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Soul Parking, Indonesia’s tech-enabled pioneer in innovative parking solutions announced a 100x growth in its topline revenue over the past three years.
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PUBLISHED : 19 Aug 2023 at 04:57
Thailand is aiming to become a top destination for Muslim tourists from other countries by 2027, according to deputy government spokeswoman Rachada Dhnadirek.
She said on Friday that Muslim tourists are one of the biggest targets for the country’s tourism sector due to their growing numbers and high purchasing power.
More than 3 million Muslim tourists visited the country last year, a massive jump when compared with 875,043 in 2017, she said, citing Department of Tourism (DoT) data, adding on average, a Muslim visitor stays for 13 days and spends about 6,000 baht per day.
To further promote the kingdom among Muslim tourists, the DoT has announced a five-year plan (2023–2027) to focus on improving the service quality of tourism operators to meet international standards, she said.
This includes introducing halal goods, services and activities that meet the needs of Muslim tourists and implementing technology to facilitate travellers, she said.
The DoT is working closely with related sectors to identify how to support Muslim visitors and promote Thailand as a Muslim-friendly tourist destination, she said.
This strategic plan is expected to help the country become one of the top destinations for Muslim tourists in the next five years, Ms Rachada said.
“The government sees the importance of opening for the Muslim tourism market,” she said. “We hope the policy can be carried on by the new government.”
According to the Mastercard-Crescentrating Global Muslim Travel Index 2023, Indonesia and Malaysia are tied for the number one spot, followed by Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Turkey.
Meanwhile, Thailand has welcomed more than 16.472 million international tourists since Jan 1, bringing 689 billion baht for the country, according to the Tourism and Sports Ministry’s Economics Tourism and Sports Division.
The top five groups are from Malaysia (2,581,251), China (2,027,823), South Korea (982,328), India (947,431) and Russia (884,839), it said.
From Aug 7–13, the country welcomed 577,136 foreign tourists, with the number of Japanese and Indian tourists increasing by 84.36% and 22.54% from last week, respectively, it said.
For this week, the ministry estimates that the country will welcome about 570,000 international tourists with the majority of them from East Asia, South Asia and Southeast Asia.
Among the many political dramas now playing out after Thailand’s May general elections is the continued unravelling of the Democrat Party (DP), the country’s oldest.
Thoroughly eclipsed by the progressive Move Forward Party and the populist Pheu Thai, the Democrats won only 25 seats in the 500-member House of Representatives in their worst electoral performance since the party’s establishment in 1946.
The party is now in disarray. Former party leader Jurin Laksanawisit resigned after the polls and now, three months later, the party has repeatedly failed to find a new leader amidst a fierce internal power struggle.
The Democrats’ demise is long in the making. The reasons for this are many – the abandonment of the party’s namesake principles, an unresolved identity crisis woven with inconsistent political stands and the emergence of more hardline conservative parties such as Palang Pracharath and Ruam Thai Sang Chart (UTNP) are to blame for the group’s fatal decline.
This downfall into irrelevance could serve as a doomsday reminder for its former archrival Pheu Thai. The May elections were also the first time in 20 years that Pheu Thai and former shells affiliated with ousted former Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra did not come out of the poll as the top party.
The long-standing electoral champion collected 141 seats as the runner-up to the more youthful Move Forward. Despite winning 151 seats, the reformist party seems likely to be muscled out of the ruling coalition by the military-backed conservative establishment.
Like the Democrats, Pheu Thai is a remnant of the old-fashioned political era. Thaksin and his family – most recently his daughter Paetongtarn – remain central to the party’s political manoeuvring and decision making. In the years past, Pheu Thai has not shown efforts to build itself and refurbish its political branding beyond the Shinawatra clan to adapt to new demographics of the Thai electorate.
Despite suffering endless cycles of political persecutions, bloody crackdowns on protesting supporters and two military coups ousting its elected government in the past 20 years, Pheu Thai appears to be repeating its own mistakes – and, even worse, walking in the Democrats’ footsteps to failure.
Heeding the conservative camp’s relentless endeavour to block Move Forward and its charismatic leader Pita Limjaroenrat from forming a government, Pheu Thai recently jumped ship from the progressive-led coalition pact and has optimistically established a new coalition with the would-be kingmaker Bhumjaithai Party.
