Pinkaew Luang-aramsri, 2013

INTRODUCTION

Throughout the year 2013 and in the early stages of the following year, Thailand was filled with political excitement generated by Red Shirt demonstrations both in Bangkok and outside, in support of the elected Yingluck Government. This led many to believe that the Red Shirt movement was a strong democratic force, particularly in the northeast and northern regions. It appeared ready to oppose the return of an authoritarian regime at all costs, and if a military coup were to be staged, the Red Shirts seemed prepared to establish a government in exile, or even carve out a Federation of Isan-Lanna States from Thailand's existing territory.

Andrew Walker's 2012 study of peasants in rural Chiang Mai presented a vivid picture of the extent to which villager-farmers and rural politics have been transformed since Thaksin's Pheu Thai Party came to power in 2001 and created a strong impact there after the coup in 2006. There are two frequently-quoted studies on the Red Shirts in Northeast and Northern Thailand. The first was written in November 2013 and published in 2014, and the second was published in September 2014. Both confirm the findings in Walker's study, describing strong political activism among Red Shirt villagers in these two regions. They tell a developing story of villagers growing into politically-active and brave fighters, ready to protect and sacrifice their lives for the sake of democracy. The second work is particularly important because its field research was conducted on Red Shirts in the conflict zones of the four districts of Chiang Mai Province. These are the districts of Mueang, Sankampaeng, Doisaket, and Fang-Mae Ai (considered the capital of the Red Shirts in the North).

The economic, political, strategic and cultural dynamism in Southeast Asia has gained added relevance in recent years with the spectacular rise of giant economies in East and South Asia. This has drawn greater attention to the region and to the enhanced role it now plays in international relations and global economics.

The sustained effort made by Southeast Asian nations since 1967 towards a peaceful and gradual integration of their economies has had indubitable success, and perhaps as a consequence of this, most of these countries are undergoing deep political and social changes domestically and are constructing innovative solutions to meet new international challenges. Big Power tensions continue to be played out in the neighbourhood despite the tradition of neutrality exercised by the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN).

The Trends in Southeast Asia series acts as a platform for serious analyses by selected authors who are experts in their fields. It is aimed at encouraging policy makers and scholars to contemplate the diversity and dynamism of this exciting region.

The economic, political, strategic and cultural dynamism in Southeast Asia has gained added relevance in recent years with the spectacular rise of giant economies in East and South Asia. This has drawn greater attention to the region and to the enhanced role it now plays in international relations and global economics.

The sustained effort made by Southeast Asian nations since 1967 towards a peaceful and gradual integration of their economies has had indubitable success, and perhaps as a consequence of this, most of these countries are undergoing deep political and social changes domestically and are constructing innovative solutions to meet new international challenges. Big Power tensions continue to be played out in the neighbourhood despite the tradition of neutrality exercised by the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN).

The Trends in Southeast Asia series acts as a platform for serious analyses by selected authors who are experts in their fields. It is aimed at encouraging policy makers and scholars to contemplate the diversity and dynamism of this exciting region.

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

On 19 October 2014, Joko Widodo, known to all as Jokowi, was inaugurated as Indonesia's seventh president. He had no personal, career, class, or political ties to the outgoing administration and was viewed by the policy-making establishment as a newcomer lacking the attributes considered necessary to lead the country. Concerns were voiced about the future directions and constancy of Indonesian foreign policy. More directly, would term-limited President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono's outward-looking internationalism be replaced by Jokowi's inward-looking nationalism? Now, approaching two years into Jokowi's term of office, it is appropriate to essay preliminary answers to these questions.

FOREIGN POLICY AND JOKOWI'S ROAD TO THE PRESIDENCY

President Jokowi was elected on 9 July 2014, defeating retired General Prabowo Subianto. The presidential candidates could not have been more different. Prabowo had followed a military career. Once commander of the army's feared Special Forces (KOPASSUS), he has a record of alleged human rights abuses which, if elected, would have made him unwelcome in liberal democratic countries. He is a former son-in-law of President Suharto and a staunch defender of the Suharto government when it was toppled in 1999 and Indonesia's democratization began. Jokowi came to office from a Central Javanese middle-class socio-cultural stratum with no roots in Indonesia's pre-democracy political history. Before entry into politics, he was an entrepreneur in a Surakarta (Solo)-based furniture manufacturing and exporting company. His political career began with him being the mayor of Surakarta [Solo] (2005–12), whose administration emphasized infrastructure, education, social welfare, and anti-corruption. Backed by the Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI-P [Partai Demokrasi Indonesia-Perjuangan]), he was elected governor of Jakarta in 2012.

