Indonesia’s experiment with decentralization is facing a tough test under President Prabowo Subianto. As Jakarta pulls billions of dollars in regional funding back to the center to finance his signature programs, local governments are left with less money to pay workers, maintain infrastructure and provide basic services.

The consequences are increasingly visible not only in local budgets but also on the streets.

In Banda Aceh on Aug. 15, demonstrators attempting to raise the Bulan Bintang, or Crescent Star, flag at the Baiturrahman Grand Mosque clashed with security forces. The protest came as Aceh marked the 21st anniversary of the peace agreement that ended an armed insurgency against Jakarta. Protesters criticized the government’s response to devastating floods in late 2025 and what they described as the incomplete implementation of the 2005 Helsinki peace accord that ended the fighting.

The same day, in Timika, Central Papua, demonstrators raised security and humanitarian concerns and called for a referendum. Some carried the Morning Star, a symbol associated with the Papuan independence movement. In West Kalimantan, the Borneo Raya flag was raised in Sanggau. Its supporters said it represented cultural identity rather than separatism, while demanding a fairer share of natural-resource revenues and greater control over local wealth.

The three protests have different histories and political demands, but they share a familiar grievance: resources are extracted from the regions, decisions are made in Jakarta and communities feel they receive too little in return.

Shrinking fiscal space

The government’s sweeping budget-efficiency drive has become a major source of frustration. Regional transfers were cut to Rp 693 trillion in the 2026 budget, down Rp 226.9 trillion, or 24.7 percent, from the previous year. The proposed 2027 allocation rises to Rp 735 trillion but remains below the 2025 level.

The savings are needed to finance Prabowo’s populism, including the Free Nutritious Meals program, Red-and-White Village Cooperatives, People’s Schools, Garuda Schools and food-security projects.

For local governments, however, the cuts are not merely an accounting exercise. Syafruddin Karimi, an economist at Andalas University, estimates that about 490 local governments need additional funding to meet payroll and minimum operating costs after the reduction in transfers. The pressure is compounded by about Rp 70 trillion in revenue-sharing funds that remain unpaid to hundreds of regions.

Local governments are consequently forced to choose between competing necessities. Salaries and essential services must be protected, while infrastructure, maintenance and payments to contractors can be delayed or cut. Some governments have turned to higher local taxes and fees to compensate, potentially increasing costs for residents and businesses.

The problem is particularly acute for regions with weak tax bases. Of Indonesia’s 546 autonomous regions, fewer than 10 percent have strong locally generated revenue. Most are heavily dependent on transfers from Jakarta.

That dependence was not accidental. Regional transfers were created as part of Indonesia’s post-Suharto decentralization after 1998 to give local governments the resources to perform responsibilities transferred from the central government and set their own development priorities.

Now, critics say, the system is moving in the opposite direction.

“The regions remain the location of development but lose control over the budget, project design, timing and contractors,” Syafruddin said. “They are left with responsibility for public services without commensurate fiscal authority.”

The distinction matters. The government argues that money has not disappeared from the regions because central government ministries continue to finance regional projects. But spending money in a region is not the same as giving the region control over it. A project designed in Jakarta leaves local governments with little say over what should be built, where it should go, who benefits or when it should be implemented. In effect, local governments become administrators of decisions made elsewhere.

Voices of protest

The move back to centralization, which was the norm under Suharto, has drawn objections from local officials and civil-society groups. Governors have previously confronted the Finance Ministry over the cuts. Two organizations, the Committee for Monitoring the Implementation of Regional Autonomy and the Indonesian Forum for Budget Transparency, have challenged the 2022 law governing fiscal relations between Jakarta and the regions before the Constitutional Court, which has yet to rule on the case.

They argue that changes to the transfer system, including adjustments made to finance central priorities such as the Free Nutritious Meals program, are narrowing the fiscal autonomy guaranteed to local governments by the Constitution.

Constitutional Court Justice Saldi Isra acknowledged the complaints during a hearing this month, saying regions were “crying out” over changes to the transfer system. He warned that annual political calculations in the state budget should not override the fiscal framework established by law.

“If political logic is allowed to defeat systems that have been firmly established,” he said, “the system itself loses its function.”

Prabowo has argued that money is better managed centrally than “left to be corrupted.” The argument reflects a legitimate problem: corruption in regional governments is real and has been pervasive. But centralization is not the same as fighting corruption. Much regional corruption involves bribery and extortion rather than the direct theft of budget funds. A more effective response would be stronger oversight, transparent procurement and targeted sanctions against inefficient or corrupt governments rather than reducing the fiscal autonomy of all regions.

The Institute for Development of Economics and Finance (INDEF) has warned that shrinking regional transfers and the restoration of central authority could weaken decentralization and deepen local governments’ dependence on Jakarta.

The Center of Economic and Law Studies (CELIOS), has raised another concern: shifting regional funds into large central programs could concentrate corruption risks on a much larger scale while making oversight more difficult. This has already occurred with a headline-grabbing corruption case centered on procurement for the free lunch program. CELIOS also estimated that food waste from the free meals program alone could reach Rp 1.2 trillion.

The government, meanwhile, says regional transfers remain essential to maintaining public services and has provided additional revenue-sharing funds to some regions, including disaster-hit Aceh. Finance Minister Purbaya Yudhi Sadewa confirmed that around Rp 20 trillion in additional funding has been disbursed to 490 local governments to help them meet payroll obligations for contractual civil servants. The move came after mounting protests from regional governments over the cuts.

The shrinking of decentralization

Economists argue that decentralization was designed to prevent excessive concentration of political and economic power in Jakarta by giving local governments both the resources and authority to set priorities in education, health care, infrastructure and other public services.

From that perspective, the growing role of the central government in determining how money is spent is difficult to reconcile with meaningful regional autonomy. For example, Prabowo initially put the free lunch program under the education budget, a move that was struck down by the Constitutional Court, which said meals are not legitimate education activities. As Jakarta controls more funding, selects more projects and determines their implementation, local governments risk being responsible for delivering services without having comparable control over resources.

Economists acknowledge that local governments need to strengthen their own revenue collection efforts. But they caution that fiscal independence cannot be built overnight. Regions with weak economies require years of investment, stronger human capital, better institutions and sustained economic development before they can reduce their dependence on central transfers.

They also point to Article 18A of Indonesia’s Constitution, which requires financial relations between Jakarta and the regions, as well as public services and natural-resource management, to be conducted “fairly and harmoniously.” For some experts, the current shift in fiscal authority risks upsetting that balance.

The government may succeed in directing more money toward Prabowo’s national priorities, economists say. But if that comes at the expense of local fiscal space and decision-making power, the consequences could extend beyond delayed projects and unpaid bills. They could erode something harder to restore: public trust.

The appearance of regional identity flags in Aceh, Papua and Kalimantan, they argue, should be understood as a symptom of political frustration when communities feel decisions about their lives are increasingly being made in Jakarta.

The unexpected announcement on August 12 that Natarajan Chandrasekaran will not seek a third five-year term as executive chairman of Tata Sons, India’s biggest conglomerate, marks the climax of bitter family differences and ego clashes that have colored events at the top of the $280 billion group for decades.

Noel Tata, chairman of the Tata Trusts that control the group, has come out the winner, having triggered Chandrasekaran’s decision to leave when his current five-year term ends next February.

With Chandrasekaran going, Noel is gaining the group leadership that he was denied when his elder half-brother, Ratan Tata, retired as Tata Sons chairman in 2012. At the time, he was seen by many in Mumbai and elsewhere as the natural successor.

Noel’s managerial advancement was also restricted by Ratan during the 21 years that he was chairman, allegedly because he doubted Noel’s ability, but basically, observers say, because of their family history.

Ratan Tata’s parents had a difficult divorce. His father later married Simone Dunoyer from Switzerland, and Noel was born. The two boys grew up separately and it seems that Ratan never accepted his stepmother or half-brother. Noel then complicated the family base by marrying Aloo Mistry, the daughter of Pallonji Mistry whose Shapoorji Pallonji group is Tata’s largest minority shareholder with an 18 percent stake (which it now wants to sell).

Helped initially by his mother, Simone, who was regarded as a trailblazer in cosmetics and fashion retailing, Noel proved his ability by turning Tata’s Trent retail business into a success against strong competition, hitting $2 billion in revenues last year. He also developed Tata’s international trading company and had boardroom roles in various companies.

But Ratan is quoted in a recent biography saying, somewhat dismissively, “perhaps, if Noel had had the experience of handling difficult assignments, he could have established his credentials more forcefully… For Noel to compete successfully for the top post he should have greater exposure than he has had… Partly, his not having it has been his own choice.”

Tata is generally revered as India’s most respectable large business, devoted to charitable enterprises and patriotic principles that guide corporate decisions over its 1.1 million employees and 30 operating companies, ranging from salt to software and Jaguar cars, and hotels to aviation and defense,

The image, however, began to unravel after Ratan retired as chairman of Tata Sons in 2012. He remained head of the trusts that have a controlling 66 percent share in the group and, in 2016, at age 78, he staged a boardroom coup that ousted his chosen successor as chairman, 50-year-old Cyrus Mistry (brother of Noel’s wife). Ratan replaced him with Chandrasekaran, who ran the highly profitable Tata Consultancy Services software business, again sidelining Noel. (Cyrus died later in a car crash).

The coup was widely criticized. “The halo that once surrounded the Tata name has gone. The group looks like just one more conglomerate that has lost its way,” wrote Swaminathan S Anklesaria Aiyar, a respected veteran economic affairs columnist, in The Economic Times.

Mistry had not been removed for bad management, though there were criticisms of his style and some of his decisions. He went primarily because he did not show sufficient respect and deference to Ratan. Some of his more brash aides also upset the serenity of Tata’s Bombay House headquarters.

Unlike Mistry, Chandrasekaran managed his relationship with Ratan expertly, but he does not seem to have felt the need to do the same with Noel Tata, probably because, like others, he underestimated Noel’s ability to be tough and exert authority.

Chandrasekaran has had some failures, notably trouble-prone Air India, and there have also been losses on new digital and other ventures with major expansion into AI. But growth has been good with revenues of $185 billion, and many of the problems left by Ratan, such as the Tata Motors’ declining Indian car business, have been turned into successes. That is reflected in a bullish annual report for 2025-26.

