One of the more baffling puzzles of Malaysian politics is the convoluted political relationship of Dr Mahathir Mohamad, twice Prime Minister of Malaysia (1981–2003 and 2018–20), and Anwar Ibrahim, once Deputy Prime Minister (1993–98), which thrived for many years but suddenly collapsed, and, after many more years, almost unbelievably revived, but just as incredulously crashed again.

Mahathir and Anwar's political relationship formally began in March 1982. In July 1981, Mahathir became President of the United Malays National Organization (UMNO) and Prime Minister. Six months later, Anwar left Angkatan Belia Islam Malaysia (ABIM, or Malaysian Islamic Youth Movement), which he had led for eight years, to join UMNO. Thereafter, Anwar's political career blossomed. By 1993 he was UMNO Deputy President and Deputy Prime Minister. But just when he appeared to be UMNO's “anointed successor” to the prime minister, Anwar was sacked by Mahathir on 2 September 1998, expelled from UMNO the next day, arrested on 20 September, prosecuted on charges of corruption and sodomy, convicted and handed prison sentences of six years for the first charge and nine for the second. This shocking end to the Mahathir- Anwar relationship sparked a dissident movement, Reformasi, and inspired the opposition to battle the regime past Mahathir's retirement in November 2003.

The two men had an unexpected reconciliation in September 2016. Anwar was then in prison again although he was earlier freed in September 2004. The reconciliation brought Mahathir's new party, Parti Pribumi Bersatu Malaysia (Bersatu, or United Pribumi Party of Malaysia) into the Anwar-led opposition coalition, Pakatan Harapan (Harapan, or Pact of Hope) to fight the regime of Najib Razak who was embroiled in the 1 Malaysia Development Berhad (1MDB) financial scandal. There was a Harapan agreement that if Harapan won the impending general election, Mahathir would lead its government for about half of its five-year termbefore handing the premiership to Anwar. At the 14th General Election (GE14) of May 2018, Harapan won and Mahathir became the “7th Prime Minister”.

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 policymakers and scholars to contemplate the diversity and dynamism of this exciting region.

THE EDITORS

Series Chairman:

Series Editor:

Editorial Committee:

INTRODUCTION

Communism was seen as a serious threat and a perennial concern in Malaya (Malaysia from 1963), Singapore, and elsewhere in Southeast Asia in the post-World War II period until the 1980s. Many people today, especially the younger generation, may not be aware of this. The communist parties of the Soviet Union and China had set up or abetted the setting up of communist parties in the developing world to foment communist takeover of these countries through political mobilization and violent revolution.

The years 1989 to 1991 saw the end of communist regimes in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union, starting with the collapse of the Berlin Wall in 1989. In Southeast Asia, 1989 saw the signing of the peace agreements between the Communist Party of Malaya (CPM) and the governments of Malaysia and Thailand. The Cold War in Southeast Asia formally ended with the signing of the Paris peace accords in 1991 to settle the Cambodian conflict.

It is therefore appropriate at this juncture, thirty years after the end of the communist threat in Southeast Asia, to reflect on the security anxieties that communism then caused in Singapore and non-communist Southeast Asia.

The paper is divided into five parts. The first deals with the security threat posed by the CPM; the second with fears of a “nutcracker” strategy involving Indonesia and Vietnam, the two prongs of the nutcracker; the third on the impact on Southeast Asia of the capture of South Vietnam by communist forces in 1975; the fourth on the dangers posed to the region by Vietnam's invasion of Cambodia in 1978 and ASEAN's and Singapore's responses to it; and the last a concluding section on the close relations that Singapore enjoys today with Vietnam, Cambodia and China.

THE COMMUNIST PARTY OF MALAYA

The CPM insurgency in Malaya, which began in 1948, brought much insecurity for over a decade, marked by bombings, assassinations, ambushes, train derailments, fire-fights in the jungle, curfews and numerous security checks. The insurgency was defeated by British and Malayan military, police and intelligence forces and the Emergency (the euphemism by which the British called the insurgency) was declared over in 1960.

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

• • The year 2021 marks the thirtieth anniversary of the signing of the Cambodian Peace Agreements which ended the Cambodian conflict and the Cold War in Southeast Asia.

• • Communism was a perennial concern in Singapore and Malaya (later Malaysia) from 1948 into the 1980s—a concern which younger generations may not appreciate. The threat came largely from the Communist Party of Malaya (CPM) supported by China, and from Vietnam.

• • The CPM waged a guerrilla war in Malaya. They were defeated by 1960 but tried to revive the insurgency in the 1970s. In Singapore they attempted to attain political power through a united front with the People's Action Party during the 1950s.