They’ll start with a combined 238 seats in the lower house along with Chart Thai Pattana Party, another junior partner. But they’re still far behind the 376 seats required for the simple majority threshold in the House of Representatives’ joint session with the unelected 250-member Senate.
Such a number can never be reached unless the Pheu Thai-Bhumjaithai coalition brings in other conservative and military-affiliated parties alike, including the Democrats, the UTN and Palang Pracharath.
The latter two have ex-junta leaders Prayut Chan-ocha and Prawit Wongsuwon as patriarchs, respectively. It is especially note-worthy that Prayut and Prawit still have political influence on the senators handpicked by them when they were heads of the now-defunct junta National Council for Peace and Order.
Let alone reconciling with ultra-conservative and military-affiliated parties, even Pheu Thai’s infamous “mint-choc” partnership with Bhumjaithai appears problematic. The party was only formed in late 2008 by founder Newin Chidchobas through a sudden turn from Pheu Thai’s predecessor pro-Thaksin People’s Power Party.
Newin, an-ex minister in Thaksin’s government famously told the populist senior politician: “It’s over, boss!” before leading a number of like-minded parliamentarians to leave the party, form Bhumjaithai and join former Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva of the Democrats to form an unpopular government in 2009. In the eyes of Pheu Thai and Redshirt supporters even until recent elections, Bhumjaithai has always been untrustworthy and a symbol of betrayal.
During the street protest in May 2010, it was Abhisit who ordered a bloody crackdown on the protesters killing at least 90 people and injuring more than 2000. Although the Thai court already dismissed all the charges against Abhisit, Redshirts still demand accountability from the Democrats.
Equally important, after the 2014 military coup ousted the government of Yingluck Shinawatra, the resulting junta arrested and detained several Pheu Thai supporters for protesting the takeover. Some activists, including academics, reporters and commentators fled the country for fear of being arrested and jailed. Several years later, justice is still remotely far for them.
Looming large over Pheu Thai’s unpopular hedging position is Thaksin’s planned return to Thailand after 15 years in exile. With his daughter Paetongtarn likely one of Pheu Thai’s prime-ministerial candidates, the 74-year-old is still a big factor for the party. Rumours have that he had struck a deal with the pro-establishment camp to form a government without Move Forward and abandon the latter’s agendas – such as reforming the lèse-majesté law, which prohibits speech deemed critical of the monarchy – in exchange for leniency upon his eventual return home.
If the rumour is true or Pheu Thai managed to form a government without Move Forward, the modern-day politics of Thailand have nearly completed a full circle.
From mid-2000s to 2014, conservative camps used all means at their disposal, including two military coups, to stamp out Thaksin, his proxy parties and allies from the centre of power. After almost a decade under junta rule and elected but military-friendly governments, a far-left camp emerged under the late Future Forward and the current Move Forward parties to become a new opponent of the pro-establishment camp.
To block this emerging rival from taking office, Thaksin is recast overnight as not that bad at all. His former enemies and rivals have even spoken highly of him, or at least described him as a lesser evil.
However, if this is the case, Pheu Thai can review the Democrats’ demise as a crystal ball showing its destiny yet to come.
The Democrats’ miscalculated disrespect of the electorate in the 2000s, along with its cooperation with the military in an attempt to wipe out the so-called Thaksin regime and later joining a military-friendly coalition in 2019 all played a significant role in its self-destruction.
It might be still too early to evaluate if Pheu Thai’s departure from the original eight-party coalition to join hands with the conservative parties is rational and well-calculated.The party, however, still needs to very carefully explain its reasoning to its supporters.
In the case of a government that excludes Move Forward, Pheu Thai still has a chance – perhaps a dwindling one – to introduce popular policies from the less-controversial progressive agenda.
Otherwise, the Democrats’ past might be the future of Pheu Thai. The Thai public, which voted for Move Forward and Pheu Thai and against the conservative style of national governance, is growing less patient and tolerant to any breaking of electoral promises or political flip-flopping.
Maybe the ultimate question is how a Pheu Thai-led government would respond to possible massive street protests by Move Forward supporters. Would it trigger a military crackdown as the Democrat-led government did to Pheu Thai supporters in 2010? Only time will tell.