Air India’s losses more than doubled to nearly $3 billion in 2025-26 and accounted for some 80 percent of the group companies’ total losses. The airline’s reputation has been hit by a fatal crash last year and by a pilot losing control of an aircraft for four seconds earlier this month. There have been a series of other problems, not least rising fuel costs and restrictions on international flight routes. The airline has just appointed a new chief executive – Tewolde Gebremariam who earlier ran Ethiopian Airlines.

Tata bought Air India from the government in 2022. Ratan, who died in 2024, was still running the trusts and will have had some influence on the decision. Commercially it was a disaster, but it helped the government because there was no other viable buyer, and it was a homecoming for the group that founded the airline in 1932 and lost it to nationalization in 1953.

There were splits among trustees throughout last year about appointments and governance issues. This escalated to the point where Chandrasekaran and Noel went to Delhi last October for a meeting with Amit Shah, the home minister and the prime minister’s troubleshooter, and Nirmala Sitharaman, the finance minister. Chandrasekaran had good links with the government because he had hired S. Jaishankar as a global affairs adviser for a few months in 2018-19 after Jaishankar retired as foreign secretary and before he was appointed foreign minister. But it seems he over-estimated the support that access could yield.

Despite the problems – and tensions over whether Tata Sons should follow a Reserve Bank of India instruction to be floated on the Bombay Stock Exchange – the two main trusts proposed Chandrasekaran for a third term. This however was questioned at a Tata Sons board meeting in February by Noel who was critical about losses. Not a risk-taker, Noel has also raised concern about Chandrasekaran’s $120 billion five-year expansion plan for the group.

The proposal for a third term “was not carried through because one of the Board Members did not support it,” Chandrasekaran said in his resignation statement, referring to Noel without naming him. In the absence of unanimous support, Chandrasekaran said he had, as chairman, deferred the decision. Noel apparently did nothing after that to solve the impasse, so Chandrasekaran made his statement on August 12, avoiding the risk of an embarrassing situation at Tata Sons’ annual general meeting planned for August 18 which was postponed because of separate issues involving one of the trusts.

Noel lacks Ratan’s commanding (though shy) presence, but now has the opportunity to prove that he can preside over the group as head of the trusts. He cannot also be chairman of Tata Sons because Ratan, after he retired from that position, changed the rules so that one person cannot hold both posts.

Ratan having not married, Noel is securing his own family’s role in Tata’s future. He has appointed his 32-year-old son Neville, who has managerial roles in the retail businesses, to the two top trusts. Noel’s two daughters, Leah and Maya, are employed in the group’s hotels and in retail.

First, however, Noel needs to lead the choice of a strong candidate to succeed Chandrasekaran, and then allow the winner freedom to run the group and be its public face.

John Elliot is a veteran observer of India. This is reprinted with permission from his blog, Riding the Elephant.

The Philippines is taking another legal and diplomatic step to assert its maritime rights in the West Philippine Sea, asking a United Nations commission to consider the 2016 South China Sea arbitral award as it reviews Manila’s claim to an extended continental shelf (ECS) off western…

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Aug. 5 marked the seventh anniversary of the demotion of Jammu and Kashmir from a state to two federally governed Union Territories (UTs). Seven years on, India’s decision to unilaterally withdraw special state status remains politically fraught as regional parties, except the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), still oppose the decision as something that politically dispossessed the region.

While the BJP celebrated the day for completing the “constitutional integration” of Jammu and Kashmir with India (the region is also claimed by Pakistan and a small portion of it by China), major regional parties like the National Conference (NC) and People’s Democratic Party (PDP), continue to mourn the loss of special status, which they say snatched away decades of constitutional rights and diluted the special identity of the region.

Omar Abdullah, the Chief Minister of the Union Territory of Jammu and Kashmir and president of the National Conference party, said the “wounds have not yet healed” seven years after Aug. 5, 2019. He said the central government’s promise to restore full statehood remains unfulfilled and his party is committed to reversing a decision that “took away our rights and threatens our identity.”

NC leaders and MPs joined protests in Delhi and Srinagar on Aug. 5, demanding immediate restoration of full statehood. They said that central government assurances after delimitation and elections remain unmet.

The president of the regional PDP, Mehbooba Mufti, called Aug. 5 a “black day.” She said the central government “looted the special status of Jammu and Kashmir” and demanded the restoration of the rescinded Articles 370 and 35A, release of political prisoners and an end to curbs on democratic expression. PDP activists staged candlelight protests on the occasion in Srinagar and other towns.

“Neither Pakistan nor China granted Article 370 and 35A to Jammu and Kashmir but it was the Indian Constitution. However, the BJP used the brute majority to snatch Article 370 from Jammu and Kashmir. We are an alive nation and will keep fighting for it,” Mufti said on Aug.4 while participating in a protest in Srinagar on the eve of the anniversary.

A recent report released by the Forum for Human Rights in Jammu and Kashmir, an informal group of concerned Indian citizens including former judges, senior bureaucrats, military officers, academics, lawyers, and activists, paints a grim picture of the political condition of the region since special status was revoked. The group calls for full statehood to be restored.

The report, Jammu and Kashmir: Seven Years Under Union Rule, was released this month and describes 2025-26 as a year of “contradictory trends” with fewer militant incidents (about 20 vs 35 the previous year) but no corresponding improvement in democratic normalcy or civil liberties.

Deepening accountability gap

The report notes that the current administration has “deepened a governance and accountability gap” as elected representatives, including the ruling NC government, have limited power over key domains. The report highlights the continued use of anti-terror laws, frequent detentions and restrictions on peaceful protest and free expression.

On the overall security situation in Jammu and Kashmir, the report notes that it appears to have improved between August 2025 and July 2026, with reported fatalities in armed conflict falling to 32 in 20 incidents with no civilian deaths, 23 alleged terrorist fatalities and 9 soldiers killed. However, the report points out, “Kashmir-related militancy continues and may once again be targeting significant structures in the rest of India.”

The report concludes that fully restoring statehood is a human rights issue and that linking statehood to the security situation is “dangerous” and can be used indefinitely to justify the suspension of democratic rights.

The report notes that governance remains “stalemated between the concentration of powers in the hands of the Lieutenant-Governor, who is not accountable to the people, and the administration, which is accountable to the people but has little to no powers of governance.”

“The grant of emergency powers over telecommunications to Manoj Sinha [the Lieutenant Governor of the Union Territory of Jammu and Kashmir] further compounds the helplessness of the elected administration,” the report states.

The report is also critical of the region’s economic trajectory. The report found that the regional economy has suffered from “ill-considered interventions” by the Union government that follow a “start‐stop pattern” that disrupts long-term planning in key sectors. The report highlights rising unemployment in the Union Territory, which is about twice the national average. It links economic underperformance to concentrated power in the hands of the Lieutenant Governor and criticizes the absence of stable, accountable institutions that can design and implement coherent economic policy over time.

The Forum has recommended restoring the pre‐2019 federal arrangements, and reviving independent oversight institutions (including a human‐rights commission) that were disbanded or weakened post-2019.

Grievances remain despite elections

In a recently published research paper authored by two Kashmir-based academics, Waseem Ahmad Bhat and Javaid Ahmad Bhat, the authors analyzed the 2024 assembly elections in the context of the post-2019 changes, arguing that while the local polls provided formal procedural representation, they operated firmly within boundaries engineered by the central government.

“Durable political stability and substantive democratic agency in Jammu and Kashmir will remain elusive without genuine restoration of representative autonomy, clear institutional accountability and a federal recognition of regional diversity,” the authors write in the conclusion of the paper, published in the journal Asian Affairs.

A Kashmir-based political analyst and academic told Asia Sentinel that the abrogation of Article 370 fundamentally changed the political and constitutional position of Jammu and Kashmir.

“It reduced the region’s political autonomy and increased the role of the central government through Union institutions and the Lieutenant Governor. The restrictions, detentions, communication shutdowns, and limits on political activity after 2019 created a sense of uncertainty and political alienation among many people,” the analyst said, wishing to remain anonymous.

Overall, he said the 2024 elections were a key sign of renewed political participation, “but not necessarily evidence of full democratic reconciliation or restoration of the political autonomy that existed before 2019.” He said voting does not necessarily mean that political grievances have been resolved.

Burhan Majid, a Kashmiri academic who teaches law at Jamia Hamdard University in New Delhi, told Asia Sentinel that demands for the restoration of statehood, and the continued opposition of regional political parties, show that the 2019 changes have not resolved the deeper political contest over Jammu and Kashmir.

“Even the Supreme Court, in upholding the abrogation in 2023, ordered the government to hold elections and restore statehood, a tacit admission that legality and legitimacy are not the same thing,” he said.

Majid Maqbool is an independent journalist and writer based in Kashmir.

Chinese President Xi Jinping, who faces enemies on many fronts, needs all the friends he can get as he seeks a fourth term. This is why Xi is handing out exceptional honors to two late Chinese leaders, President Jiang Zemin and Prime Minister Zhu Rongji, analysts told Asia Sentinel.

“The fact that Xi has been forced to adopt high-profile functions to honor Zhu and Jiang shows the limits of Xi’s powers,” Willy Lam, a veteran Hong Kong journalist and senior fellow at the Jamestown Foundation, told Asia Sentinel. “It is possible that Xi might merely be giving lip service to Zhu and Jiang to placate still-powerful CCP (Chinese Communist Party) members loyal to Zhu and Jiang.”

Zhu, hailed in state media as “an outstanding leader,” was cremated in Beijing on Aug. 18. The Chinese flag in Tiananmen Square in Beijing was flown at half-mast while tight security sealed off the area.

The tight security likely reflects the Chinese government’s fear that the death of Zhu, who is liked by many Chinese for his economic reforms, might spark demonstrations. The death of another Chinese leader, Hu Yaobang, in April 1989 led to the protests in Tiananmen Square that ended in carnage on June 4, 1989.

The official hagiography of Jiang in particular now approaches idolatry.

A silver coin bearing Jiang’s face will be issued, the People’s Bank of China announced on Aug.14. China’s postal service issued stamps on Aug. 17 commemorating Jiang. With the support of the Chinese government, a book of articles on foreign diplomacy by Jiang has been distributed throughout the nation, state media reported on Aug. 17.

“Xi has to honor both of them to mitigate conflict. Xi probably seeks a fourth term as general secretary and president and he must build public and party support,” an ex-banker told Asia Sentinel.

