Commentary ,Asia (Page 10)

JAPAN’S MIDDLE CLASS IS GETTING SQUEEZED

But most pressing is the risk of pricing out locals. On a trip last season to Rusutsu, a Hokkaido resort not far from Niseko, I was shocked to discover that lift prices had risen some 35 per cent to ¥8,800. This year they’ve gone up a further 31 per cent to ¥11,500.

For a Japanese resort, that’s quite the outlay, even if you’re making Niseko money. You would need to work more than 10 hours at the minimum wage in Tokyo, which the government has recently been proudly advertising on trains, to afford that – but just five hours at the minimum wage in Australia (not a wonder Japan sees so many Aussies).

On the other side, even that price is a fraction of what it costs in a US resort village like Vail, Colorado, suggesting there’s room to squeeze tourists more.

Ski shops in Kanda-Ogawamachi, Tokyo’s mecca for winter sports goods, are filled with travellers from Hong Kong, the US and Australia; locals seem a minority, with the number of skiers and snowboarders among them having dropped more than 75 per cent from its 1998 peak. As prices increase, Japan’s middle class is getting squeezed.

Some are trying different routes. During a recent visit to Appi, an up-and-coming resort in the Iwate Prefecture town that also hosts a campus of the elite British school Harrow, I was intrigued by the option to buy a limited-edition “Black Pass”.

The ¥33,000 lift ticket offers early access to the slopes, priority lift lanes and use of a piste only accessible by snowmobile. (As a journalist paid in yen, I stuck with the regular tickets, which are a reasonable ¥7,000 even after a hefty price hike this year.)

Other resorts have taken to offering residents from nearby towns discount tickets, or those that work out cheaper for the type of quick trips locals are likely to favour.

This kind of upselling is something that Japan, where ostentatious displays of wealth are less celebrated, will have to get used to. But you don’t have to visit Niseko to see this in action. Already in Tokyo, you can spot places that are charging “inbound prices” (i.e., those for tourists), which is leading some to call for a dual-pricing system that would offer cheaper services for locals.

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NOT WITHOUT CHALLENGES

Even then, the project is not without challenges. Global growth is forecasted to be sluggish while global investment is expected to be weak, which will make it difficult to attract investors to invest in projects which can attract more cruise tourists.

There is also considerable competition for cruise tourism on the west coast of Peninsular Malaysia. Penang, for example, is also a heritage city. It is bigger than Melaka and has well-developed tourist products.

Unsurprisingly, Penang has more domestic and foreign tourists than Melaka. It has also forged a collaboration with Royal Caribbean Cruises which upgraded the Swettenham Pier Cruise Terminal in 2021. The terminal now allows two mega-sized cruise ships to dock and can handle 12,000 passengers at the same time.

There are also reported plans to make Port Klang on the west coast as Malaysia’s homeport for international cruises.

To bring in cruise tourists, there is a need to develop attractive tourism products such as cultural shows, museums and handicraft activities. This requires cooperation with tour operators and the state.

In addition, there are sustainability challenges when large numbers of cruise tourists disembark in a small city like Melaka. As in the case of Penang, will Melaka be able to balance tourism with the preservation of its precious heritage status, which is the cornerstone of its attraction?

Hence while the revived Melaka Gateway project is now centred on cruise tourism alone, success in bringing in cruise tourists to Melaka extends beyond the mere construction of a cruise terminal and collaboration with cruise port operators. It remains uncertain whether the projected number of cruise tourists can be achieved in the short term and sustained in the long term.

Tham Siew Yean is a Visiting Senior Fellow at the ISEAS – Yusof Ishak Institute and Professor Emeritus, Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia. This commentary first appeared on ISEAS – Yusof Ishak Institute’s blog, Fulcrum.

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The golden era of Hong Kong films and Cantopop was in the 1980s and 1990s, when directors such as Wong Kar Wai and actors like Tony Leung and Jackie Chan took to Western theatres while superstars such as Leslie Cheung and Anita Mui led the region’s pop culture.

