Author: Vikram Nehru, Carnegie Endowment
Thailand has witnessed an upsurge in violence throughout its unsettled south. The message is clear: more repression will not pacify the region, so the government and the military need to adopt a different strategy.
On 31 March 2012, two separate and apparently coordinated bomb explosions killed 14 people and wounded hundreds more in Yala Province in southern Thailand, making March the region’s most violent month in recent years (73 violent incidents led to 56 deaths and injured 547 others). Read more…
Author: Vikram Nehru, Carnegie Endowment
Philippine President Benigno S. Aquino III is facing a crucial test of his leadership and has an opportunity to show his country that he is serious about reform.
The Supreme Court has ruled that his family must distribute almost half of its 25,000 acre holding in Hacienda Luisita — the family’s large sugar plantation located in the province of Tarlac — to some 6,300 farmers. Read more…
Author: Vikram Nehru, Carnegie Endowment
There is growing speculation that the 13th Malaysian general elections will be held in June this year, the prospect of which is raising political temperatures.
But massive demonstrations in Kuala Lumpur on 28 April organised by Bersih, a civil society coalition for clean and fair elections, may have thrown a spoke in the government’s wheels. The demonstrations ended in tear gas and pitched street battles, and some 380 people were arrested. Read more…
Author: Vikram Nehru, Carnegie Endowment
As Indonesia’s revised 2012 budget was being discussed in parliament in late March, thousands of people across the country protested the government’s plan to increase the domestic fuel price.
Amid news that the demonstrations were becoming increasingly violent, President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono lost crucial support within his own ruling coalition and failed to push the vote through parliament. Read more…
Author: Vikram Nehru, Carnegie Endowment
Over 30 years since launching its one-child policy, China’s demographic dividend is abruptly coming to an end.
Not only is the Chinese labour force set to decline in absolute terms, the old-age dependency ratio (the number of people above the age of 65 for every person of working age) is expected to double over the next two decades, reaching the level of Norway or the Netherlands by 2030. Read more…
Author: Vikram Nehru, Carnegie Endowment
Last month the Malaysian and Southeast Asian media was abuzz with the dramatic twists and turns surrounding the trial of Anwar Ibrahim and the prospect of an early election in Malaysia.
Less noticed was an announcement by Malaysia’s sovereign wealth fund, Khazanah Nasional Berhad, that it had sold its 47.2 per cent stake in the country’s national car company, Proton, to Malaysian conglomerate DRB-HICOM. Read more…
Author: Vikram Nehru, Carnegie Endowment
Tensions continue to rise in the South China Sea following the Obama administration’s foreign policy ‘pivot’ toward Asia late last year.
There are many reasons for the pivot, but a principal motivation was to protect the freedom of navigation in the Malacca Straits and the South China Sea. Read more…
Author: Vikram Nehru, Carnegie Endowment
Some Chinese astrologers have pronounced that 2012, the year of the dragon, will be particularly volatile.
But you do not have to believe in the Chinese zodiac to know that Southeast Asia is likely to have a tumultuous year. Read more…
Author: Vikram Nehru, Carnegie Endowment
Political and economic reforms and the lifting of international sanctions have set in motion Myanmar’s re-entry into the family of nations.
Already, the release of over 600 political prisoners and other economic and political reforms, including the re-registration of Aung San Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy for the 1 April by-election, have paved the way for the restoration of diplomatic relations with the US and other Western countries. Read more…
Author: Vikram Nehru, Carnegie Endowment
With elections expected to be held in Malaysia this year, there is reason for concern that tensions could rise in the event of a close result — and a misstep by either side could lead to violence.
National elections have to take place by March 2013, but Prime Minister Najib Razak has indicated that they could likely be sooner. Read more…