• • The victory of the communists in the Vietnam War in 1975 alarmed non-communist Southeast Asia. The concern was aggravated by Vietnam's invasion of Cambodia in 1978.

• • ASEAN states strongly opposed Vietnam's action on the grounds that the invasion and occupation of a sovereign country violated a fundamental principle of international law. Successive UN General Assembly resolutions supported the ASEAN position with significant majorities.

• • Thailand was pivotal to the security of the rest of non-communist Southeast Asia. Had it succumbed to Vietnam's pressures and reached an accommodation with Hanoi, the security of the rest of Southeast Asia would have been endangered. Thailand stood firm. Had it not done so, the people of Southeast Asia would be living in a different world today.

INTRODUCTION

On 12 February 2020, the Indonesian government sent a draft for a Bill, the Cipta Kerja Bill, to the Indonesian parliament. Soon afterwards the RUU Cipta Kerja Working Committee (Panitia Kerja, or PANJA) was established with representatives from all parties sitting in the committee, except the Justice and Prosperity Party (PKS). The PANJA Committee was headed by a member of Gerindra Party, with a deputy chairperson from the Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI-P). This committee would prepare material for the various stages of the House of Representatives consideration of the Bill. The PDI-P deputy chairperson was Rieke Diah Pitaloka. At the time of the formation of the committee, Pitaloka expressed the sentiment that the government should withdraw the Bill for the time being, and that, in any case, there were opportunities to amend it. She urged that all clauses relating to Labour Law be removed and that the Bill be renamed the Ease of Investment and Permits Bill (Kemudahan Investasi dan Perizinan). Pitaloka had associated herself with trade union campaigns for reforms over the previous ten years. The government did not act on Pitaloka's suggestions.

Eight months later, the Bill was passed by an overwhelming majority of parliament on 5 October 2020. All member parties of the governing coalition voted for the Bill. Two political parties outside the governing coalition voted against it, although they had not actively campaigned against it during the previous seven months. These were the Demokrat Party, which had been a member of the PANJA, and the PKS. The Bill was signed into law by President Joko Widodo on 2 November 2020.

During the intervening seven months, which coincided with the growth of the COVID-19 pandemic, the Bill was strongly supported by employer and business groups and opposed by labour, civil society and environmental groups. The bigger trade unions criticized the Bill and lobbied the government to drop the Bill; and there were some street protest campaigns, with the smaller trade unions playing a leading role. Major educational institutions, particularly those connected to private religious schools, opposed specific aspects of the Bill dealing with education. During the deliberation of the Bill, only two amendments of substance were made, removing the provisions relating to the education and media sectors.

THE CONTENTS OF THE LAW

The RUU Cipta Kerja is a massive document, over 1,000 pages long.4 It includes revisions to 73 existing laws, and consists of 15 chapters and 174 articles.

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

• • During 2020, the Widodo government introduced a new Bill for parliamentary consideration. This was the Employment Creation Law. It was also known as the Omnibus Law as it introduced amendments to seventy-four other existing laws on a wide range of matters.

• • The Bill provoked considerable controversy, especially provisions reducing protection of labour rights and weakening environmental protection laws. Several provisions introducing further deregulation of a range of activities also attracted criticism. The labour and environmental issues were the basis for a series of street protest mobilizations during the year. These also involved mobilizations where university students participated.

• • The Law was justified by the government in its supplementary material to the legislation as a strategy to attain a specific growth rate in the gross domestic product and arguing that the revisions in the Law were necessary to substantially improve what was described as Ease of Doing Business.

• • Despite the protests and criticism, the law was passed by a big majority in Parliament on 5 October 2020. All member parties of the governing coalition voted for the Bill, and it was signed into law by President Joko Widodo on 2 November 2020.

• • The political journey of this Bill into Law revealed very clearly the homogeneity of the Indonesian political elite, represented by the parliamentary parties, all of whom either supported or acquiesced to the Law. It was also revealed that sustained and mobilized opposition to the Law was basically confined to a section of civil society, with some sections, including important large trade unions, campaigning in only a moderate and constrained way.

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 policymakers and scholars to contemplate the diversity and dynamism of this exciting region.

THE EDITORS

Series Chairman:

Series Editor:

Editorial Committee:

The Philippines, in early 2020, became the first country in Southeast Asia to record a COVID-19-related death. A Chinese national visiting from Wuhan died on 1 February. The Philippines ended the year as the country in Southeast Asia the worst affected by this pandemic in combined public health and economic terms. It hammered the Philippine economy, with many predicting that the pandemic's global spread would turn the country's reliance on overseas remittances from a socio-economic buffer to a vulnerability.