Getting ready for term 4

Xi will chair a meeting in Beijing in October at which analysts believe he will seek endorsement for a fourth term. Xi already broke a rule laid down by the late leader Deng Xiaoping that Chinese presidents should not serve more than two five-year terms. His power may be creating unease.

“He has amassed too much power, so everybody is against such an upstart. He broke the 10-year tenure rule and went after other princelings for corruption, so he alienated himself from the princelings. Not only did he not protect their interests, but actually moved their cheese away from them,” a Malaysian analyst told Asia Sentinel.

“Xi has enemies aplenty and everywhere. So he needs some sort of allies,” said the analyst, who declined to be named. “Apparently, Xi needs to bolster himself with the help of the Jiang faction nowadays, hence all the olive branches to the Jiang faction.”

In a ceremony marking the 100th anniversary of Jiang’s birth at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing on Aug. 17, Xi spoke glowingly of Jiang, who died in 2022 at the age of 96. Xi praised Jiang for having lived a glorious life and making contributions that can never be forgotten. Xi commended Jiang for having made the Chinese people more prosperous and deepening economic reforms. Xi declared of Jiang, “We must learn from his strategic foresight.”

Cai Qi, the fifth most powerful Chinese leader, is hosting a discussion on the thought of Jiang in Beijing Aug. 17-19, Chinese state media reported. The forum will discuss “the Three Represents,” the signature philosophy of Jiang, which reconciled capitalism with Chinese Communist doctrine.

Jiang’s good old days

Under the current political and economic climate in China, Xi needs to respect Jiang’s accomplishments. Many Chinese remember that under Jiang the economy boomed and wages rose. Xi needs to create a narrative that builds on Jiang, rather than denouncing or criticizing him, because many Chinese question the course that Xi has chosen for China,” explained the ex-banker, who declined to be named.

Xi’s effusive praise for Jiang is an apparent reversal of the two men’s rivalry when Jiang was alive. In 2020, Xi cancelled the initial public offering (IPO) of Ant Group in Hong Kong and Shanghai, for example. The $37 billion dual listing would have been the world’s biggest IPO at that time. Alvin Jiang Zhicheng, a grandson of Jiang Zemin, was a minority shareholder of the Chinese online payment company.

Alvin and his father, Jiang Mianheng, attended the 100th anniversary event for Jiang. At the ceremony, Xi shook hands with Jiang Mianheng, the eldest son of Jiang Zemin, and posed for photographs with members of the Jiang family.

Former Chinese leaders like Wen Jiabao, Wang Qishan and Zhang Gaoli also attended the ceremony.

The meaning of the elders

Conspicuously absent was Hu Jintao, Xi’s predecessor. The former Chinese President was escorted out of a Communist Party Congress session in Xi’s presence in Oct. 2022 and is rarely seen in public any longer. Hu was seen as close to Jiang.

“A key point of observation for these commemorative events is whether Hu Jintao will make another public appearance. If he attends, it could at least be leveraged on the level of political messaging to demonstrate that unity persists between the current leadership and the retired elders; if he continues to be absent, it will inevitably reignite external speculation about his health and high-level relationships,” China watcher David Tsai tweeted on Aug. 15.

“By comparison, whether Wen Jiabao and Wang Qishan appear is equally noteworthy. There have been numerous unverified rumors surrounding their political circumstances in recent years, so if the two attend as normal, it would undoubtedly address some of those external speculations to a certain extent; conversely, if several heavyweight retired leaders are absent simultaneously, the political symbolism would only be further amplified,” Tsai said.

At the ceremony, Xi praised Jiang for being “decisive, confronting risky challenges, resolutely overcoming danger and difficulties.”

Deng had chosen Jiang to be his successor, largely because Jiang put down the protests in Shanghai without bloodshed in 1989, in contrast to the bloody crackdown in Beijing that year.

“We must learn from his resolve and unusual courage…to better combine development and security,” Xi said at the ceremony.

Another of the old titans, former premier Zhu Rongji, died at the age of 97 on Aug. 12. The next day, Chinese state media praised him in a lengthy obituary, saying that after Zhu stepped down as prime minister in March 2003, he “firmly supported” Hu as China’s leader and subsequently Xi as China’s leader.

In many circles, it is believed Zhu was at odds with Xi over his economic policy, but after retirement, Zhu remained quiet on policy matters, which allowed speculation to continue.

In the words of government economists these days, South Korea hasn’t had it so good in years.

Riding on the back of strong semiconductor exports, the economy this year is expected to post 3 percent growth for the first time in five years, boosting per capita annual income from $40,000 to $50,000, nearly on par with Japan.

Undoubtedly stir…

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In a much-anticipated press conference by ousted Bangladesh premier Sheikh Hasina in New Delhi that drove relations between the two countries to a new low, Hasina reiterated that she intends to return to Bangladesh in December but did not disclose a specific date or travel plan, avoiding spelling out a roadmap. Her son, Sajeeb Wazed Joy, joined the briefing from the United States and acknowledged India’s continued support for his mother since she left Dhaka two years earlier, following the student-led uprising that ended the Awami League government.

Dhaka expressed dismay over Hasina’s appearance, charging that New Delhi had allowed a convicted individual to address journalists. Bangladesh’s foreign ministry objected to what it described as an opportunity for Hasina and her allies to attack the state and people of Bangladesh. The ministry said the event was an affront to Bangladesh’s sovereignty and an insult to those killed during the July Revolution, while adding that Bangladesh still sought a constructive and forward-looking relationship with India based on sovereign equality, mutual respect, non-interference and national dignity.

Reactions from Bangladesh over the Hasina event were sharp and strong, with the country’s home minister, Salahuddin Ahmed, criticizing New Delhi for allowing Hasina to repeatedly address the media, including some global news agencies, from Indian soil. Reiterating Dhaka’s wish for friendly ties with New Delhi, the minister argued that Hasina’s presence in India has emerged as a source of discomfort in bilateral ties between the two countries. Earlier, a statement from the Bangladeshi foreign ministry said that Dhaka was outraged over an absconder’s open press briefing in New Delhi. It asserted that “convicted mass murderer Hasina and her mafia enterprise will never have a place in the polity of Bangladesh.”

It also raised questions about the timing, as on that particular date the people of Bangladesh observed the second anniversary of the Monsoon Revolution that deposed Hasina’s autocratic government. Dhaka said New Delhi had been informed in advance about the potential negative consequences of the Hasina event on bilateral relations, but its concerns were not taken into consideration, which it interpreted as an insult to the July-August martyrs. Insisting on a constructive, mutually beneficial and forward-looking relationship with India based on non-interference in each other’s internal affairs and respect for national dignity, the statement described the Delhi program as detrimental to bilateral ties. It also called for Hasina’s extradition to Bangladesh under the 2013 extradition treaty without delay. When Dhaka repeated its demand for Hasina’s repatriation, New Delhi responded that the matter remained under legal scrutiny.

New Delhi responded that the event had been organized by an independent press club made up of journalists from Indian and international media organizations, and that the Indian government neither organized the briefing nor endorsed the views expressed. A foreign ministry spokesperson said India had no role in the program and added that, even if Hasina had been granted shelter, she was not permitted to conduct political activity from Indian soil against another sovereign state. New Delhi is not expected to press Hasina to leave India unless it receives assurances from Dhaka that she would be treated in accordance with due legal process after her return.

New Delhi clarified that Hasina’s event was organized by an independent press club comprising journalist-members from national and international media organizations and that the Indian authorities do not endorse any views expressed during the press briefing. The Indian authorities had no role in the program, a foreign ministry spokesperson said, adding that even though Hasina has been granted asylum, she is not allowed to pursue political activities targeting another sovereign nation from Indian soil. It is understood that New Delhi would not insist that Hasina leave India unless it receives assurances from Dhaka that she would be treated in accordance with legal provisions upon her arrival in Bangladesh. However, New Delhi reiterated that it does not endorse the comments made by either Hasina or Joy, both of whom were highly critical of the current BNP government in Dhaka.

Hasina, 78, has lived in New Delhi in self-imposed exile since August 2024. In what was billed as her first public media interaction in two years, she repeated comments already reported, saying that “whatever fate awaits” her, she would return home. Recalling the struggles of her father, Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, during the 1971 liberation war and the sacrifices of the Muktijoddhas, or freedom fighters, Hasina said fear for her life would not determine whether she returned. She said December was an appropriate month because Bangladesh marks Victory Day on 16 December, commemorating the 1971 surrender of Pakistani forces.

Referring to the July-August 2024 unrest, Hasina alleged that organized groups had infiltrated the job-quota reform movement and transformed it into a campaign demanding her resignation. She said what began as a peaceful protest turned violent, with demonstrators attacking public infrastructure and law-enforcement personnel. Hasina argued that the escalation forced her to leave Bangladesh but did not sever her connection with the people. She also claimed that the February national election was stage-managed because the Awami League was barred from participating, leaving citizens, in her words, under fear, repression and economic hardship.

The government led by Professor Muhammad Yunus took charge in August 2024, after Hasina fled shortly before a mob entered the prime minister’s residence. Eighteen months later, the caretaker administration sponsored a general election in which Khaleda Zia’s Bangladesh Nationalist Party emerged victorious and BNP chief Tarique Rahman became prime minister. Since then, Hasina has faced numerous penalties in absentia, including a death sentence from Bangladesh’s International Crimes Tribunal over alleged crimes against humanity during the July-August uprising. The Awami League has also been restricted from political activity and from contesting elections.

The interim administration demanded Hasina’s repatriation from India to face trial in Dhaka, and the BNP government has repeatedly asked New Delhi to extradite her under the bilateral treaty between the two countries. Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi was among the first foreign leaders to congratulate Tarique Rahman before he took office, but New Delhi has remained non-committal on Hasina’s extradition. That cautious posture appeared to be reflected in Rahman’s recent first overseas visit, which included Malaysia and China but not India. He has been invited to New Delhi for the BRICS summit on 12-13 September, though Dhaka has reportedly not confirmed his attendance.

Dhaka is yet to confirm Prime Minister Tarique Rahman’s visit to India, with Bangladesh Deputy Foreign Minister Shama Obaed stating that the proposed trip to New Delhi was “yet to be finalized.” It is speculated that the Bangladeshi government has insisted on Hasina’s extradition before the prime minister accepts the multiple invitations from New Delhi to visit the country. Tarique Rahman received the first invitation months ago for a bilateral trip to India and was later invited to attend the BRICS Summit outreach session in New Delhi on September 12-13 in his capacity as the current BIMSTEC chair. It is believed that the prime minister conveyed his position to the Indian government during a meeting with Indian envoy Trivedi in Dhaka on August 10. Trivedi later returned to New Delhi to brief the Indian prime minister on their discussions.

