. Ramos-Horta is a former president and prime minister, and was one of the most celebrated independence leaders of the country. Although the president doesn’t have much formal power, his election could alter politics, which has been in a state of flux since 2018. He has said he could try to dissolve parliament; his backers, the political heavyweight Xanana Gusmao and his National Congress for Timorese Reconstruction (CNRT) party, feel aggrieved that the outgoing president didn’t accept their ministerial nominations. And the CNRT fell out of government in 2020 after splitting from the coalition in an attempted power grab.
Seen through an optimistic lens, there is now more balance in politics. Fretilin, the main rival to the CNRT, is in the current coalition government and Lu-Olo, the outgoing president, is a Fretilin man, so now there should be some balance between the political factions. If Ramos-Horta can dissolve parliament and call for new legislative elections, which seems unlikely, there’s no guarantee Gusmao and the CNRT will win. Ramos-Horta will be inaugurated on May 20, the 20th anniversary of Timor-Leste’s independence from Indonesia, which has occupied it for 24 years.
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Pro-independence students demonstrate in Dili in May 1999, one day before the United Nations agreed to supervise a vote on the territory's future. Photo: Bangkok Post
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Incidentally, Ramos-Horta’s victory could secure the country’s democratic traditions; things have been a bit messy since 2018 when the electorate returned weak coalitions to parliament but there is now balance between the political groups from parliament to the presidency. Ramos-Horta isn’t about to leap headfirst into a constitutional crisis. Things will get a little heated, but I’ve always argued that Timor-Leste’s democracy has benefited from the lack of consensus since 2018; there’s now greater diversity in the parties and ideologies, and years of different coalition governments have forced them to compromise.
What about China? Does it benefit from Ramos-Horta’s victory?
Claims that Beijing is gaining influence in Dili have cropped up for years. On the one hand, there’s little to actually show it’s the case. Bilateral trade barely exists. China has constructed some political buildings in Dili but Timor-Leste has taken almost no loans from Beijing, nor are Chinese businesses so visible in the country. Even after major spats with Australia over their oil and gas reserves, which included Australia spying on Timorese officials, the country’s political elites still look to Australia or Japan or Western democracies for support. Ramos-Horta, as with almost all other political elites, is cordial with China. But he’s a committed internationalist, has spoken out against human rights violations committed by other countries, and doesn’t appear to have any inclination to upend Timor-Leste’s natural foreign policy.
That said, what could change the situation is if his presidential victory opens the door for the return of Gusmao and the CNRT. Where China could play a major role in Timorese politics is over the now seemingly stalled Tasi Mane project, a corridor of petroleum infrastructure along the southwest coast of this country that would process the LNG at an on-shore site. The current prime minister, Taur Matan Ruak, has put this into the long grass, dismissing Gusmao’s associates from key offices in the petroleum sector. Gusmao has long favored processing the extracted gas at an on-site facility, which almost all other stakeholders reckon is senseless. Timor-Leste cannot really afford to build it by itself; that would cost about half of what’s left in its already dwindling sovereign wealth fund. Neither does it have the expertise to build it itself.
So if Gusmao and the CNRT were to get back into office, perhaps if Ramos-Horta is able to call new elections, then possibly Gusmao would push for on-shore processing to be finally accepted. It’s hard to see any investor other than China willing to pony up the money and expertise to assist in that project. All of this is unlikely, though. Gusmao didn’t get his way with on-shore processing even when his party was in government. Now there’s even more opposition to it. And the Covid-19 pandemic means that the money left in the wealth fund is even more precious; fewer political elites will be willing to back a risky megaproject that could empty the state’s coffers and indebt the country to China.
What does it all mean for Timor-Leste’s ambitions to join ASEAN?
Accession to ASEAN membership has been a long, hard road. Most other ASEAN states are supportive, but in the past Singapore was skeptical because of Timor-Leste’s economy; its GDP was just US$2 billion in 2019, compared to $18 billion for Laos, currently the poorest ASEAN state. It has also been said that Timor-Leste’s successful democracy – it was the only Southeast Asian state ranked “free” in Freedom House’s latest democracy indexes – has put off some of the more authoritarian states in the region from supporting its membership bid.