Sek Sophal holds a Master degree in Asia Pacific Studies from Ritsumeikan Asia Pacific University in Japan. He is a researcher at the Center for Democracy Promotion, Ritsumeikan Center for Asia Pacific Studies, as well as a contributing writer for Southeast Asia Globe.
Chhengpor Aun is a visiting fellow at the International Institute for Strategic Studies. He is also a graduate student in the Master of International Affairs Programme at the Hertie School in Berlin.
Krayon Digital, a digital multi-party computation (MPC) wallet solutions provider to start-up and enterprise clients, recently announced its strategic partnership with Israeli blockchain security consulting company, Sayfer.
“The partnership between Krayon and Sayfer is the result of a shared ambition – to revolutionise the security landscape within digital asset management,” Hamilton Keats, CEO and co-founder of Krayon told FinanceAsia.
Typically, a cryptocurrency or digital asset wallet is paired with a single private key that authorises transactions. However, this means that if the private key is stolen or lost, it creates a single point of failure where all digital assets secured by the key are exposed to risk.
Krayon, on the other hand, provides digital wallet solutions based on MPC technology: a cryptographic protocol that enables multiple parties to contribute to a database and run computations on its basis in a secure manner, without disclosing their own input to others.
The implementation of MPC technology involves splitting private keys into pieces, or shards, that can be distributed among multiple trusted parties, such as different departments within an organisation or even different geographical locations, Keats explained.
Such deployment avoids a single party having full access to a whole private key, which greatly reduces the risk of unauthorised crypto asset access or theft.
The partnership with Sayfer will enable the development and implementation of “a comprehensive suite of [security] measures”, including end-to-end encryption, secure key generation, storage and recovery mechanisms, multi-factor authentication, and continuous security audits.
The collaboration roots from an initial all-round assessment on Krayon’s protocols, where both parties saw a lack of attention to private key management in the field, Keats told FA.
“We’ve seen so many people dealing with tens of millions of dollars [in digital wallets], but with no private key management or private key security involved,” he said.
“Our joint efforts will bring together Sayfer’s expertise in key management audits and Krayon’s cutting-edge MPC technology to deliver a secure and seamless experience for our clients,” Nir Duan, Sayfer’s CEO, commented in the release.
Blockchain and beyond
Discussing trends across the Web3 space, Keats pointed to asset tokenisation as the most exciting use of blockchain technology across Asia’s capital markets. “This revolutionary process will completely streamline global financial markets and enhance transparency.”
Although issues around security, regulatory compliance, and private key management remain some of the main challenges for the success of Web3, Keats is bullish on regulatory progress across the region.
He noted that key hubs, including Singapore and Hong Kong, are building friendly innovation framework to create regional sandboxes, and some financial institutions are seeking to tokenise their assets. These, Keats said, send promising signals of “a massive opportunity” for players building the digital asset space.
Looking ahead, Krayon aims to make MPC a more accessible and flexible solution available across the digital asset management world. The key to this lies in improving usability, which includes simplifying the complicated wallet set-up process, and offering flexibility in distribution adjustments, Keats told FA.
Embedding MPC wallet solutions into broader digital asset capabilities, such as a consumer-facing app built upon the same software development kit (SDK), is a long-term goal for the partnership.
As enterprises usually manage larger amount of asset than individual users, the ability to recover the losses, or to prevent insecurity in the first place, is crucial, Keats reiterated.
“Our ultimate goal is to offer individual clients the same level of services as we are able to offer start-ups and enterprises,” he concluded.
¬ Haymarket Media Limited. All rights reserved.
Both a lot and very little happened on Saturday as voters in six Malaysian states headed to the polls to select their state assemblies.
But while the incumbent governments in each of the states were able to hold onto power, the results still have the potential to shift power dynamics in a profound way at the national level.
The state elections have taken on national significance due to the inconclusive results of last year’s general election, said James Chin, a professor of Asian studies at the University of Tasmania. With no decisive winner, long-time rival coalitions Pakatan Harapan (PH) and Barisan Nasional (BN) came together to form a unity government under Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim.
Saturday’s elections were the first opportunity voters have had to show their support or disapproval of this government at the polls.