Meanwhile, Bangladesh is set to hold a presidential election on August 20, with BNP stalwart Mirza Fakhrul Islam Alamgir poised to become the country’s next head of state. As the BNP holds a majority in the Jatiya Sansad, the party nominee, who currently serves as a minister in Tarique Rahman’s cabinet, is widely expected to win the election and move into Bangabhaban in the coming days. A trusted ally of former premier Khaleda Zia during periods of severe crisis, including her illnesses, he effectively led the BNP while Tarique Rahman remained in exile for years. A grassroots BNP worker, Mirza Fakhrul endured repeated humiliations at the hands of the ruling Awami League leadership. The August 20 election became necessary after President Mohammed Shahabuddin, regarded as a Hasina loyalist, resigned prematurely on July 24.

In Dhaka the same day, Prime Minister Tarique Rahman inaugurated the July Uprising Memorial Museum, converted from the vandalized Ganabhaban complex at Sher-e-Bangla Nagar, in the presence of Nobel Peace Prize laureate Professor Yunus. Yunus said the museum would honor the courage and sacrifice of those killed in the 2024 revolution, now widely described by its supporters as a struggle for democracy in Bangladesh. He urged citizens to visit the museum and reflect on the vision of a new nation that rejects authoritarianism.

Bangladeshi author Taslima Nasreen also backed Hasina’s stated intention to return, saying after the audio address that the former prime minister should be guaranteed an impartial and internationally credible judicial process. Nasreen said she understood the pain of exile, having lived outside Bangladesh for more than three decades, and wished Hasina success in the next phase of her political life. She criticized the government’s restrictions on media coverage of Hasina’s New Delhi event as undemocratic and called for the ban on the Awami League to be lifted. At the same time, she reminded Hasina that, during her 15 years in power, she had not allowed Nasreen to return home because of opposition from radical Islamist groups—a position Nasreen said had later turned against Hasina herself.

Vietnamese Communist Party General Secretary Tô Lâm’s visit to Australia and New Zealand may look like routine diplomacy. It is better understood as a marker of Hanoi’s evolving strategy in a more contested Indo-Pacific.

Vietnam is not abandoning its “Four No’s” defense policy, nor is it preparing to align formally against China. Instead,…

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Since the 2020 onset of the Covid-19 pandemic, Malaysia’s Ministry of Communications and its executive arm, the Malaysian Communications and Multimedia Commission, have metastasized into one of Asia’s largest state information control agencies, raising concerns among civil libertarians and press protection organizations that it is u…

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Perry Warjiyo’s resignation as governor of Bank Indonesia has become more than an unexpected leadership change. Announced on July 27, nearly two years before his second term was due to end in 2028, the decision has fueled concerns that President Prabowo Subianto is steadily expanding political influence over inst…

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The saga of 38 Oxley Road, near Singapore’s prestigious Orchard Road, appears to be over. The Singapore government has decreed that the house will be preserved as a shrine to Lee Kuan Yew, independent Singapore’s founder and first prime minister.

Stunningly, as an indication of the rancor, it was a dispute in which former Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong appears to have brought down the power of the government to intervene in a family clash in which the decision to preserve the house has precipitated a bitter implosion in one of Asia’s most illustrious families, a rupture that is unlikely to ever be repaired.

Lee Hsien Yang, Hsien Loong’s brother, retired as a brigadier general and later CEO of Singtel, a leading Singaporean telecommunications carrier. He has been granted asylum under the 1951 Geneva Convention in the United Kingdom with his wife Lee Suet Fern, a distinguished lawyer and founder of Stamford Law Corporation, a leading Singaporean law firm, and president of the Inter-Pacific Bar Association. Because of the fight over the mansion, she was suspended from practicing law for 15 months. Both she and her husband were interviewed for allegedly giving false evidence in a case involving the handling of the father’s final will.

Their eldest son, Li Shengwu, is a professor of economics at Harvard University in the US and unlikely to ever move back to Singapore. The third sibling, Lee Wei Ling, a neurologist and former director of Singapore’s National Neuroscience Institute, died in 2024 holding onto an implacable will to fulfill her father’s wish to have the house demolished. Title to the house passed into Hsien Yang’s hands on her death. That didn’t stop the government from gazetting it for a monument.

Prominent families often fall victim to secrecy in the face of intense external pressure to maintain a perfect public image – especially in Singapore, a city state that prides itself on its Asian exceptionalism – and “empty shell” dynamics where honest communication completely stops. Relatives switch destructively between being emotional family members and objective business stakeholders, crippling family dynamics. But in this case, whatever the pressures in the family, it came apart over the patriarch’s home.

The acrimonious, years-long feud escalated into a public rift in 2017, with the siblings accusing Hsien Loong of going against their father’s final wishes. He died on March 23, 2015, with the feud between the siblings going public in June 2017 with a joint statement on Facebook by Wei Ling and Hsien Yang, which stated they did not trust Hsien Loong (who was then Singapore’s prime minister) “as a brother or as a leader.” Lee Hsien Yang, fearing arrest, fled to live in self-imposed exile abroad. Any hopes for reconciliation may have permanently been closed.

“Today, the PAP government has seized control of 38 Oxley Road,” he wrote on Facebook on July 31. “My father’s wish was crystal clear: demolish his home. Wei Ling and I sought to honor his wish, as the executors of his will. The compulsory acquisition of his home is a repudiation of his values and a flagrant disregard for his long-held wish. No amount of sophistry can disguise this fact.”

By most accounts, Lee wanted the house destroyed to keep it from turning into a shrine to his efforts to turn Singapore into a modern economic powerhouse, becoming an international statesman in the process. In 2011, Lee, in an interview, told reporters he wanted the distinguished black and white mansion demolished after his death or kept as a closed residence for his family and descendants, a view he repeated in his memoirs and writings and in his first will published that year.

That same year, government officials debated whether to conserve the house for historical reasons. Although the patriarch met with the cabinet and told them the house should be demolished, the cabinet, then headed by Hsien Loong, informally decided that it should not be due to its historical significance.

In later discussions with the family, Lee Kuan Yew is quoted by Hsien Loong in a parliamentary debate as agreeing to preserve the building. In early 2012, Ho Ching, the wife of Hsien Loong and then head of the sovereign wealth fund Temasek, emailed the family with detailed plans about how the house would be renovated. Ho said that if there were objections to renting out the house after it was renovated, Hsien Loong’s family could move in with Wei Ling, who was granted the right to live in the house after Lee’s 2014 death until she herself died or moved out.

“We have observed that Hsien Loong and Ho Ching want to milk Lee Kuan Yew’s legacy for their own political purposes. We also believe, based on our interactions, that they harbor political ambitions for their son, Li Hongyi,” alleged the statement by Wei Ling and Hsien Yang. “Lee Kuan Yew believed that Hsien Loong and Ho Ching were behind what was represented to the family as a government initiative to preserve the house.”

Hsien Loong has denied any wrongdoing. Hongyi previously said he has no interest in politics. Hsien Loong has said he would not sue his siblings for libel out of respect for their late parents. Although Lee Kuan Yew is revered by many Singaporeans as the father of the nation, critics have faulted Lee senior’s propensity to sue opposition politicians and international media for defamation.

In fact, the case has bled into Singapore politics, featuring debate in parliament and with Home Affairs Minister K Shanmugam and Singapore Foreign Minister Vivian Balakrishnan collecting more than S$600,000 (US$468,000) from Hsien Yang for defaming the two in an earlier Facebook post about their rental of two huge heritage houses. The two ministers sued Hsien Yang for libel in 2023, after Hsien Yang accused them in a Facebook post of getting the Singapore Land Authority to grant them preferential treatment in renting the dwellings. No Singaporean official has ever lost a defamation case in the island republic.

There the matter stands, with three of the Lees in what appears to be permanent exile and with the government saying that “to balance heritage with privacy, the government plans to alter the interior, including removing private living areas, rather than preserving the house exactly as the Lee family knew it.” Lee Hsien Yang remains defiant, criticizing the state’s action, reiterating that it disregards his father’s explicit, long-held wish for the property’s demolition.

From security ties to trade and business relations, the US-South Korean alliance, long hailed as iron-clad and most successful in East Asia for decades, is coming under exceptional stress, threatening the whole fabric of their long-term relations. In a worrisome sign that surfaced on July 30, the newly arriving US ambassador to Seoul, Michelle Steel, a Korean-born former Republican congresswoman from California, was greeted at Incheon airport by angry Korean picketers yelling, “Ultra-right-winger, Go Home!”

It was an unprecedented show of hostility towards an American ambassador arriving to take the post in the history of the Korea-US alliance, especially someone known to be an influential politician close to the incumbent President of the United States. As if she had an early premonition of less-than-exuberant reception waiting for her in Seoul, where she happened to have been born a daughter of a refugee family fleeing North Korea in the 1950-53 Korean War, Steel responded calmly before a crowd of reporters: ‘I was born in Seoul,’ she said before a microphone in perfect Korean but added calmly, ‘today I represent the United States. A thousand emotions cross my mind.’

That amounted to an understatement, given the tough challenges facing bilateral relations, ranging from security ties to the Trump administration’s tariffs and US demand for a hefty business investment from Seoul. Despite periodic assurances that bilateral problems such as tariffs and investments were coming under control, evidence indicates they are getting worse rather than better.

The latest issue bedeviling the Washington-Seoul ties is a strenuous protest over Seoul’s regulators imposing a stiff fine of US$422 million on the US e-commerce firm Coupang, which has been blamed for failing to plug its data leaks of 33 million South Korean customers. A Chinese employee working for the company has been under suspicion of leaking the data, but he has fled to China.

While a number of US congressional members, from both Democratic and Republican sides, have protested the fine as excessively large, discriminatory and unjustified, the Lee Jae Myung government has defended its punitive action as justifiable, citing the enormous size of personal data leaked. The company, although doing business in Korea, is registered in Washington DC. It is owned and operated by Korean Americans with a reputation for wide lobbying activities in Washington D.C. where the amount of fine has so inflamed the Congressional members that they are urging the Trump administration to respond with its own reprisal.

