Introduction

Speaking at the inaugural India–ASEAN Summit held in November 2002 during the Eighth ASEAN Summit in Cambodia, Singapore's Prime Minister Goh Chok Tong portrayed India as one wing of ASEAN's jumbo jet, with the People's Republic of China (PRC) and Japan as the other wing. Leaving aside whether such a plane could take off, much less land, safely, the comment describes, certainly inadvertently, India's idiosyncratic ties with Southeast Asia both bilaterally and relative to the region's other formal partners. These attributes include: fresh and ancient links; importance and marginality; episodic engagement and occasional estrangement with long spells of detachment; and mutual insensitivity and over-sensitivity.

The erratic connections between India and Southeast Asia mean that a linear review of political, economic, and security ties will yield only a partial picture of current and possible future India–Southeast Asia relations. The approach employed here, therefore, is to briefly review the features of India–Southeast Asia relations, and then examine the manner and extent to which India's domestic politics and economics, its South Asian neighbourhood relations, and its foreign policy generally impinge upon its ties with Southeast Asia. For it is precisely these factors that have both facilitated and constrained India's rapprochement with Southeast Asia beginning in the early 1990s, and are likely to shape relations in the coming decade. The chapter concludes with a brief assessment of India–Southeast Asia relations.

The Curious Characteristics of India–Southeast Asia Relations

Though India's membership in Southeast Asia-wide political organizations is quite new (as are these organizations themselves), India's role in regional politics is not. The November 2002 inaugural India–ASEAN summit marks the acme of India's incremental inclusion in a network of ASEAN-driven initiatives that began with the establishment of an India–ASEAN “sectoral dialogue” in 1993. In 1995, India was elevated to the status of a full dialogue partner, and a year later India participated, for the first time, in the ASEAN Regional Forum (ARF).

Overview of the SOE Reform in Vietnam

The first state-owned enterprises (SOEs) in Vietnam were established by nationalization of privately owned enterprises and development of new SOEs from the 1950s. Given the backward state of its agrarian economy, these SOEs were constructed according to the Soviet model as this model, at that time, was perceived to be the quickest way to develop the economy. Generous investment in the SOE sector during this period brought about impressive economic results. The high rate of growth of industrial production, however, had masked the underlying defects of the SOEs: inefficiency and dependence on foreign aid. In spite of these defects, this model was again applied to the SOEs in the south of Vietnam after the unification of the country in 1975. As a result, despite a large amount of investment and the rapid expansion of the SOE sector, the economy experienced a crisis in the second half of the 1970s.

The threat of economic collapse forced the Vietnamese Government to review the economic strategy it was pursuing. Consequently, different policies were introduced from the early 1980s, which relaxed the rigidity of compulsory state plans. The SOEs were allowed to produce some non-planned products, sell them in the free market and enjoy a share of the realized profits. The changes had a strong impact on the behavior of SOEs towards production efficiency. However, the positive impact was short-lived as reform measures were partial in nature and were carried out within the frame of a centrally planned economy with the ultimate aim of strengthening that mechanism. These partial reform measures contributed to inflation during this period. The failure of the subsequent price, wage, and money reform in September 1985 directly caused hyperinflation with prices increasing by nearly 800 per cent in 1986 alone. The negative macroeconomic impact of this hyperinflation induced the next wave of reform in the second half of the 1980s.

Introduction

In April 2001, at the Ninth Congress of the Vietnam Communist Party (VCP), Nong Duc Manh replaced Le Kha Phieu as Secretary General. Manh came to office after nine years of service as Chairman of the National Assembly's Standing Committee. Reform of the National Assembly and its legislative capacity in order to transform Vietnam from arbitrary one-party rule into a “law governed state” has been a major goal of the VCP. It is designed to pre-empt domestic opposition and to maintain the VCP in power.

Manh represents the ideological centre of the Vietnam Communist Party. He had served on the Politburo for two full terms before his elevation to the top leadership post. The position of party Secretary General is not as powerful as it once was. The era of the party strongman is long over. It passed with the death of party leader Le Duan in mid-1986 after more than a quarter century at the helm. Since then, no party leader has served two five-year terms. Reformist Nguyen Van Linh only served one term in office (1986–91). His successor, Do Muoi, was elected to serve two terms but stepped down after only six years (1991–97). His replacement, Le Kha Phieu, served out the remaining four years of office but failed to secure election to a full five-year term.