Last year, the Christmas holiday slump for Hong Kong films sent a worrying signal, with a 20-year box office low. One reason is a surge in Hongkongers travelling again after three years of COVID-19. Border reopening also means more choices for pop concerts outside the city.

CHINA’S LONG SHADOW ON CREATIVITY?

But with the sweeping national security law imposed by Beijing in 2020 that curtailed civic freedoms and silenced dissent and another new security law in the brewing, the long shadow on Hong Kong’s creativity remains.

Domestic films have been barred from public screening locally under a 2021 film censorship law. Over the past months, two of Hong Kong’s most prominent lyricists have moved abroad.

And earlier this month, a leading performing arts academy in Hong Kong abruptly cancelled a scheduled drama performance of the Nobel literature prizewinner Dario Fo’s Accidental Death Of An Anarchist, citing “legal risks”.

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BANDUNG, Indonesia: Voters in the world’s third-largest democracy, Indonesia, have elected former army general Prabowo Subianto as its eighth president, despite his campaign being dogged by accusations of human rights violations and electoral fraud.

According to the latest reliable polling, Prabowo – Indonesia’s defence minister – secured almost 60 per cent of the votes in what is considered as the largest and most complex single-day election in the world. This will likely mean that there will be no second round.

More than 200 million eligible voters in more than 17,000 islands cast their votes at more than 820,000 polling stations. The one-day voting process involved 5.7 million election workers, almost the size of Singapore’s population.

Given the complexity of the election, General Elections Commission will announce the official result on Mar 20. But since its first direct presidential election in 2004, Indonesia has relied on quick counts to know their new president on the election day.

According to these preliminary results Prabowo defeated other candidates – former Jakarta governor Anies Baswedan, who is backed by Muslim conservatives, and former Central Java governor Ganjar Pranowo, who is supported by the country’s largest political party, Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI-P).

Prabowo’s victory is a long time in the making. This is his fourth attempt to run for the country’s top jobs. He first ran as the vice presidential candidate for Megawati Sukarnoputri, PDI-P chairwoman, in the 2009 presidential election.

The pair lost to the Democrat Party’s chairman, Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono. In the 2014 and 2019 elections, Prabowo ran against the incumbent president, Joko “Jokowi” Widodo. He lost in close elections on both occasions as Jokowi had the backing of Megawati’s party.

It was after his 2019 election defeat that Prabowo accepted the offer of a job as Jokowi’s defence minister.

In this year’s election, Prabowo teamed up with Jokowi’s eldest son, Gibran Rakabuming Raka, after a dispute between Jokowi and Megawati over their choice of candidates. It’s an example of how unpredictable the manoeuvres by politicians in Indonesia can be to stay in power and retain their dignity.

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JOKOWI 3.0

In their campaign platform, Mr Prabowo and Mr Gibran pledged to uphold Mr Jokowi’s policies, emphasising “continuity” as the cornerstone of their political agenda.

Mr Jokowi’s influence would persist in a Prabowo administration via his eldest son, Mr Gibran. As the vice president, Mr Gibran’s role would be pivotal in shaping policy decisions, ensuring that Mr Prabowo’s administration remains under Mr Jokowi’s oversight.

Mr Prabowo’s priorities align closely with Mr Jokowi’s emphasis on advancing value-added manufacturing, expanding infrastructure, and developing the new capital, Nusantara. However, certain campaign promises, such as a free school lunch programme, should be taken with a grain of salt because they are unlikely to be financially viable and would potentially strain the state budget.

Under Mr Prabowo, Indonesia would continue to court foreign investment to foster economic growth. Mr Prabowo is likely to strengthen trade and investment ties with China, building on the groundwork laid by Mr Jokowi over the past decade.