“The main reason it is widely seen by everybody in Malaysia, especially the political class, as a referendum on Anwar Ibrahim is because [in] last November’s election there were no winners,” Chin said.
While Anwar’s PH was able to hold its own among the electorate on Saturday, BN saw its support in the ethnic Malay community further erode as its traditional support base defected within the rising wave of support for opposition coalition Perikatan Nasional (PN). This further loss of Malay votes, while in line with the outcomes of the last general election, may have longer-lasting implications for Anwar’s government.
Support for PH has been conspicuously low within the Malay community – the party received only 13% of the Malay vote in peninsular Malaysia during the last election. A show of support among the Malay community in this election was of particular importance for the Anwar’s government’s hopes of leading effectively, noted Chin.
“If the government is seen as not being Malay enough, or does not have the majority vote of the Malay community, then there are question marks about its legitimacy,” he said. “That will mean big problems for Anwar because it means that he doesn’t have the political capital to carry out fundamental reforms of the political and economic system.”
Identity politics has often played a key role in electoral cycles of the past. Such a mindset in last weekend’s election may have edged out questions of economic performance in some states, said Lee Hwok-Aun, a senior fellow and co-coordinator of the Malaysia Studies Programme at the ISEAS-Yusof Ishak Institute.
“Perikatan’s stranglehold in the Northeast and Northwest, and major inroads into rural and mixed urban/rural constituencies in all states, despite unremarkable economic track records in Kedah and Kelantan, confirm that the coalition now dominates the Malay heartland,” he said. “PH-BN continued to win by wide margins in urban areas that have not distinctly improved economically. I would say identity politics as championed by multi-ethnic parties played a role there.”
Identity politics aside, the largely status-quo result demonstrated the awkward coalition PH has formed with many of its old rivals has not overly damaged the party’s support among its core voter base. Still, the result far from guarantees these voters’ future support for a PH-BN coalition, according to Teck Chi Wong, a PhD candidate at the University of Queensland.
“The low transferability is not unexpected, but it could be part of an ice-breaking process,” Wong said. “Only time will tell.”
Despite being unable to flip control of any of the states with incumbent PH-BN governments, the opposition coalition PN was able to consolidate and further expand on the “green wave” they experienced in the general elections. The coalition – composed primarily of Islamist and Malay nationalist parties – was able to make inroads in all three government-controlled states.
In Penang, they increased their representation in the state’s legislature from one seat to 11 seats; in Selangor from five seats to 22 seats; and in Negeri Sembilan from no seats to five seats. The party also further consolidated its position in the ‘Malay-Belt’ states of Kedah, Kelantan and Terengganu by securing every seat in the Terengganu state legislature, all but three seats in Kedah and all but two in Kelantan.
So far as the election was a referendum on Anwar’s government, PN clearly feels its performance was strong – or at least is projecting this message. The coalition’s chairman, former Prime Minister Muhyiddin Yassin, declared victory and called on the leaders of the PH-BN coalition to resign their positions at a press conference following the announcement of the election results in all six states.
“It is true that the state election is a referendum on the people’s rejection of the PH-BN collaboration,” Muhyiddin said. “Anwar Ibrahim and Ahmad Zahid Hamidi must take moral responsibility and resign as prime minister and deputy prime minister.”
His coalition’s electoral gains in Malay constituencies came at the expense of BN and UMNO, the party which has historically represented the country’s Malay majority in government. The results mirrored those of the last general election, where UMNO underperformed due to voter dissatisfaction with the party’s perceived corruption problems.
In last year’s general election, Wong said, this resulted in “a Malay revolt against UMNO” which drove many Malay voters to support PN as an alternative. As such, it was vital for UMNO to staunch the flow of Malay voters leaving the party in these state elections, both for the stability of the party and the unity government as a whole.
“If UMNO is not able to penetrate the rural Malay heartland states of Kelantan, Terengganu, and Kedah, then the federal government will be unstable,” said Chin in an interview before the election.
Unfortunately for UMNO, they failed in this task. With the spectre of corruption still lingering over Malaysia’s “Grand Old Party”, UMNO won just 19 of the 108 seats it contested in the election. However, despite failing to deliver the Malay vote and with it the political capital Anwar needed to maintain a stable unity government, there are unlikely to be any serious repercussions within the party for UMNO leadership, said Wong.