As Chairman of the National Assembly's Standing Committee, Manh has had the task of turning party strategic guidance into pragmatic and workable outcomes. Manh successfully managed the reform of the National Assembly, transforming it from a rubber stamp body into a legislature that has come to play an increasingly important role in Vietnam's political life. Manh thus brings to his present position not only seniority but extensive experience in political brokerage, such as forging consensus when discordant voices are raised. This chapter reviews political developments in Vietnam during 2002 with a view towards assessing Nong Duc Manh's stewardship as party leader.

Two significant, electric developments occurred in 2002 in Myanmar, a country in which political change in the past decade had seemed glacial. The implications and effects of these turns of events, however, remained indeterminate at the year's end. These two events were the release from house-arrest of one important figure and the effective imposition of such arrest on another, and his later death from natural causes. Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, leader of the opposition National League for Democracy (NLD), was freed, and former General (also former President and Chairman of the Burma Socialist Programme Party until 1988) Ne Win and his influential daughter Sanda Win were placed under effective house-arrest. General Ne Win died on 5 December 2002. In a sense his death was an anti-climax. Both developments may have been interrelated. Both should have been causes for optimism. However, at the year's close, frustration and pessimism seemed more prevalent reactions. Although internal events predominated during this period, foreign relations, especially with Thailand, became significant too, and were not divorced from domestic concerns.

The Release of Aung San Suu Kyi

More excitement concerning Myanmar whirled through international circles in 2002 compared with the May 1990 elections in that country and the subsequent year in which Aung San Suu Kyi received the Nobel Peace Prize. At that time, and since 1989, she had been under house-arrest, and was only released in 1995. On 6 May 2002, the military junta, known since 1997 as the State Peace and Development Council (SPDC), released Aung San Suu Kyi after nineteen months of modified, de facto house-arrest, her second, with the promise that she could travel internally and engage politically in rebuilding the opposition National League for Democracy (NLD), with which she has been associated and which the military had methodically castrated through the arrest of many of its key members and the closure of numerous local offices.

The year was marked by economic and security crises on the one hand, and on the other by national consultation, self-reflection, and self-critique, all with the aim of remaking a nation that by most accounts has not even been made yet. But a nation-building project with a clear start and a conceivable moment of completion is little more than a fiction, though a useful one because it narrates (and so explains) past, present, and future in ways that orientate individual experiences and values to the needs, purposes, and destiny of the imaginary nation. But Singapore, as with all living nations, can only be alive if its meanings and purposes are the site of an inconclusive and dialectical relationship between conflict and celebration, a slippery and fragile balance that serves to re-enchant the national imagination within processes of globalization that curiously homogenize as much as they fragment.

Dealing with Terrorism: The Strategies

On 11 September 2001, explosions rippled out from the economic and political capitals of the most powerful nation on earth, and the rest of the unsuspecting world was stunned. Ordinary people reacted with sympathy, empathy, and righteous indignation, while the political élite grappled internationally with the difficult question, “What is to be done?” For Singaporeans, the answers were clear as an increasing stream of media images put real names and faces to the shadowy, and at one time faraway, world of international political violence. It was no longer just a story of an American tragedy that inspired, far beyond its shores, a sense of pity and terror. It had become a sobering realization that slippery, transnationally organized, and highly motivated networks brought the possibility of terrorist activity much closer to home.

In less than three months, the Singapore Government detained under the Internal Security Act fifteen men suspected of terrorist activities that included drawing up plans to attack U.S. interests in Singapore such as the Embassy and other commercial buildings, and even American personnel who were known to travel by the Mass Rapid Transit (MRT) system from the station at Yishun, a public housing estate.

I. INTRODUCTION

Indonesia is a fascinating amalgam of ethnicities, languages, cultures, and religions, united by history, by a common national language, by political will and sometimes by sheer force, and spread over thousands of separate, distinct, and often distant islands. That such a country would have a high degree of regional autonomy would seem to make sense but surprisingly the regions in Indonesia until recently did not have much autonomy and were administered mainly by the central government. This led to a lot of resentment towards the centre and particularly towards Java and the Javanese who dominate in politics and in the central government.

Addressing a call for more regional autonomy, the Habibie government passed new laws that promised the broadest autonomy to the regions and the Wahid government adopted regulations under the new laws. The laws and regulations came into force on 1 January 2001. This decentralization has been referred to by some as the “Big Bang” — Indonesia moved from a government structure that was highly centralized to one of the most decentralized in the world (at least on paper) and did so in about 27 months from the People's Consultative Assembly (MPR) decree opening up the regional governance reform in October 1998 1 until the coming into force of the laws on 1 January 2001. Many believe that no country has ever decentralized so much so suddenly.