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However, we saw a very controversial decision last year when it abstained at a vote on a nonbinding resolution in the United Nations General Assembly condemning Myanmar’s military junta for its coup. It was believed that Timor-Leste was trying to keep Myanmar on-side with its ASEAN membership bid, as well as potentially with Cambodia, which also abstained and was set to take up the ASEAN chairmanship in 2022. Ramos-Horta, the new president, last year described that decision as a “vote of shame.” My guess is that things may progress a little more this year; Cambodia will want to secure some sort of important progress as chair this year, and that isn't happening with the Myanmar crisis or the South China Sea, so Timor-Leste could be low-hanging fruit for Cambodia. But full accession this year is unlikely.
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Malaysia’s broken refugee policies in the spotlight
Hundreds of Rohingya Muslim refugees held for the past two years at a temporary immigration detention depot in Malaysia’s northern Penang state staged a pre-dawn escape after a riot broke out at their facility on April 20. Some 528 detainees had bent through metal barriers with their bare hands to escape. Six people were killed. Malaysia does not recognize refugees or applications for asylum. Hundreds of thousands of Rohingya fled Myanmar five years ago amid a brutal military crackdown, with many reaching Muslim-majority Malaysia by boat. Rights organizations have questioned the refugees’ extended detention and called for reviews of policies to detain asylum seekers indefinitely.
Poll body rules Marcos did not defraud government
Philippine presidential frontrunner Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos Jr, son of late dictator Ferdinand Marcos, cleared a major legal hurdle in his path to the presidency on April 20. The Commission on Elections (Comelec) dismissed the last of six petitions calling for his disqualification from the May 9 election, ruling that a case calling for Marcos to be barred from the contest based on his failure to file income tax returns lacked merit. “No tax was actually intentionally evaded,” said Comelec’s first division in the ruling. Five other cases seeking to keep Marcos from running were also earlier dismissed by the poll body. These are now under appeal and could be escalated to the Supreme Court.
Singapore to proceed with execution of intellectually disabled man
Nagaenthran K Dharmalingam, a 34-year-old Malaysian man arrested in 2009 for trafficking a small amount of heroin into Singapore, is due to be executed in Singapore on April 27 despite efforts at both the domestic and international level to save him from the gallows. Supporters say Nagaenthran has an IQ of 69 – a level recognized as a disability – and was coerced into committing the crime. His case has rekindled debate within Singapore about the city-state’s use of the death penalty for drug offenses. Malaysia’s king and premier wrote to Singapore authorities asking for leniency on behalf of Nagaenthran. Singapore's top court rejected a last-ditch appeal against his death sentence in late March.
Biden to host ASEAN leaders at White House summit in May
US President Joe Biden is due to host leaders of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) in Washington for a May 12-13 summit. The gathering will commemorate 45 years of relations between the US and ASEAN and is meant to demonstrate America’s commitment to the bloc in line with its Indo-Pacific policy. "It is a top priority for the Biden-Harris administration to serve as a strong, reliable partner in Southeast Asia," White House press secretary Jen Psaki said in a recent statement. The summit was previously to be held March 28-29 but was postponed due to scheduling concerns among some of the bloc’s members.
No holiday amnesty for Myanmar’s political prisoners
Thingyan, Myanmar’s New Year festival, came and went without the release of political detainees. The country typically grants an annual amnesty to thousands of prisoners to mark the holiday, which is usually celebrated with jovial water fights. This year’s festivities were muted as opponents of the military junta’s February 2021 coup called for a boycott of government-supported activities. More than 1,600 prisoners were released, though according to Myanmar’s Prisons Department Spokesman, those freed were mostly drug offenders and petty criminals. More than 13,000 people, many of whom participated in the anti-coup civil disobedience movement, have reportedly been arrested under military rule.