However, closer economic cooperation with China will not come at the expense of weakened ties with other countries. Like his predecessors, Mr Prabowo would not compromise Indonesia’s foreign policy principle of non-alignment. He would continue to engage with all countries, as long as there are political and economic benefits coming from the cooperation.

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IMPLEMENTATION OVER IDEOLOGY

I interviewed Widodo twice, the last time during his 2019 re-election campaign, in an airport lounge. He was returning from one of his blusakans, a visit to the villages to listen to voters, and showed up dressed in an inexpensive-looking shirt and sneakers.

He emphasised “implementation” over “ideology” and the need for flexibility in a leader. He described himself as willing to play any role – director, producer, actor, “even the audience”. The frontrunner to replace him, former general Prabowo Subianto, has recast his image in a similarly approachable mould.

Throughout his tenure, Widodo made a priority of containing the deficit, which averaged less than 3 per cent of gross domestic product during his terms.

He inherited a plan for universal healthcare and pushed it hard, extending coverage from 56 per cent to 94 per cent of the people in a population of 280 million. That’s the largest programme of its kind in the world, yet public health spending still comes in at barely 1 per cent of GDP.

Widodo was also very conscious of keeping inflation low, saying rising prices hurt the poor the most. Food price inflation, a scourge that has toppled many a leader, trended steadily down on his watch.

But during his time in office, the economy did not enjoy the 7 per cent growth he had promised. Indonesia grew at a rate of 4 to 5 per cent a year, faster than most emerging nations certainly, but no faster than its Southeast Asian neighbours.

One of his top advisers told me that he kept urging Widodo to run a bigger deficit, in order to push growth faster, but the president remained cautious, choosing stability over a dash for growth. This might be explained by the way that 1998, the year riots provoked by the Asian financial crisis left Jakarta in flames, still lingers in the minds of many Indonesians.

Stability seems to suit them. In a 2023 Edelman survey of leading developed and developing nations, 73 per cent of Indonesians said they expected to be better off in five years – among the highest readings for any country.

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WHAT ABOUT THIS TIME AROUND?

So what are the prospects for women’s representation in the upcoming elections?

The barriers to women’s election have not changed and are unlikely to change in the short term. As a result, incremental progress is the best that can be hoped for.

Several women politicians were instrumental in the passage of the Anti-Sexual Violence Bill that passed last year. It’s possible that this increased visibility will give women a bump.

On the other hand, gender issues have not been central to the presidential or legislative campaigns so are unlikely to be uppermost in voters’ minds.

In fact, we may have reason to be more pessimistic. A seemingly minor change to the regulations on quota implementation means that for the first time in three elections, the requirement for a 30 per cent candidate quota will not be applied in every electoral district party list, but instead for the total number of women candidates of each party.

The changes date back to a controversial regulation issued by the Indonesian Electoral Commission (KPU) in April 2023. The regulation allowed rounding down when assessing the number of women a party has on a candidate list. For example, in electoral districts with eight seats, 30 per cent is 2.4 candidates. Previously, a party would have had to field three women candidates. Now, fractions can be rounded down if under 0.5, so in our example, parties are only required to field two women candidates.

A coalition of democracy and gender activists appealed against this regulation to the Supreme Court, and they won. But the electoral commission has indicated it will not enforce the court’s decision in this election. Democracy activists say that this means almost 18 per cent of party lists do not meet the requirement for 30 per cent women candidates.

It could be that these changes will have little impact. After all, we know that most candidates are elected from the first position on the list.

However, it sets a worrying precedent for women’s representation going forward. Our research shows the 30 per cent candidate quota for women is widely supported in Indonesia. Yet, it has effectively been watered down without public discussion and against the advice of the Supreme Court.

The actions of the electoral commission, apparently at the direction of a male-dominated parliamentary commission, underline again how the foundational institutions of Indonesian democracy are being eroded by the political elite.

Sally White is research fellow at Australian National University. This commentary first appeared in The Conversation.

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