The new Jakarta governor was soon touted as a possible presidential candidate in 2014. The PDI-P is the political vehicle of former president (2001–04) Megawati Sukarnoputri, daughter of Indonesia's first president, Sukarno. Defeated twice for election to president by outgoing president Yudhoyono, Megawati still had her eye on the presidential prize. Polling showed that Jokowi was overwhelmingly preferred over Megawati. In the competitive atmosphere of an open presidential seat, Megawati had little choice but to anoint him as the party's flag-bearer if the PDI-P hoped to win the election. For both Megawati and Jokowi, it was a marriage of convenience, not of passion. Megawati made it known that she considered Jokowi beholden to her.

The theme for the Australian National University (ANU) 2015 Myanmar Update Conference was “Making Sense of Conflict”. The weeks leading up to the conference, held in the first week of June, added to the theme' poignancy and urgency; at least 25,000 Muslims were fleeing persecution and poverty by making the dangerous trip from Rakhine State across the Bay of Bengal (UNHCR 2015). My paper at the conference presented findings from research into the ways people in Myanmar talk about this violence and, in particular, how those Buddhists who direct a sense of threat and antagonism towards Muslims explain and justify it. I had spent the preceding six months managing a “listening project”, born from my belief that to make sense of conflict we must listen carefully to the way it is discussed in everyday life. This research formed a part of the Myanmar Media and Society (M.MAS) project, a partnership between St Antony's College, Oxford University and the Myanmar ICT for Development Organization (MIDO).

One of the things I raised in my conference presentation was the similarity between discourses about Islam that I was hearing in Myanmar and those I had heard in my home country, the United States. We should note parallels between these discourses, I said, and consider what it may mean that the arguments called upon to justify anti-Muslim sentiments in Myanmar are strikingly similar to those I remember in the US after 9/11. You may notice similarities to discourses in the US or Australia today, I also suggested. The first member of the audience to ask a question refused this parallel. “Why are we spending so much time listening to bigots?” she asked. “Would we give such careful attention to the beliefs of Holocaust deniers?” The question presented a different analogy, in which those expressing anti-Muslim sentiments in Myanmar are equivalent to deniers of the Holocaust. This was its refusal: the question positioned discourses in Myanmar as far from home as possible, more analogous to Holocaust deniers — a fringe group most reviled — than anything commonplace on the streets of Sydney, New York, or London.

I would like to take this question seriously by asking: what are the consequences of such a refusal? Conversely, why might it be important to explore relationships between anti-Muslim discourses currently circulating in Myanmar and those elsewhere?

A few weeks after Myanmar's historic November 2015 national elections, images of opposition leader Daw Aung San Suu Kyi crouching in grass to pick up trash went viral on Facebook. Following high-profile meetings with President Thein Sein, Senior General Min Aung Hlaing and former dictator Than Shwe, Daw Suu made one of her first public appearances since the poll: to collect rubbish in her electorate in Yangon. After fifteen minutes flanked by jostling photographers — who she commanded to “Help pick up the garbage!” — she disappeared back into her car and zoomed away (Fuller 2015).

At the Lady's orders, similar clean ups were occurring across the country, led by local party members and welfare groups. In Taungoo, an hour or so south of Naypyitaw, volunteers from local welfare groups and private schools collected rubbish from the streets surrounding a government housing project next to the railway tracks. Above an entrance to the housing project, a large green signboard erected prior to the November 2015 election declared this a ‘USDP [Union Solidarity and Development Party] village’. That morning though, an oversized dump truck backed slowly through the gate, driven by a member of a local welfare group wearing a red T-shirt of Aung San Suu Kyi's National League for Democracy (NLD).

Within the housing project, in a small clearing surrounded by dilapidated wooden houses and filled with decades of accumulated domestic waste, women bathed and washed clothes from a well while chatting about the spectacle surrounding them. As the dump truck reversed into the clearing, NLD candidates fresh from their political clean sweep of the township a few weeks prior helped a squatter move his makeshift bamboo hut out of the path of the incoming vehicle. A few minutes later, a bulldozer driven by an off-duty policeman began to scoop up piles of old rubbish, lungyis and even a writhing snake, and dumped everything into the waiting truck.

The businessman who donated the industrial vehicles stood proudly alongside the township development officer, watching as decades of accumulated filth was removed. Both took photos on their phones, loading them to Facebook as local residents looked on, bemused yet pleased. “Is this a political campaign?”, I asked the businessman, who was wearing a flashy golf cap to keep the sun off his face.