“Although there will be (and are already) calls for Zahid Hamidi to step down as the party president, they are unlikely to turn into a strong movement within the party against Zahid,” he said. “Many leaders who are not happy with Zahid were already purged before the state elections; and within UMNO, the power is highly centralised in the hands of the president.”
Ultimately, the weekend’s state elections reinforced many of the trends seen in November’s general election. But it is likely too early to tell whether Anwar and his unity government will be able to alter the country’s course.
“A lot of people are saying that eight months is too short a time for the government to try to convince these Perikatan supporters to change their minds,” said Chin. “The government simply does not have enough time to pursue new policies.”
SINGAPORE: Lucasfilm is winding down operations in Singapore after nearly 20 years in the country, with parent company Disney citing economic factors affecting the industry. Lucasfilm’s visual effects and animation studio, Industrial Light & Magic (ILM), has been operating in Singapore since 2006. The studio was founded as Lucasfilm Animation Singapore in 2004 toContinue Reading
SINGAPORE – Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim’s administration survived a key electoral test over the weekend, losing support to a conservative opposition bloc but maintaining its incumbency of state governments in midterm polls that nonetheless served as a sobering early referendum on his nine-month-old “unity” government.
The August 12 state elections resulted in a “3-3” outcome, meaning the Pakatan Harapan-led (PH) government and right-wing opposition alliance Perikatan Nasional (PN) each clinched three states out of the six that were up for election, with the latter making significant inroads nationwide in key Malay Muslim majority constituencies.
The results had broader implications, especially for the Barisan Nasional (BN) coalition and its main party, the United Malays National Organization (UMNO), which won only 19 of the 108 seats it contested. Analysts see the electoral drubbing as further proof of UMNO’s diminished role as a national political force after its previous six decades of uninterrupted rule.
Calls for reform within UMNO have resurfaced amid its lackluster performance, which saw the party’s share of seats across six states fall by more than half from 41 with no wins in Malay-majority Terengganu or Kedah. The dismal showing has stoked speculation that deputy premier Ahmad Zahid Hamidi, UMNO’s embattled president, could face a leadership challenge.
Internal strife within UMNO and demands for Zahid’s resignation, as some senior party figures have already expressed openly on social media, could potentially test the stability of the unity government in the months ahead given the pivotal role Zahid played In Anwar’s ascension to the premiership after November general elections resulted in a hung parliament.
Zahid is the subject of an ongoing corruption and money laundering trial, making his senior position in government all the more controversial. Already a liability for sacking his rivals to tighten his grip over UMNO since his appointment as deputy premier, Zahid’s failure to boost Malay Muslim support for the avowed reformist government has cast further doubt on his political utility.
“A widespread perception among the Malay electorate, in particular, that the UMNO leadership is corrupt has been building up since the [2013] general election,” said veteran political analyst Chandra Muzaffar. “It peaked in the recent state elections because UMNO continues to be led by a man facing 47 corruption-related charges who is hell-bent on remaining in power and has rid the party of those who are critical of his wrongdoings.”
With a rallying call of “dulu lawan, sekarang kawan” (once foes, now friends), proponents of the PH-BN alliance, a previously unthinkable pairing of political adversaries, had certain hopes of UMNO attracting Malay voters to Anwar’s PH coalition, which enjoys strong support from non-Malay minority communities, though less so among ethnic Malays who account for some 60% of the 33 million population.
A survey conducted by the Kuala Lumpur-based research firm Ilham Centre in July found that Anwar’s approval ratings among minority Chinese (88%) and Indians (81%) in the six states holding elections were overwhelmingly positive. The data also showed that only 24% of Malays, around one in four respondents, were satisfied with his performance as prime minister.
The PH-BN pact only proved viable in Negeri Sembilan, where it won a two-thirds majority with BN contributing 14 out of 31 state seats. BN failed to contribute more than two seats to the government in all other states. Selangor, Malaysia’s wealthiest state, was the only of the six contested to have a government without a two-thirds majority, with PH-BN winning 34 out of 56 seats.