The government's crisis response—highlighted by a particularly long and severe lockdown—exposed serious shortcomings in policy planning and implementation by the national government; very credible allegations of corrosive corruption in key government agencies; and President Duterte's ineffective crisis leadership. Many have argued that President Duterte's rhetorical focus on fighting corruption, delivering public services, and the poor is a key factor in his enduring popularity. In 2020, the president and his administration fell short of this rhetoric in practice.

Despite the depth and duration of the ongoing COVID-19 crisis and the ineffective government response, however, Philippine domestic politics and foreign policy have gone largely undisrupted. President Duterte remains very popular and is in a uniquely powerful position among post-Marcos presidents entering the final quarter of their respective single six-year terms. Philippine foreign policy remains in volatile tension between the president's personal embrace of China and President Xi Jinping and his animus towards America and the bureaucratic state and the Philippine population's opposing preferences. Fortunately, despite predictions of doom, overseas remittances continue to act as an economic buffer, and indeed a more important one, given the steep and sustained fall-off in trade and private capital formation in 2020.

This overview chapter begins by looking at the public health and economic impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on the Philippines. It then looks at how both of these were aggravated by the shortcomings of the national government's crisis response. The next two sections look at how domestic politics and foreign policy remained largely undisrupted. The conclusion offers some predictions for 2021.

The Philippines’ Pandemic

As is clearly shown by the Philippine Department of Health's COVID-19 Tracker website, from March 2020 until the end of the year, the Philippines experienced one continuous wave of recorded COVID-19 cases that crested at a high of 22,813 new recorded cases in the second week of August.

As one of the smallest states in Asia, Brunei Darussalam has demonstrated an enduring stability amidst a turbulent global pandemic in 2020. Though the COVID-19 pandemic proved to be Brunei's sternest test in decades, the country appears to have come through it relatively unscathed, and at the end of 2020 was preparing for a post-pandemic period, including assuming the ASEAN chairmanship in 2021. Brunei in 2020 illustrated the resilience of a monarchy of a small state supported by a largely contented society, with the domestic social compact between the government and its people intact.

The Social Contract Imperative

The social contract tradition in political philosophy refers to the tacit agreement between a ruling government and a ruled society in which social benefits are provided by the state in return for some restrictions on individual freedom. The social contract in contemporary times is often based on trust and cooperation, in what is also described as accumulating social capital—the greater the social capital, the stronger the social contract. For policymaking purposes the social contract is more commonly described in many countries as the social compact. It is seen as a centrepiece of state-society relations, with the government as the interlocutor, and is integral to legitimizing the authority of a government over the citizenry within state boundaries. The stronger the social compact, the greater the legitimacy of the government.

The adhesive that has long held Brunei together is the social contract between its government and society underpinned by Malay cultural traditions and Islamic principles, encapsulated in the ideological trinity of Melayu Islam Beraja (MIB, or Malay Islamic Monarchy). To this end, the kingdom, under the reign of the present sultan, Sultan Hassanal Bolkiah, provides extensive social welfare for its people such as in education and healthcare, with them paying virtually no tax. This helps preserve the social compact by keeping the society contented with, and pragmatically accepting of, monarchical rule alongside the cultural rationale of reverence for the monarchy. This social compact undergirds Brunei's strategic culture, which continues to be defined and moulded by the MIB.

Apart from sporadic instances of youth restiveness, it was the battle against the COVID-19 pandemic that proved to be the sternest test for the monarchy-led Bruneian government in sustaining the social compact throughout 2020.

In 2020 the COVID-19 pandemic hit Southeast Asian states hard. From a health perspective, the region has managed the pandemic comparatively well, with fewer reported cases and deaths as a percentage of the population than other parts of the world. But measures applied to stem the spread of the disease have caused a deep economic contraction in the region, seen rises in unemployment and poverty, strained already fragile governmental institutions, and in some cases created political instability. There are further variations within the region, depending on levels of trade dependency, state capacity and the stringency of control measures implemented by national governments. For the vast majority of states, minimizing the health impacts and pulling through the depths of the economic recession caused by the virus has become the immediate and top priority that dominates all others.