This article will look at the provisions of the new regional autonomy laws. It will, in particular, examine the political context that led to their adoption, their contents including their shortcomings, the many difficult tasks faced during the implementation of the laws over the past two years, and the possibility of amending the laws. It will then look very briefly at the separate autonomy laws adopted for special regions.

I have elsewhere made a detailed legal analysis of the laws and regulations just before their coming into force and also written on the legal consequences of the regional autonomy laws on regional minorities in Indonesia.

Introduction

The rejuvenation of Philippine–American security alliance in the aftermath of the 11 September 2001 terrorist attacks on the United States has created opportunities and expectations for both countries in their fight against international terrorism. For the Philippines, supporting Washington's war essentially opened channels for increased U.S. military assistance that enabled the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) to gain the upper hand in its fight against local Islamist terrorist and secessionist groups led by the Abu Sayyaf Group (ASG) and the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF). On the other hand, the United States gained much more from the revived alliance because it was able to secure a mutual logistics accord that would enable it to use Philippine territory in its campaign against international terrorism. The security interests of the Philippines and the United States on the issue, however, are by no means absolutely mutual. This chapter examines the nature and dynamics of Philippine–American security relations since 11 September, and looks at the influence of political and economic factors in the domestic, regional, and international levels that continue to shape the Philippines’ policy of supporting the United States’ war against international terrorism.

Bilateral Alliance: An Overview

Philippine–American security relations, dormant since the removal of the U.S. military bases in Clark and Subic Bay in 1992, were reinvigorated following the tragic event of 11 September. Philippine President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo and U.S. President George W. Bush have both considered international terrorism as a serious threat to international security, and both leaders have pushed for closer military co-operation between their two countries in the fight against terrorism. However, the mutuality of Philippine and American security interests on this issue was complicated by domestic and external factors that to some extent have constrained their revitalized bilateral alliance, especially for the Philippines. For one, the deployment of a small contingent of U.S. forces in Mindanao, in February 2002, caused the re-awakening of anti-American sentiments among Filipino nationalist legislators and civil society groups — a kind of reverse déjà vu that preceded the closing days of American military presence in the country in the early 1990s.

The editors are to be commended for publishing the thirtieth issue of Southeast Asian Affairs at a timely moment.

The articles contained in this issue are a reflection of the rapid and dramatic developments that have occurred over the past one year, both within and outside the region. The region remained preoccupied with the economic downturn, terrorism, and militant Islam. Efforts to revitalize ASEAN continued, with some hopeful signs that the major powers were paying more attention to the grouping.

I hope, as in the past, Southeast Asian Affairs continues to be a journal of interest for scholars, policy-makers, the business community, and the media.

While thanking the authors for their articles, the views reflected therein do not necessarily reflect the views of the Institute.

Introduction

On the face of it, 2002 should be seen — in the parlance of political science — as the year of intensification of Thailand's democratic “consolidation”. The promulgation of a new Constitution in October 1997 had been the culmination of five years of political reforms designed to exorcise the ghosts of frequent military coups, patronage, “money politics”, and vote-buying that long plagued the country's politics of representation. Less than three years later, 200 senators were elected to the upper chamber for the first time. The election of the 500-member lower house followed suit in January 2001. Concurrently, a clutch of so-called democratic institutions, revolving around the Election Commission, the National Counter Corruption Commission, and the Constitution Court, were spun into action as mandated by the Constitution in an effort to promote transparency and accountability of the political system. The stability and effectiveness of the government were constitutionally enhanced by new electoral stipulations that induced a consolidation of the party system towards larger political parties and by “party- list” mechanisms that enabled capable individuals to enter Cabinet relatively untainted by the mud slinging of election campaigns. Given the eclectic design of the Constitution, its initial implementation in the aftermath of the 1997 economic crisis generated pervasive optimism both at home and abroad. The Thai economy may have lost a decade of growth, but at least Thai democracy was on its way to fulfilment. Or so it seemed.

As 2002 drew to a close, it has turned out that Thailand's democratic consolidation is less than meets the eye. The government of Thaksin Shinawatra, the prime minister who ushered his Thai Rak Thai (TRT) party into power on a landslide victory in the January 2001 election, has arguably turned Thai democracy on its head. The TRT has monopolized the party system, marginalized the opposition, co-opted and coerced the media, extended its controlling tentacles over the military and the police, and shunned the dissenting voices of civil society groups.