Despite big talk on the hustings, right-wing opposition bloc PN failed to flip Penang, Negeri Sembilan or Selangor as it boasted it would, but it still has much to celebrate. Its candidates picked up 15% to 30% more votes in a majority of seats compared to November’s election. Of the 245 state assembly seats up for grabs, PN took 146 seats compared to PH’s 80 and BN’s 19 seats.
PN chairman Muhyiddin Yassin, a former premier and political veteran, said the results represented a “huge wave calling for change” and that Anwar and Zahid had a “moral responsibility” to resign from their posts. “PN’s roaring success in garnering Malay support shows that PN is now the main political platform for Malays. UMNO is no longer relevant,” boasted Muhyiddin at a press conference.
Wong Chin Huat, a professor and deputy head of the Asia headquarters of the UN Sustainable Development Solutions Network at Malaysia’s Sunway University, said voters’ shift away from UMNO stems from grassroots discontent with Zahid’s leadership and perceptions that the party has been relegated as a junior partner in government, having only contested a small number of seats.
“Zahid cannot be officially challenged as president, but pressure may mount for him to step down as president or deputy premier and be replaced by his deputy, Mohamad Hasan,” he told Asia Times. Without leadership renewal and reinvention, “UMNO may try to shift the blame to its alliance with PH and pressure the government to move to the right, which would destabilize the government.”
Muzaffar added that “though an open, outright challenge against Zahid Hamidi may not happen immediately, it is quite conceivable – given UMNO’s electoral debacle – that other UMNO leaders will come together and try to coax him to resign as UMNO president. Zahid’s departure in this manner will not have repercussions for the political system.”
In his post-election speech, Anwar gave assurances that his government would remain stable and called for a cooling of the political temperature following what observers saw as one of Malaysia’s most divisive ever election campaigns. “All parties, win or lose, should join hands to defend the peace and focus on the dignity of the nation and champion the public interest,” he said.
Malaysia’s political divide was on full display during campaigning, with both rival coalitions resorting to scare tactics on the stump. PN’s largest member, the hardline ultraconservative Parti Islam SeMalaysia (PAS), leaned heavily into racial and religious sentiments and proved adept at harnessing social media platforms like TikTok to sway younger voters.
PAS turned in a stellar performance, winning all but two of 45 seats in a landslide victory in Kelantan and fully capturing Terengganu, leaving the state without an opposition. The Islamist party, which stunned observers by outperforming in November’s general election, also helped PN win a two-thirds majority in Kedah state, clinching 33 of the 36 seats in the state assembly.
PN’s narrative familiarly accuses Anwar of being a proxy for non-Malays, warning that Muslim and Malay rights will be marginalized under his leadership while also more credibly taking shots at PH’s embrace of graft-tainted UMNO. Anwar, in turn, dismissively implied that PAS-led states were examples of backward governance, dog-whistling to non-Malay fears of fundamentalist religious rule.
In a separate viral exchange between Anwar and a non-Malay student who asked him whether race-based education quotas could be replaced by a meritocracy system, the premier came off to many as impatient and combative, telling her that doing so would be disastrous and cause PH to “lose all the elections in this country, and you will suffer more in this country run by PAS [and PN].”
“PN continues to exploit the concerns of the Malay-Muslim majority and leverage identity politics. Anwar tried to woo Malay-Muslim voters with divisive rhetoric/stances of his own but this failed to bolster PH-BN’s support and may have just alienated progressive voters,” said Peter Mumford, a Southeast Asia analyst with the Eurasia Group consultancy.
Anwar’s government has been accused of pandering to social conservatives and his progressive supporters have appeared dismayed by the perceived slow pace of promised institutional reforms. PH had campaigned on a broad reform and clean governance agenda. So far, it has reduced subsidies for the wealthy, eased listing rules for companies and abolished the mandatory death penalty.
“There is also dissatisfaction that Anwar has failed to deliver on some of the promised political and economic reforms, though his ‘reformist’ image has always seemed questionable, so this is not surprising,” Mumford added. “A stronger result for PH-BN might have given Anwar more confidence to proceed with significant reforms, though this now looks unlikely.”