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Marcos way ahead on a no-policy, no-debate campaign
Richard Javad Heydarian | April 22, 2022
Presidential frontrunner Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos Jr’s campaign speeches have been mostly devoid of policy details, with only vague references made to national “unity.” On the campaign trail, the namesake of late dictator Ferdinand Marcos has implied that only widespread fraud could derail his bid to capture the Malacañang presidential palace.
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Russia-Vietnam ties put US in a sanctions dilemma
David Hutt | April 21, 2022
Vietnam could soon be hit by US sanctions over its continuing military relations with Russia as the West seeks new secondary pressure points to punish Moscow for its invasion of Ukraine. Scheduled Russia-Vietnam joint military exercises due later this year could also imperil Hanoi’s improving strategic links with the United States.
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Fog of stats enshrouds Myanmar’s wars
David Scott Mathieson | April 22, 2022
Myanmar’s multiple internecine conflicts are raging, with few if any signs of respite or resolution. Quantifying “old” and “new” dimensions of the conflict is difficult, if not impossible, with any degree of accuracy. But that isn’t deterring some dubious manipulators of data. The Myanmar Institute for Peace and Security’s latest report is a case in point.
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Help for Ukraine but little for Myanmar
Htun Aung Gyaw | April 20, 2022
There are many similarities between the war in Ukraine and the civil conflict in Myanmar. There are urgent humanitarian concerns in both countries, but the grave suffering in one has been greatly overshadowed by the other. On moral grounds, the world and its leaders need to try to find a better solution to the crisis in Myanmar.
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Garuda Shield: Indonesia tilting to US against China
John McBeth | April 20, 2022
While Indonesian foreign policy remains on a neutral track, the country’s military is tilting ever more towards the United States and the West with preparations underway for its biggest-ever combined arms exercise next August that for the first time will skirt the South China Sea and inevitably stoke Beijing’s ire.
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Timor-Leste election opens new door to China
David Hutt | April 20, 2022
Timor-Leste’s relations with China could once again come under the spotlight as former Nobel Peace Prize winner Jose Ramos-Horta looks set to retake the presidency following a second-round vote on Tuesday. Analysts say a new rapprochement with Beijing is likely, followed by new oil and gas-related investments, if Ramos-Horta wins.
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What premier-in-waiting Wong means for Singapore
Nile Bowie | April 20, 2022
Until a few years ago, Singapore’s Finance Minister Lawrence Wong was a relatively little-known civil servant turned politician. But after recently being endorsed as leader of the ruling People’s Action Party’s fourth-generation, or 4G, team, he is on track to becoming the city-state’s next prime minister and a symbol of its meritocracy.
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Myanmar’s de-dollarization looks like financial suicide
Bertil Lintner | April 19, 2022
After a year of political, social and economic self-destruction, Myanmar’s coup-installed junta appears now to be committing financial suicide with a central bank directive requiring all Myanmar citizens to change their foreign currency holdings and transmittances from overseas into local currency kyats at state-licensed banks.
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Burmese Haze: US Policy and Myanmar’s Opening – and Closing
By Erin Murphy
Columbia University Press, April 2022
A play on George Orwell’s famous novel, Burmese Days, Burmese Haze provides a unique – and personal – perspective on the historical events and foreign ties that shaped Myanmar and its relationship with the United States. Former intelligence analyst Erin Murphy tells the story of a remarkable political transition and subsequent collapse, taking the story beyond the headlines to explain how US policy towards Myanmar arrived at where it is today. The book weaves in historical details, analysis, and memories drawn from interviews with senior US officials and Myanmar tycoons, monks, activists and antagonists.
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WHAT WE'RE READING
Corruption is the Worst Enemy of the Vietnamese Army
Fulcrum, April 22, 2022
Russia war on Ukraine threatens Southeast Asia’s economic recovery
East Asia Forum, April 21, 2022
As the focus on Myanmar fades, Ukraine takes the spotlight
9Dashline, April 20, 2022
Indonesians want reassurance about democracy, not a third Joko Widodo term
Channel NewsAsia, April 19, 2022
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