Preface

In November 1998, while en route from Shanghai to Port Klang in Malaysia, the Hong Kong registered cargo-ship Cheung Son was approached just off the west coast of Kaohsiung in Taiwan by a small boat which appeared to be a Chinese Customs vessel. Left with little choice, the captain allowed the officers on board his ship, which carried a cargo of furnace slag. Once on board the Cheung Son, the Chinese ‘officers’, dressed in uniform and armed with guns, threatened the crew and took control of the vessel. After being held hostage for ten days, all twenty-three Chinese crew members of the Cheung Son were bludgeoned to death and their weighted bodies thrown into the sea. After the killings, the pirated vessel was sold within China for about US$36,000. The new owner hired a new crew and reportedly sold the vessel to an unknown Singaporean party for US$300,000.

The pirates, however, did not get away with their crime. In an interview granted to the foreign media, Chinese police officials recounted that investigation into the Cheung Son's disappearance had begun when the owner of the vessel reported loss of contact with the ship. As fishermen found the first bodies of the murdered crew members, police learned that a man from Shanwei “went to sea and came back with a lot of money and a dented boat”. The police officers eventually located the boat and its owner, who was hiding in a fishing village. He told the police that he had lent his vessel to two other men who could be found in Shenzen. Acting on this information, 300 officers raided a karaoke bar, where the alleged members of the pirate gang were celebrating. In the course of further investigation, the Chinese authorities discovered that some of the gang members had been involved in at least two other serious pirate attacks between August and November 1998. This information and the discovery of a celebratory photograph, taken by the pirates on board the Cheung Son, led to further arrests.

Introduction

Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad's unexpected announcement at the 2002 UMNO General Assembly of his intention to resign on 22 June was one of the most baffling developments for the country. Although his detractors had long clamoured for his stepping down but were almost resigned to tolerating his prolonged tenure, they too were surprised and puzzled by the timing of his resignation. Coincidentally, the second largest Malay party, the Islamic Party of Malaysia (PAS) also lost its leader a day after Mahathir made his own announcement to give up his premiership. Fadzil Noor, president of PAS for the last thirteen years, died on 23 June 2002. With the passing of moderate leader Fadzil Noor, there is speculation that PAS will take on a more hardline Islamic stand under the stewardship of Hadi Awang. The year 2002 was thus the penultimate year of Mahathir rule. On the surface, it passed by quietly for the country, although deeper within lies the makings of many future turbulences.

Transition or Continuity?

Mahathir's scheduled exit has become a subject of great reflection as to whether Malaysia in 2002 had entered a transition phase that will divide its Mahathir years from a post-Mahathir era. Will there be a continuity that will see the Mahathir legacy seamlessly enmeshed with the policies of his successor or will his departure mark a crucial political watershed? Most opted to see the future of Malaysia in the former, stable sense. Wary of what would await the future, moves were started by some quarters in October 2002 to pedal arguments and a “moral” plea for him to consider staying on, until this possibility was quickly denied by the Prime Minister's own son. Mahathir himself is unlikely to contest in the next election due in 2004.

Perhaps what was behind this momentum to prolong Mahathir's leadership was the rise of increasingly fractious national issues and political dilemmas all set to pepper post-Mahathir Malaysia.

Introduction

By most accounts, 2002 was a politically quiet year for Laos. Unlike previous years, there were no student protests or bomb explosions in the capital, Vientiane, and no reported rebel raids against army and police outposts. President Khamtay Siphandone's government grip on power appeared absolute with no open dissent in the ranks. Elections to the National Assembly were held on 24 February, and the government claimed, “all 2.5 million eligible voters nationwide used their right to vote.” There were few surprises when a total of 166 candidates competed for 109 seats in the Assembly, which in effect is little more than a rubber-stamp body controlled by the ruling Lao People's Revolutionary Party (LPRP). Khamtay is also the president of the Central Committee of the party, which controls all aspects of life and society in the country.

The lack of political debate and initiative was seen by most foreign observers as the main reason why Laos’ troubled economy showed few signs of real improvement during the year. A Western embassy in Laos stated in an internal memo dated 10 October that: “the trend is disturbing.” The currency, the kip, continued to slide, inflation rose, foreign investment declined, not enough revenue was being collected, and the government did not even have enough money to pay state employees, such as teachers.

In the foreign-policy field, there were problems in the relationship with Thailand over border demarcation. Laos also continued to demand the extradition from Thailand of seventeen Lao rebels who had been involved in an attack on a border post in 2000, and then taken refuge across the frontier. Despite promises from Thailand, the issue remain unresolved as 2002 drew to a close.

On the other hand, Laos moved closer to its old allies, Vietnam and Cambodia. In January, the prime ministers of Laos, Vietnam, and Cambodia met in Ho Chi Minh City to discuss the creation of a “triangle development” spanning the three countries.