The factors behind PN’s rising support in what has been dubbed the “green wave” after the color of PAS’ party flag continue to be debated by analysts. While PAS has emerged as the biggest beneficiary of disillusionment with the once-popular UMNO, some see economic distress over higher living costs and slowing economic growth under Anwar as key reasons for its rise.
Apart from economic challenges, some analysts say attacks on prominent opposition figures by government leaders during the election campaign alienated many Malay voters. PN leader Muhyiddin also notably faces abuse of power and money laundering charges that were brought against him in March, which he claims amount to political prosecution.
Oh Ei Sun, a senior fellow at the Singapore Institute of International Affairs (SIIA), believes socio-economic reasons do not fully account for PAS’ success. “There is a desire for a more religiously and racially-oriented socio-political narrative, regardless of socio-economic status,” he told Asia Times, pointing to the party’s dominance of rural areas and rising appeal in wealthier urban states.
“Religiously and racially-motivated rhetoric is not something new in Malaysia and has been occurring for many years. It’s just that now PN is using it more prominently and exclusively, and as long as Malaysia still has a racially-divided society at large, I think it’s very difficult to get rid of this social and religious messaging” he opined.
“A certain degree of ethnic polarization will remain for some time to come,” Muzaffar concurred. “However, political polarization can be overcome if leaders on both sides of the political divide adopt a conciliatory tone. As leader of the ruling coalition, Anwar Ibrahim set the right tenor in his election night speech. The opposition should now respond, and both should translate words into deeds.”
Follow Nile Bowie on Twitter at @NileBowie
GDS makes debut in SEA with launch of inaugural Data Center Campus
New campus geared to meet surging digital demands in the age of AI
GDS, a leading China based developer and operator of high-performance data centers, celebrated the grand opening of its Nusajaya Tech Park Data Center Campus in Johor, Malaysia.
In a…Continue Reading
JAKARTA – Taken aback by Elon Musk’s decision to use Malaysia as Tesla Inc’s Southeast Asia base, Maritime Affairs and Investment Coordinating Minister Luhut Panjaitan remains cautiously optimistic the world’s richest man will still invest in Indonesia’s ambitious electric vehicle (EV) supply chain.
After a low-key, two-and-a-half-hour August 3 meeting in San Francisco, which went on twice as long as expected, the multi-billionaire carmaker is said to have agreed to make a final decision on building a manufacturing plant by the end of the year.
Learning from past mistakes, when they annoyed Musk by making premature statements about his plans for Indonesia, Panjaitan and his negotiating team have said very little publicly about the outcome of the hastily arranged meeting.
A source close to Panjaitan said Musk was “very open about what he thinks” regarding Tesla and SpaceX, his spacecraft venture which has previously been offered an equatorial launch site on Biak island, off the northern coast of Papua.
Indonesia’s only public comment focused on a proposed collaboration with SpaceX subsidiary Starlink, which currently provides cheap internet access to more than 60 countries using over 4,000 small, mass-produced satellites in low Earth orbit.
Health Minister Budi Sadikin, who accompanied Panjaitan to the meeting, said Starlink was necessary to link schools and health clinics across marginalized and remote areas of eastern Indonesia, mostly Maluku and Papua.
Among the internet provider’s customers is Ukraine, which has found the service vital to maintaining communications across a countryside often devastated by Russian missile and artillery strikes.
Although it wasn’t touched on in the official release, the source said the two sides talked about a car-making investment of at least US$1 billion, but he indicated it may depend on whether the government is prepared to make significant concessions which have so far stalled negotiations.
“The problem is in our court because we have not allowed him to do what he wants,” he told Asia Times, referring to Musk. “The most important thing is that everyone has to know what they will get.”
Any concessions will have to be agreed to by the president and, as with mining giant Freeport McMoRan Copper & Gold’s ground-breaking contract three decades ago, will almost certainly require parliamentary approval.
Lawyers say Freeport could serve as a template, locking in tax rates and the choice of vendors and employees and other issues to ensure that future governments don’t change the rules of the game.
“Rules that are not subject to abrupt change at the whim of policymakers jumping to accommodate public sentiment or lobby pressure are critical for business continuity,” The Jakarta Post editorialized last year in discussing Musk’s cautious approach.