Beyond these domestic coronavirus challenges, ASEAN member states experienced a sharp deterioration in their external strategic environment in 2020 as the already tense relationship between the United States and China became even more hostile and confrontational. From March 2020 onward, the Trump administration accelerated its campaign against a range of Chinese Communist Party (CCP) policies and diplomatic narratives. It placed the blame for the global calamity squarely on the CCP, alleging a cover-up by party officials about the source of the outbreak and citing the failure of China's leaders to respond rapidly to quarantine the local outbreak, to urgently close internal and international borders, or to disclose key information about the infectiousness and severity of the virus to the World Health Organization and the world. It doubled down on criticisms of Chinese trade and investment practices, its political influence over the World Health Organization, and human rights issues in Hong Kong and Xinjiang. The Americans also implemented policies and laws to limit the capacity of Chinese companies to dominate high technology sectors of the world economy.

For its part, the CCP has displayed an acute insecurity and defensiveness of its competence, right to rule and global standing and it has gone on the attack against all forms of domestic and international criticism. It has done so through a mixture of “wolf-warrior” diplomacy, economic coercion against critics like Australia, and further clamping down on sources of internal dissent.

The word of the year for 2020, according to Collin's Dictionary, was “lockdown”. Cambridge Dictionary opted for “quarantine”. Oxford decided there were too many choices to even pick one at all. In the trade world, the best choice for 2020 may have been “disruption”. This paper considers three different sources of tension in trade that created significant disruption: a continuing collapse of the global trading system, the stressors caused by the unfolding US-China trade war, and the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic with its associated lockdowns and quarantines.

A Creaking Trading System

Heading into 2020, there were already significant signs of trade and economic distress building up in the system. The primary institution for managing global trade issues has been the World Trade Organization (WTO). Created in 1995 out of the post–World War II institution, the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT), the WTO had been struggling to make progress on a variety of fronts.

The GATT/WTO system was built on creating a more liberal and open trading regime based on sets of negotiations among members. Each of these exercises, called a “round”, broadened and deepened the levels of commitment among members. This included creating sets of trade rules that included goods, services and intellectual property rights along with country-specific commitments.

The rulebook at the WTO is legally binding with an institutional structure called the dispute settlement system to manage conflict between member governments. Heading into 2020, however, at least two important stressors had appeared in the WTO regime.

First, the rulebook itself had not been fully updated since 1995. Other than a relatively modest addition to handle customs or border procedures more consistently, the 164 members in the WTO have been unable to agree on a comprehensive set of new rules. The Doha Development Round was launched in 2001 and never reached fruition. It has now been a quarter of a century since the last round was completed. Not every trade rule requires updating or adjustment, but the world has seen some significant unanticipated changes in all this time. An inability to manage updated rules has left governments trying to interpret existing rules for new situations, which is not ideal.

After his inauguration to a second term in October 2019, Indonesian president Joko Widodo (or “Jokowi”) had looked forward to consolidating his political and economic legacy. Politically, his rule was stable. Jokowi commanded high approval ratings in the electorate and a large majority in the Indonesian legislature, and the turmoil associated with the large-scale Islamist mass protests in 2016 and 2017 had died down. Some of the president's former opponents had joined his government (his rival in the 2019 elections, Prabowo Subianto, became Jokowi's defence minister), while others kept a low profile or were even in long-term foreign exile (the leader of the 2016–17 demonstrations, Rizieq Shihab, resided in Saudi Arabia to escape legal investigations at home). Economically, Jokowi wanted to continue his vast infrastructure projects, make Indonesian businesses more competitive, and move the nation's capital from the overcrowded Jakarta to a remote location in East Kalimantan. His second term, the president hoped, would stand in clear contrast to that of his predecessor Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, which had been widely criticized as a missed opportunity.

Of course, 2020 did not turn out the way Jokowi, or anyone else for that matter, had expected. From January, the world's news cycle was dominated by COVID-19, fundamentally changing political and economic trajectories. Jokowi's annoyance with this massive interruption of his second-term plans was palpable. At the start, he tried to ignore the issue and project a business-as-usual attitude, hoping that the virus would spare Indonesia. Indeed, he initially viewed the outbreak as an economic opportunity for Indonesia as it could—or so he claimed—absorb tourism flows from countries badly affected by the pandemic. Once Indonesia reported its first cases in early March, Jokowi realized that action was needed, but he was adamant to limit such action so as not to damage the economy. As a result, many epidemiologists criticized Jokowi for his soft approach, which led Indonesia to record the highest death and infection numbers in Southeast Asia. However, despite the fact that most of Indonesia's Southeast Asian neighbours did significantly better in containing the virus, Jokowi largely succeeded in keeping Indonesia out of the international COVID-19 headlines. To no small extent this was because of the massive outbreaks in the United States, Europe and parts of Latin America, which overshadowed Indonesia's own poor record.