In Seoul, legislators belonging to President Lee’s center-left Democratic Party have in turn faced domestic criticisms for mishandling the Coupang affair with what some critics regarded as emotional outbursts, holding hearings of Coupang executives where screaming and finger-pointing at Coupang’s American executives caused alarm, prompting emotional backlash in Washington that US businessmen were being intimidated and harassed.

But the tumultuous hearings only intensified the worsening ties with the Trump administration over a raft of issues troubling the two sides, ranging from tariffs to investment to political issues.

In Seoul, the Lee administration remains troubled over the Trump administration’s unilateral slapping of 15% tariffs on Korean exports, despite Seoul’s pledge to make annual capital investments worth US$20 billion annually for a ten-year period, prompting serious concern that it could affect the nation’s foreign exchange holdings. On top of that, Seoul has had to pledge commercial investments totaling US$150 billion in the US shipbuilding sector, with the Trump administration yet unsure if it can find enough American industrial workers to take over building ships at US shipyards.

South Korea itself is in short supply of requisite shipbuilding labor force, so that it now trains a workforce from other parts of Asia to operate its shipbuilding sector. Nor would it be easy to find and send Korean workers to the US, after the last episode of US immigration officials in Georgia raiding a Korean factory site where they rounded up Korean engineers working on a Korea-invested project. Chained and handcuffed, they were dumped on an aircraft bound for Seoul, causing a national uproar in the country.

On the security level, Seoul keeps pressing for acquisition of wartime operational command authority now held by the United Nations Command under a US four-star army general. The Lee government wants a South Korean general to hold the wartime command control, who will also command 28,000 US ground forces here if another war breaks out. Although Washington has placed peacetime operational control under Korean leadership, it remains unlikely the US will place its troops under command control of a Korean general in time of war. Not only do the two armies possess different kinds of armaments, but never in US history has the US allowed its soldiers to be commanded in war under another country’s flag.

Some significant chasm also appears to be surfacing over the all-important issue of how to deal with North Korea’s nuclear threat. While Washington remains committed to pressing the North to accept a CVID formula (Complete, Verifiable, Irreversible Denuclearization), the Lee government has recently moved in favor of accepting the “freeze” formula, with Seoul’s Unification Minister Chung Dong Young suggesting that Washington and Seoul should seek a breakthrough by recognizing the current nuclear weapons stock held by the Kim Jong Un regime as a condition of stopping him adding more nuclear weapons. Chung is pressing Washington to start a process of dialogue on the basis of recognizing Kim’s nuclear status quo, even as he keeps adding more bombs on top of about 50 bombs he is understood to possess already.

These differences covering security and economic relations are substantial enough to underscore their different interests, irrespective of Seoul’s pursuit of a more assertive stance in their bilateral relations. Moreover, there are indications that the Trump administration remains skeptical of President Lee’s center-left platforms, especially as his popularity at home appears to be waning in recent months. As Lee’s political base erodes, it will be less tempting for Washington to agree to Lee’s more assertive control over their combined military strength at a time of rising nuclear challenges from North Korea. That means Ambassador Steel’s job in Seoul would not deviate much from her predecessor’s.

For a head of state who has spent years as the West’s favorite pariah, Belarus President Alexander Lukashenko, in early July, received the diplomatic equivalent of a royal flush. Sukhoi combat aircraft roaring overhead. An 80-member cavalry escort thundering down Medan Merdeka Utara. The traditional Enggang dance from East Kalim…

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Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s visit to Manila this week— attending the ASEAN Post-Ministerial Conference, the East Asia Summit Foreign Ministers’ Meeting, and the ASEAN Regional Forum — highlights a crucial geopolitical reality: while the Taiwan Strait and the first island chain remain vital to regional security, the long-term balance of power in the Indo-Pacific may ultimately depend on strategic choices made across Southeast Asia.

Global attention centers on China’s military modernization, America’s alliances, and Taiwan risk. Less examined is China’s quieter contest to shape ASEAN’s strategic orientation. Beijing’s approach appears pragmatic: not expelling the United States from Asia but preventing a cohesive regional coalition capable of balancing Chinese influence, preferring to deal with Southeast Asian nations on a bilateral basis rather than as a unified bloc, which allows it to leverage its immense economic size.

By forging closer ties with more receptive or dependent states such as Cambodia, Laos, and Malaysia, Beijing is ensuring that the bloc is stymied in attempting to achieve consensus needed to issue unified criticisms or counter-pressures. By benefiting from ASEAN’s preference for strategic autonomy and non-alignment, China is advancing its interests without directly confronting Washington’s alliance network.

This competition transcends military power. It focuses on economic influence, political credibility, technological partnerships and the shaping of regional norms and institutions.

The United States holds strong cards. Alliances with Japan and South Korea remain enduring pillars of its Indo-Pacific strategy. Security ties with the Philippines have deepened significantly, and Australia continues as a vital partner. These relationships anchor the first island chain. Yet they cannot alone determine the broader Indo-Pacific order. ASEAN is central.

ASEAN’s Strategic Weight

ASEAN is neither a military alliance nor a unified bloc. It is a diplomatic community rooted in consensus, sovereignty, and strategic autonomy. Its 11 member states span diverse political systems, economic priorities, and threat perceptions. What unites them is not a common security policy, but a shared commitment to regional stability and resistance to excessive dependence on any major power.

The Philippines has strengthened defense cooperation with Washington as a treaty ally. Singapore maintains close security ties with the United States while avoiding formal alliances. Thailand balances its longstanding US alliance with diversified engagement. Indonesia, Vietnam, Malaysia, and others prioritize strategic autonomy and diversified partnerships.

For Beijing, outright alignment is unnecessary. It may be sufficient that ASEAN sustains its aversion to great-power rivalry and avoids the formation of a unified balancing coalition, a preference that aligns naturally with ASEAN’s longstanding doctrine of flexibility and non-alignment.

The Weight of Economic Geography

China enjoys significant structural advantages in Southeast Asia. As ASEAN’s largest trading partner, China is deeply embedded in regional supply chains, manufacturing, infrastructure, energy and digital networks. Geography reinforces this advantage: China is a permanent neighbor, while the United States remains an external Pacific power. When neutrality pairs with deepening economic interdependence with Beijing, Washington’s military strengths become harder to translate into sustained political influence.

Deterrence remains essential, but long-term leverage demands economic engagement, technological cooperation, institutional trust, and persistent diplomacy.

The key question is not whether ASEAN states will choose Washington or Beijing, but whether they can preserve real space for independent decisions. If that space narrows under the weight of economic dependence, neutrality may gradually evolve into de facto alignment—even without formal treaties or political declarations.

Three Models of Strategic Hedging

Vietnam, Indonesia, and Singapore exemplify distinct hedging approaches, with Vietnam confronting direct maritime pressure in the South China Sea.

Hanoi balances growing economic ties with China against deepened partnerships with the United States, Japan, Australia, India, and Europe. Its “Four Nos” policy — no formal alliances, no foreign bases, and no alignment with any major power — safeguards autonomy. However, flexibility without domestic resilience and credible alternatives risks turning into vulnerability. Vietnam remains one of the most important counterweights to Chinese maritime assertiveness among ASEAN claimant states. Sustaining this role requires ongoing modernization, institutional strength, and economic capacity.

Indonesia represents autonomy rooted in scale and leadership. As ASEAN’s largest member by population, economy, and territory, Jakarta follows its “free and active” foreign policy tradition. It avoids alignment while preserving ASEAN centrality and preventing any single power from dominating the regional order. Although facing fewer direct confrontations than Vietnam, particularly around the North Natuna Sea, Indonesia wields influence through demographic weight, diplomacy and institutional shaping.

Singapore builds autonomy on institutional strength and global connectivity. It welcomes a sustained US security presence while maintaining deep economic links with China. Singapore’s leaders reject Cold War binaries, positioning the city-state as a pragmatic bridge and global hub, a model that maximizes maneuverability in an increasingly competitive environment.

Together, these cases demonstrate that hedging is not indecision. It is deliberate statecraft — tailored efforts by large and small states to maximize agency amid great-power rivalry.

Washington’s Diplomatic Imperative

Rubio’s visit highlights the distinct challenge for US diplomacy. Reassuring allies is familiar terrain. Engaging non-aligned partners requires nuance. Most ASEAN governments prioritize development, stability, and autonomy. They view China as a neighbor, competitor, and vital economic partner simultaneously.

The United States need not create an anti-China bloc. It must demonstrate that closer partnership expands — rather than restricts — Southeast Asian choices. This calls for initiatives beyond defense: resilient supply chains, digital governance, technological standards, infrastructure, education exchanges, and support for maritime rights. The goal is an open, independent ASEAN capable of resisting coercion while preserving strategic flexibility.

The Decisive Arena

ASEAN’s refusal to choose sides may prove one of the defining factors in the Indo-Pacific balance. Neutrality is not pro-China. Yet under conditions of China’s economic weight and geographic proximity, it can produce asymmetric outcomes. Southeast Asian states seek neither dependence on Washington nor Beijing. Meaningful autonomy requires economic resilience, diversified partnerships, and institutional credibility.

The institutional and economic rules that solidify in this decade will shape not only the regional balance of power, but also the range of choices available to the next generation of Southeast Asians.

The region’s future will not be settled by naval power or alliances alone. It will be decided in ASEAN’s diplomatic, economic, and institutional space — the true strategic center of gravity in US –China competition. The first island chain remains indispensable for security. But the broader contest for regional order will increasingly be shaped in Southeast Asia, the strategic center of the Indo-Pacific century.

Khanh Vu Duc is a frequent contributor to Asia Sentinel. He is a lawyer and part-time law professor at the University of Ottawa who researches on Vietnamese politics, international relations, and international law.

What began as an investigation into a series of nationwide power outages has rapidly evolved into a rare confrontation between Indonesia’s two most powerful law enforcement institutions. Indonesia’s National Police, through its Anti-Corruption Task Force (Kortastipidkor), is investigating alleged corruption and money laundering in coal procurement for state-owned power plants between 2018 and 2026. Investigators suspect manipulated contracts, falsified coal quality and supply records, and illicit financial flows that may have caused state losses of roughly US$300 million.

As the investigation has expanded, police have searched more than a dozen locations in Jakarta and nearby cities last week. Several of the properties were linked to Febrie Adriansyah, the former head of the Special Crimes Unit (Jampidsus) of the Attorney General’s Office (AGO), transforming what appeared to be a procurement case into a much broader inquiry into the relationships among Indonesia’s law enforcement elite.