Analysts believe the government is particularly keen to bring Musk on board, not only as a credible EV pioneer, but also to balance investment away from China, which has dominated the local nickel industry and continues to pour billions of dollars into Indonesia.
“All agreed that a conclusion will be reached by the end of the year,” the source said, revealing to Asia Times plans for Musk to visit Indonesia as early as next month. “Tesla has to make some studies on a location and other nitty-gritty issues and then they will pull the trigger.”
Widodo wants to develop an entire EV production line, including the smelting of raw materials and battery and vehicle manufacturing to final vehicle assembly. But the window of opportunity for that to happen is closing fast.
Although Panjaitan has spent three years trying to lure Musk to Indonesia, the talks broke down in the latter part of last year, leading to speculation that the multi-billionaire had been deterred by the country’s “chaotic” regulations and other conditions.
Aides say it was only a few days before Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim’s announcement that Panjaitan learned to his annoyance Tesla was setting up a regional office and service center in Selangor, the state surrounding Kuala Lumpur.
Malaysia signed off on tariff-free imports of Tesla’s latest Model 3 and Model Y models, whose launch at Tesla’s Shanghai gigafactory contributed to the firm raising its EV production by 86% to 441,000 units in the first quarter of this year.
EV manufacturing in Indonesia has proceeded at a snail’s pace, partly because local government rules are proving to be yet another obstacle despite the urgency the Widodo administration attaches to developing the industry.
Only this week, Investment Minister Bahlil Lahadalia was forced to provide reassurances that a consortium led by South Korea’s LG Energy Solution was still on track to build an $8.9 billion integrated EV battery plant in Central Java.
“The investment ministry will keep overseeing the licensing process and ease LG’s investment in Indonesia so that they can realize it quickly and provide immediate benefits,” Lahadalia said in a direct reference to troubling regulatory issues.
Despite four rounds of meetings with Tesla in 2020-2021 – and Widodo’s much-publicized visit to SpaceX’s complex on the Texas gulf coast – the Indonesians have clearly had problems winning Musk over.
Panjaitan complained that Musk was making too many demands and that Tesla needed to meet domestic investment guidelines.
The tech mogul was reportedly put off by the government wanting EV investors to partner with the state-run Indonesia Battery Corporation (IBC) to allow for integrated development and promote technology transfers.
IBC is a holding company comprising Indonesia Asahan Aluminium (MIND ID), gold and nickel miner Aneka Tambang (Antam), petroleum company Pertamina and utility firm Perusahaan Listrik Negara (PLN), each of which holds a 25% stake.
It is a partner with LG Energy Solution, LG Chem, LX International, POSCO Future M and China’s Zhejiang Huayao in the LG-led consortium whose multi-phase project began with a $1.1 billion battery cell plant in Karawang, West Java.
Panjaitan claimed in August last year that Tesla had already signed contracts worth about $5 billion to buy materials for its lithium batteries from processing facilities concentrated in nickel-rich eastern Indonesia.
Hello Globe readers,
This week we have some exciting news. Our business magazine Focus Cambodia will be back in print next year. The new edition will combine the business and investment content the publication is known for with the culture and lifestyle features of Discover, our annual travel magazine. We’re starting to work with local business partners, so if you’d like to know more, ask away by sending us an email.
In the meantime, let’s dive right into the features. The Philippines are under the magnifying glass of the International Criminal Court as the organisation continues its probe into extrajudicial killings from 2011 to 2019 as part of former President Rodrigo Duterte’s war on drugs. While President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. has disavowed the court, Filipino families are looking for justice.
Meanwhile over in Thailand, the populist Pheu Thai — the runner-up of the May elections — announced a split from the leading Move Forward Party in a sudden and controversial move sparking the anger of voters across the country.
Though politics look very different in Vietnam, the recently concluded trial of dozens of defendants for corruption during the national Covid-19 response has possibly given some clues to the workings of the Communist Party. Experts shared with us their layered motivations behind the proceedings.
Last but not least, the Globe spoke with Aung Kyaw Moe, the first Rohingya representative to hold a ministerial position in the Myanmar government, about his journey from escaping persecution to becoming deputy human rights minister to the civilian National Unity Government (NUG).
That’s all for today, may you have a wonderful weekend and enjoy the features below.
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