A Prosecutor under Investigation

Police have named Febrie a suspect in corruption and money laundering investigations tied to three separate cases: a scandal involving state-owned insurance company PT Asabri, alleged corruption involving state-owned PT Krakatau Steel, and the coal procurement case. Don Ritto, a lawyer described by investigators as one of Febrie’s close associates, was also named as a suspect. Investigators allege that Febrie accepted illicit payments through the extortion of suspects in those major corruption cases. He has since resigned from the Attorney General’s Office.

The allegations mark a dramatic fall for one of Indonesia’s best-known anti-corruption prosecutors. Since taking charge of the Special Crimes Unit in January 2022, Febrie led investigations into some of the country’s largest corruption scandals, including the tin trading case, the crude oil governance scandal, and the controversial and politically charged Chromebook procurement case involving former Education Minister Nadiem Makarim. Most recently, his office was handling corruption cases involving the government’s massive Free Nutritious Meals program.

Police searched 13 locations linked to Febrie, including his residence in suburban Jakarta, and several businesses in Jakarta. Officers seized 74 kilograms of gold, hundreds of billions of rupiah in cash, and other evidence. They also searched Koin Money Changer, where they confiscated cash in 16 foreign currencies worth about 7.2 billion rupiah. “There are strong indications the location was used for money laundering,” said Senior Commissioner Budi Hermanto, the Jakarta Metropolitan Police spokesman.

Soon after videos of the raids circulated online, prosecutors – accompanied by dozens of armed military soldiers – arrived at the Jakarta Metropolitan Police headquarters demanding the return of the seized evidence. At the same time, Indonesian military personnel guarded Febrie’s residence in South Jakarta. Military spokesman Brig. Gen. Muhammad Nas said the deployment was carried out at the request of the Attorney General’s Office. What appeared to be a stand-off between the police and military was alarming – and huge news nationwide.

According to Inspector General Totok Suharyanto, head of the National Police’s Anti-Corruption Task Force, investigators are focusing on three cases. The first concerns alleged corruption in coal procurement that investigators believe contributed to electricity shortages and widespread blackouts. The second revisits alleged corruption and money laundering connected to PT Asabri and another state-owned insurer, Jiwasraya. The third involves the settlement of debts between two subsidiaries of Krakatau Steel.

Although the investigations concern separate legal matters, police have linked them in pursuing Febrie, leaving unresolved questions about the precise role prosecutors believe he played in each case, which has since been handed over to the attorney general’s office, prompting concerns that the institution is being asked to investigate one of its own and will potentially shield senior officials from independent scrutiny.

The Curse of the Free Meals Program

The bitter feud between Indonesia’s police and prosecutors didn’t begin with the coal investigation. Its roots lie in a far more politically sensitive case: alleged corruption in President Prabowo Subianto’s flagship Free Nutritious Meals (MBG) program.

Far from becoming the signature social program Prabowo envisioned, the free lunch initiative has increasingly become synonymous with allegations of corruption. What was designed as a nationwide effort to improve child nutrition and ease widespread stunting has instead exposed weaknesses in governance as the program expanded at remarkable speed.

Since mid-June 2026, the attorney general’s office has instructed prosecutors nationwide to investigate suspected corruption in the program’s rapidly expanding network of community kitchens. Prosecutors have examined allegations ranging from the sale of operating permits and kitchen locations to inflated procurement costs, illegal commissions and the misuse of government incentives.

The investigation soon reached senior officials with close ties to the police. Among those arrested was Sony Sonjaya, the deputy head of the National Nutrition Agency and a retired police inspector general. Investigators allege that Sony implicated other police officers involved in the program, including Brig. Gen. Lalu Muhammad Iwan Mahardan, an active-duty officer who was later named as a suspect.

Police officials were outraged, arguing that prosecutors had designated Lalu a suspect without coordinating with the force. They also accused the attorney general’s office of selective prosecution, saying it targeted kitchens operated by the police while leaving untouched hundreds of facilities affiliated with the Indonesian military. More than 1,000 MBG kitchens are currently managed by the national police.

The police response was swift. Soon afterward, investigators unveiled corruption and extortion allegations involving one of the Attorney General’s Office’s most influential figures, former Special Crimes chief Febrie.

Exposing Each Other’s Secrets

Indonesia has witnessed recurring rivalries among its law enforcement institutions since the police were separated from the military in 1998. Previous clashes – including the long-running conflict between the police and the Corruption Eradication Commission (KPK), as well as periodic tensions between the police and the armed forces – have repeatedly tested the country’s justice system. This time, however, the rivalry has escalated into competing corruption investigations, with each institution exposing alleged wrongdoing by the other.

The military’s involvement reflects the political alliances surrounding both institutions. Febrie serves as executive chairman of the government’s Forest Area Enforcement Task Force, which is led by Defense Minister Sjafrie Sjamsoeddin, a retired army general with considerable influence within the armed forces.

Legal scholars argue that the escalating conflict underscores the need for an independent referee. They say Prabowo could ease the institutional deadlock by transferring both the MBG investigation and the allegations against prosecutors to the KPK. Although many KPK investigators come from the police and the prosecution service, the agency operates independently of the institutions now locked in conflict.

Without an impartial investigation, they argue, the greatest casualty will not be either institution but public confidence in the rule of law.

Calls for Anti-Graft Agency Intervention

Hendardi, chairman of the National Council of the influential SETARA Institute, said the KPK should immediately exercise its statutory supervisory powers to take over – or at least oversee – the investigations. Allowing the attorney general’s office to investigate allegations involving its leadership, he argued, “simply makes no sense. The Attorney General’s Office would effectively be investigating itself.”

Hendardi also criticized the police’s willingness to hand the case to prosecutors, saying the move deepened public distrust and fueled suspicions of a political bargain between the two institutions. If the decision resulted from political pressure by the executive branch, he said, it would blur the boundary between law enforcement and political interests.

“The more political actors intervene in an ongoing legal process, the greater the risk that justice will be sacrificed for political expediency,” he said.

Hendardi warned that appeals to national stability must never become a justification for shielding corruption or manipulating legal proceedings. Stability built on impunity, he argued, ultimately weakens the legitimacy of the state. He also questioned the military’s involvement in a civilian law enforcement process, saying such intervention had no legal basis.

Finally, he said that investigators should not stop with Febrie alone. They should follow the chain of command, trace financial transactions and identify all beneficiaries of the alleged corruption, including, if supported by evidence, other senior officials within the Attorney General’s Office, or even the government’s Forest Area Enforcement Task Force.

“Corruption at this level is rarely the work of a single individual,” Hendardi said. “If the investigation ends with one suspect while protecting those above him, it will amount to sacrificing one person to preserve a corrupt system.”

Since Chinese President Xi Jinping launched his anti-corruption campaign in late 2012, millions of Chinese officials have been taken down, including “flies” (minor officials) and “tigers” (senior officials). Recently, complications have emerged in Xi’s crusade, involving a tiger who got caught and the apparent disappearance of a general in charge of fighting corruption in the People’s Liberation Army (PLA).

After a decade and a half in power, with waves of sweeping purges to protect his position, there’s little evidence that Xi faces any genuine rival, but internal power struggles nevertheless remain fierce. It is also an indication, however, of the difficulty of eradicating corruption that continues to pervade the Chinese political establishment. The recent snared tiger, Ma Xingrui, is a former head of the Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region and a former member of China’s Politburo, the country’s highest policy-making body– and an acquaintance of President Xi’s wife.

On June 30, the state-owned People’s Daily announced that Ma had been expelled from the Chinese Communist Party and dismissed as a member of the National People’s Congress. Ma’s ill-gotten gains were confiscated and he faces trial, People’s Daily added. He is the first civilian Politburo member to be taken down for corruption since July 2017.

“Politburo members typically enjoy an informal layer of political immunity and are rarely ever removed while in office,” said a report of SinoInsider, a China-focused political risk consultancy based in New York, on July 16. “Since the end of the Cultural Revolution, very few sitting Politburo members have been publicly expelled and criminally prosecuted solely for conventional corruption or personal misconduct. Ma Xingrui’s downfall suggests that he was deemed guilty of serious transgressions.”

What makes Ma’s case unusual is his long association with Xi’s wife, Peng Liyuan, growing up together in Yuncheng County, Shandong Province. When she was a child, Peng frequently spent time in the Ma family home, according to media reports. Ma’s wife, Rong Li, is reportedly close to Peng. Despite Peng’s associations with Ma and his wife, there is no evidence of wrongdoing by China’s first lady.

“The case is significant as it marks the first visible crack in the implicit social contract between Xi and his top lieutenants,” tweeted Henry Gao, a law professor at Singapore Management University, on July 15.

Some overseas Chinese media outlets and commentators have argued that the purge of Xi “confidant” Ma is a sign that Xi is “losing power,” said the SinoInsider report. “A closer examination of Ma’s career, however, shows no special connection between Ma and Xi,” adding that Ma didn’t receive special promotion or treatment while being elevated in the officialdom, “unlike those who were actually longtime Xi allies such as Cai Qi or Li Qiang.”

“Ma Xingrui turned his back on the party’s principles, seriously violated the party leadership’s political requirements for senior officials…. The nature of his case is extremely severe, creating an extremely bad influence,” said the People’s Daily. He was also accused of trading power and money for sex. He was charged with accepting gifts and money and was accused of helping relatives buy property at below-market prices, helping relatives obtain huge benefits and “committing rampant family corruption.”

Ma’s “rampant family corruption” largely involved his wife Rong Li and younger brother Ma Xingquan, reported the Hong Kong-based Chinese-language daily Ming Pao. Rong distributed Hong Kong-registered insurance policies to families of senior Chinese officials, alleged several media reports.

A July 17 report by the Chinese financial publication Caixin on Ma “has uncovered a sprawling political-business syndicate that extracted billions of yuan from real estate deals and dumped toxic assets onto property giant China Vanke Co. Ltd. (which is listed in Hong Kong and Shenzhen).”

Ma was close to Hui Ka Yan, a former chairman of the now-defunct China Evergrande Group, once China’s biggest property developer, which collapsed last year in a sea of red ink. In April, Hui pleaded guilty in a Chinese court to fraud, embezzlement and bribery in relation to his formerly Hong Kong-listed company.

Disappearing generals

Although Ma has been expelled from the NPC, two generals, Zhang Youxia and Liu Zhenli, remain members, five months after the announcement of corruption investigations against them in January. Zhang Youxia and Liu were formerly members of the Central Military Commission (CMC), China’s most powerful military body, headed by Xi. After their removal from the CMC, the commission shrank from four members to two –Xi and General Zhang Shengmin, the PLA’s top anti-graft official. Strangely, Zhang Youxia and Liu Zhenli remain listed on the CMC, although the weblinks to their names are no longer there.

“Zhang Youxia’s fall represents far more than another corruption case. It marks the culmination of a multi-year power struggle between competing princeling factions for control of China’s military,” said a report of the Institute of Security Development & Policy based in Stockholm, Sweden, on January 30, 2026.

In another unusual development, a few weeks after two other Chinese generals were appointed to important posts, all mention of them was deleted from the Chinese Ministry of Defense website and the People’s Daily Chinese-language website.

According to an announcement on China’s Ministry of Defense on July 3, at a ceremony in Beijing on that day, Xi promoted Zhang Shuguang to full general and appointed him as head of the CMC anti-corruption department. At that ceremony, Xi promoted Wang Gang to full general and appointed him the chief of China’s air force, said the defense ministry announcement.

“That means Zhang Shengmin will retire soon and Zhang Shuguang will likely become new Vice Chair of CMC. Wang will likely be part of new CMC lineup in 2027,” tweeted Lyle Morris, a senior fellow of the Asia Society Policy Institute’s Center for China Analysis.

Subsequently, the announcement on the defense ministry website has been shortened such that the names of Zhang Shuguang and Wang Gang were obliterated, only stating Xi promoted unnamed generals. The names of Zhang and Wang can no longer be found on the defense ministry website at this time of writing. The latest mentions of Zhang Shuguang and Wang on other Chinese state media websites like China Daily and the English version of People’s Daily occurred on July 3 and 4

On July 11, Morris tweeted, “Interesting. News of this has been scrubbed from the PRC MND website and the PLA Daily. It’s like it didn’t happen. Are they purged already?”

“The strange goings-on around Zhang Shuguang and Wang Gang further illustrates the fact that while Xi remains top dog overall, his influence on PLA high-level personnel developments is less than total, in fact, subject to disruptions by generals who do not see eye to eye with Xi, but who publicly dare not openly contradict Xi,” Willy Lam, a senior fellow of the US think tank Jamestown Foundation told Asia Sentinel.

The photograph of the promotion ceremony showed an unsmiling Xi, who looked unhappy, standing with Generals Zhang Shengmin, Zhang Shuguang, and Wang Gang.

A possible clue to why references to Zhang Shuguang and Wang were deleted from the defense ministry’s website lies in the identity of their ultimate backers. Wang is believed to be a protégé of former Chinese President Hu Jintao, who was unceremoniously escorted from a meeting by Xi in October 2022. Wang’s major promotions came while Hu was China’s leader. Zhang Shuguang spent years as a PLA anti-corruption investigator under Zhang Shengmin and is therefore considered his protégé. He also served for a time in the northern Chinese command under Zhang Youxia.

Zhang Shengmin is believed to be an ally of Zhang Youxia (they are not related), Asia Sentinel reported on June 5, 2025. Both men belong to the “Shaanxi gang,” since Zhang Shengmin was born in Shaanxi province while Zhang Youxia was born in Beijing, but his ancestors hailed from Shaanxi, raising the likelihood that Zhang Shuguang is possibly an ally of Zhang Youxia.

When strategic passages become instruments of coercion, everyone pays the price, as the world is relearning to its sorrow from Iran’s disruption of navigation in the Strait of Hormuz for the past four months. The dispute is centered on Iran’s refusal to ratify the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), the international treaty that …

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In early June, General Uchikura Hiroaki, Japan’s joint staff chief, met in Hanoi with Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of National Defense Phan Van Giang and General Staff Chief Nguyen Tan Cuong to strengthen bilateral defense and security ties, the latest of continuing high-level exchanges between political leaders, prime ministers, foreign ministers, and defense officials of Vietnam and Japan.

These meetings have become regular, predictable, and largely free of the historical tensions or territorial disputes that complicate many relationships in East Asia. Driven partly by supply-chain diversification and “China Plus One” strategies, Japanese investment has expanded into advanced manufacturing, semiconductors, digital technology, renewable energy, and critical minerals with an objective not of balancing China through military alignment, but of raising the costs of coercion by strengthening Vietnam’s own capabilities and improving regional resilience. This approach remains fully consistent with Vietnam’s long-standing policy of strategic autonomy and its “Four No’s” defense doctrine.

In addition, Vietnam has become an increasingly important production base for Japanese companies seeking resilience in an uncertain geopolitical environment and rising hostility to Japanese interests in China. Japan’s average annual FDI in Vietnam hovers around US$6.5 to US$7 billion, with cumulative investments nearing US$78.6 billion. In contrast, Japan’s FDI in China, while still commanding a much larger historical cumulative base and seeing occasional yearly spikes, has cooled on average due to supply-chain diversification and geopolitical tensions.

Economic cooperation now extends beyond trade and investment to economic security, technological innovation, and supply-chain resilience. Both countries increasingly view economic competitiveness as an integral component of national security.

Developing Trust

Japan has earned Hanoi’s confidence by consistently respecting Vietnam’s independent foreign policy while providing long-term political and economic support without demanding strategic alignment. The two countries also cooperate closely through ASEAN, the East Asia Summit, ADMM-Plus, APEC, CPTPP, and the United Nations. Both consistently affirm the importance of international law—particularly the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea—as the foundation for maintaining peace, stability, and freedom of navigation in the South China Sea.

While Tokyo openly advances its vision of a Free and Open Indo-Pacific, Hanoi continues to pursue strategic autonomy through diversified partnerships. These approaches are not contradictory. Rather, they are complementary, allowing both countries to deepen cooperation without forcing Vietnam into bloc politics.

The exchanges are an example of how the Indo-Pacific region is increasingly shaped not by rigid military blocs but by flexible partnerships among states seeking greater security without sacrificing strategic autonomy. In an era of intensifying great-power competition, middle powers are finding new ways to strengthen resilience while avoiding the constraints of formal alliances. Few relationships illustrate this better than the growing partnership between Vietnam and Japan.

Over the past five decades of diplomatic relations, Hanoi and Tokyo have transformed a once-cautious post-war relationship into one of Asia’s most stable and consequential strategic partnerships. What began as economic engagement following Vietnam’s Đổi Mới reforms in 1986 has evolved into a Comprehensive Strategic Partnership encompassing diplomacy, trade, infrastructure, technology, and defense. Yet neither country seeks a military alliance. Instead, both have deliberately chosen a model of deep cooperation that preserves policy independence while advancing shared strategic interests. That balance explains both the durability and the growing importance of the relationship.

Political Trust as Strategic Capital

Trust has become the partnership’s most valuable asset, with economic ties remaining the partnership’s strongest pillar. For decades, Japan has been Vietnam’s leading provider of official development assistance, financing ports, highways, power generation, urban transport, and industrial infrastructure that supported Vietnam’s modernization. Today, the relationship has moved well beyond the traditional donor-recipient framework.

The most significant transformation has been in security cooperation, with military dialogues, cybersecurity cooperation, maritime domain awareness, coast guard coordination, humanitarian assistance, disaster relief, and peacekeeping becoming regular components of the bilateral agenda. Through its Official Security Assistance program, Japan has strengthened Vietnam’s maritime capabilities by supporting surveillance, training, and transfers of non-lethal equipment.

Yet strategic autonomy requires more than diplomatic flexibility. It also depends on the institutional strength, transparency, public trust, and a clearly articulated set of principles and shared values that allow a country to sustain independent decision-making over the long term. For Vietnam, the challenge is not merely maintaining balanced relations among major powers, but ensuring that its strategic autonomy is supported by stronger institutions, greater societal trust, and clearer principles guiding its international engagement. In the 21st century, countries do not choose sides only through alliances; they also choose the principles and norms that shape their place in the international order.

Tokyo understands Vietnam’s strategic constraints. Hanoi, in turn, values Japan’s technological capabilities, institutional reliability, and long-term commitment. The result is a partnership that deepens steadily without transforming into an exclusive security coalition.

Different Paths, Shared Goals

A comparison with Japan’s relationship with the Philippines highlights the flexibility of Tokyo’s regional strategy. The Philippines, backed by its alliance with the United States, has pursued deeper military interoperability with Japan through reciprocal access arrangements, logistics agreements, expanded joint exercises, and major defense equipment transfers. Vietnam has chosen a different path—one centered on capacity-building, institutional cooperation, and greater self-reliance rather than alliance integration.

Neither model is inherently superior. Each reflects different historical experiences, domestic political choices, and strategic circumstances. Japan’s success lies not in exporting a single security model but in adapting its partnerships to the priorities of each country.

The Vietnam-Japan relationship demonstrates that strategic trust does not require a formal alliance. As great-power competition intensifies, middle powers are becoming increasingly important in shaping the regional order. By combining economic interdependence, technological cooperation, and measured security engagement, Vietnam and Japan have built a partnership that strengthens resilience while preserving sovereign decision-making.

In that evolving landscape, the Vietnam-Japan partnership offers a practical model for the Indo-Pacific: stable, adaptable, and rooted in mutual respect. It demonstrates that strategic autonomy does not require strategic ambiguity, and that middle powers can shape the regional order not through alliances alone, but through partnerships built on trust, resilience, and shared principles.

Khanh Vu Duc is a frequent contributor to Asia Sentinel. He is a lawyer and part-time law professor at the University of Ottawa who researches on Vietnamese politics, international relations, and international law.

As widely expected, Malaysia’s Barisan Nasional last weekend swept to a resounding victory in elections in the populous southern state of Johor across the strait from Singapore, taking 48 of 56 seats and leaving its rival, Anwar Ibrahim’s Pakatan Harapan coalition, with just eight, compounding the prime minister’s hopes to stay in power on the national level in general elections to be held before February 17, 2028.

The signs have been clear for a long time. Anwar didn’t become prime minister in 2022 because his coalition won the majority of parliamentary seats. The King proposed a “unity government” in which parties that had just battled it out in a bruising general election, propagating different ideologies and different dreams, were coerced into supporting an uneasy coalition government which, to its credit, has lasted three and a half years as Anwar, a gifted public speaker, persuaded many more politicians to team up with him to avail themselves of the benefits of being in government.

Malaysians were fatigued and drained by a massive scandal that had ended the 61-year reign of the Barisan Nasional as well as three successive governments since 2018 and accepted the Anwar coalition, choosing to believe the alternative, an Islamic government headed by the rural Islamist Parti Islam se-Malaysia, or PAS, would have been worse. Buoyed by an international reputation as a moderate Muslim seeking to establish a multiracial government in a country that has long suffered from tense relations between its Malay Muslim majority and its Chinese and Indian minorities, Anwar promised reformasi and stability.

The country got neither, signaled almost immediately when Anwar appointed the scandal-scarred United Malays National Organization’s President Ahmad Zahid Hamidi, literally on trial at the time for looting his own charitable organization, as his deputy prime minister. The charges mysteriously disappeared, with investigations into several UMNO leaders suddenly slow-walked into oblivion.

Anwar went back on his promises. He said there would be no politicians on boards of government-linked companies and asked all who had been appointed before to resign. And subsequently, he proceeded to fill these boards again with politicians. One after another, the promises made during the polls kept being broken. Anwar promised a clean government, but it was anything but clean.

In addition, as the leaders of Anwar’s coalition took over ministries, critics say, they displayed overweening arrogance to both the general public and government officials, a mistake in a bureaucracy put in place by 61 years of UMNO leadership and hardly receptive to tone deaf ministers. A promise to reform Malaysia’s education system has seen the schools become more Islamic, with the government actively expanding religious curriculum and implementing policies rooted in Islamic teachings across public schools nationwide.

The Chinese-dominated Democratic Action Party, the largest party in Anwar’s coalition and for 60 years the loudest voice in criticizing and preaching against corruption, power abuse and good governance, kept silent and reveled, enjoying the perks of power and fame. They paid for it.

People saw through them. The talk of “what’s the alternative to Anwar? Surely not PAS?” started floating. The DAP lost every seat it contested in last year’s Sabah state election and Anwar’s Parti Keadilan Rakyat won only one (more by default). In Johor, the DAP contested 17 seats and won six. Overall, the Pakatan Harapan coalition was left reeling from a disastrous outcome, winning only eight of the 56 seats it contested.

Top DAP leaders, including Secretary-General of DAP Anthony Loke, dismissed the danger signals. The only two who concurred in reports of alarm were the old guard, led by former Party Secretary-General and National Chairman Lim Kit Siang and his son, Lim Guan Eng.

It was shortly after that Zahid Hamidi invited all the leaders and members he had expelled a few years earlier to rejoin UMNO, still a member of Anwar’s Pakatan Harapan coalition. That is when Anwar himself was splitting his Parti Keadilan Rakyat by almost openly supporting moves by his more ambitious and crafty leaders to rid themselves of Reform- minded deputy president Rafizi Ramli and his supporters. Anwar lost the support of one-third of his members of parliament, and with that, their already dwindling supporters. Zahid’s actions helped UMNO as several thousand returned to the fold - including the popular Khairy Jamaluddin and Hishamuddin Hussein.

This was complicated by the royalty flexing their muscles beyond their constitutional roles, as Asia Sentinel reported on July 10, while Anwar’s PKR became even more splintered. Anwar seemed to bend over backwards to appease, disappointing his pro-reformasi followers by refusing to take a position on Azam Baki, the subject of a massive Bloomberg article accusing him credibly of enriching himself by turning the Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission into a protection racket for corrupt businessmen, succumbing to heavy tariffs imposed on the country by the Trump administration in Washington. The disappointments continued.

The result – a weary, fatigued voter base, struggling with rising costs and fear of the future – has shown in Sabah and Johor that they’d rather support anyone but Anwar and his coalition. This trend may continue in state elections in Negri Sembilan, in Malacca, and in the coming general elections. It’s not that UMNO has shown it has changed. But it is the devil that people know, and for all of its corruption, it has had six decades of learning how to deliver to voters. Pakatan Harapan, after almost eight years in power, is the devil people have begun to despise because it didn’t deliver on its promises. Malaysia in the past several years has been able to get by because of the fear among moderates that his coalition could be replaced by an Islamic government. Faced with the logic of choosing Anwar’s coalition – the dilemma of complacency – humans have preferred known misery over terrifying freedom and uncertainty.

Political parties today spend fortunes on consultants, data, algorithms, influencers, and war rooms. But Anwar and his advisers appear to have lost out on the fact that they are not dealing with machines. They are dealing with humans in a country disillusioned by scandal and unkept promises. A voter can go into the polling booth – if he’s not a committed party man which the majority are not – and change his mind at the last second. Party strategists of today can come up with slogans: “Ini Kali Lah; Jalan Teruih; Keluarga Malaysia; Endless Possibilities…” (This is the Time; The Road to Recovery; Malaysian Family; Endless Possibilities)

These are slogans. They don’t put food on the table, nor do they create jobs. Ultimately, that’s what counts; that’s what happened in Johor. The future, probably coming sooner than Anwar’s coalition wants on February 17, 2028, does not look bright.

Kalimullah Hassan is a veteran political commentator. A version of this story is posted on his Facebook page.

The Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) seems finally to have tired of the civil war and violence in Myanmar. Five years of feckless diplomacy, never ASEAN’s forte, have produced nothing. A new approach is now being tried. Engagement,

On July 12, Philippine Foreign Minister Theresa P. Lazaro hosted an informal gathering of ASEAN foreign ministers in Bangkok hosted by her Thai counterpart Sihasak Phuangketkow. The meeting included a briefing from Myanmar’s foreign minister Tin Maung Swe on recent developments inside the country. The Myanmar side claimed that detained former leader Aung San Suu Kyi is in good health, following years of ASEAN leaders trying to obtain access to her, a significant sticking point in ASEAN high-level contact with the Myanmar military leadership.

The statement released by the Thai ministry signaled a significant shift in ASEAN’s direction. “The meeting recognized the need for direct engagement and dialogue between ASEAN and Myanmar to help build confidence, foster meaningful progress, and create the conditions for calibrated re-engagement between ASEAN and Myanmar. ASEAN will continue to follow developments in Myanmar closely and remains united in its shared objective of helping Myanmar achieve peace and stability through dialogue and consensus-building.” This informal gathering is clearly the brainchild of Thailand. Sihasak and Tin Maung Swe met bilaterally on Saturday.

The gathering is the highest level recognition of the Myanmar regime since ASEAN released the Five Point Consensus (5PC) in April 2021 following a military coup just months before. Military chief Min Aung Hlaing attended that emergency meeting in Jakarta, and was subsequently prohibited from attending annual ASEAN summits. His subsequent diplomatic strategy was to stonewall the regional grouping and reject all efforts to implement the 5PC. Sunday’s meeting may indicate that playing the long game of obstinacy has paid off for the dictator. The meeting comes ahead of the annual ASEAN Foreign Ministers Meeting in Manila from 21-23 July.

There is a significant impasse on the Five Point Consensus between the regional grouping and Myanmar. In May, the statement following the ASEAN Summit in Cebu, “reaffirmed our united position that the consensus remains our primary reference to address the political crisis in Myanmar” while noting its “minimal progress on the implementation” and discussed the creation of a dedicated Special Envoy for Myanmar.

ASEAN remains divided over the consensus. Following Sunday’s meeting, Singapore’s foreign minister Vivian Balakrishnan posted on Facebook, “(w)e reaffirmed the importance of the Five Point Consensus – it was and it remains valid.” Malaysia, too, is exasperated by Naypyidaw’s truculence. But it may be all too late.

Yet on July 9, the joint houses of the Myanmar parliament, the Pyidaungsu Hluttaw, following days of debate, passed a motion calling on the new ‘government’ to review the consensus. This is merely a parliamentary stamp on five years of the military regime rejecting ASEAN’s diplomatic efforts. By any measure, it has been a dismal failure since it was foisted on Min Aung Hlaing in April 2021. Every ASEAN meeting, and there are multiple ones annually, reaffirms the consensus as the cornerstone of the grouping’s approach, including by its many ‘dialogue partners.’

The political masquerade of the past year in Myanmar is ample evidence for ASEAN of reform. Three rounds of charade elections, the convening of national and regional parliaments, Min Aung Hlaing’s assumption of the presidency, the reshuffling of the top military leadership, the announcement of 100 days of peace to lure armed groups to negotiations and several rounds of peace talks with armed groups that signed the 2015 Nationwide Ceasefire Agreement (NCA).

The Union Consultative Council formed in February may appear to be a reconstituted State Administration Council (SAC) which was formed after the coup and abolished in mid-2025, but in reality, Myanmar is a dictatorship. This arrangement likely won’t raise too many eyebrows in ASEAN, itself a grouping of authoritarian states and illiberal democracies, and Min Aung Hlaing as a ‘civilian’ president may be more acceptable. His first state visit to Laos in early July could potentially herald more regional acceptance as a leader. A visit to China in June was another major step.

The foreign ministers’ informal meeting will further demoralize an already divided and increasingly hapless political opposition, particularly the exiled National Unity Government (NUG) and Ethnic Armed Organizations (EAOs). The unity government’s statement released on Sunday was plaintive, insisting on inclusion as an equal partner but obviously not realizing ASEAN doesn’t take them seriously. Their chance for diplomatic reform and recalibration years ago was squandered.

Indonesia and Malaysia hosted multiple opposition stakeholder meetings in 2024 and 2025, lauded for the inclusiveness of multiple actors and groups. Yet these meetings also revealed the complexity of inter-group tensions, the confusing array of opposition political claims, and competing diplomatic entreaties from the NUG and groups such as the Euro-Burma Office (EBO) and various EAO leaders.

ASEAN will also likely be aware of reversals on the military front in Myanmar. Over the past 18 months, the army and air force have increased counter-offensives backed by air strikes and increasingly sophisticated drone strikes in multiple locations. The dubious nature of claims to ‘effective territorial control’ of more than half of Myanmar that emerged from 2022 appears even less credible now. Fighting between EAOs, and increasingly between various People’s Defense Forces (PDFs), supports the narrative of potential state collapse. There is an increasing urban-rural divide of reality. Visitors to Yangon would barely register that Southeast Asia’s most destructive civil war is raging close by.

For ASEAN, the military appears to have weathered the storm. It may be with a resigned shrug, but the grouping appears set on rehabilitating the revamped regime.

David Scott Mathieson is an independent analyst working on conflict, humanitarian, and human rights issues in Myanmar.