I belief and respect your testimonies and they are authentic because I was born and grown up with the oppression, classification, and prejudice, and they are existing in that country for centuries. The fact is because your mother was beautiful, and talented when the prince met and marry her, but she was oppressed by high societies and condemned her as a lower class citizen, and it means she does not deserve to be his wife or his mistress. I, as a mother myself, and was born in that county. Therefore, I sincerely appraise your mother as a heroine who loves and sacrifices, for her children, and I am so proud for all of your successful careers which you have earned them with your strength and effort. Further more, you must embrace your mother and your brothers and live your life with the fullest, you will be safe in America.
I am afraid our learned critics are not as informed as they think or they would know the association of fungi and other pathogens are just as prevalent in modern materials design. Toted as ‘sick building syndrome’ is no less debilitating. For the record I have been a severe asthmatic for most of my life yet in the 6 years I have lived in straw bale & cob house I have not required medication. There are many factors thAt contribute to ill health such as electromagnetic radiation, radon out gassing, out gassing of toxic chemicals from materials used such as laminates, particle boards, carpet etc.
Totally agree with this assessment. The opposition have been doing a lot of things right in recent years, but now has manage to put both feet in a pile of mahathir’s excrement.
A very sad day indeed.
For centuries muslims lived in Europe. Does this make Europe an ensemble of muslim states? What I find surprising is that a significant percentage of those refugees trying to find a save heaven in Europe come from muslim states! Does this mean that the conditions for muslims to live a religious live are better in secular Europe then in islamic states?
The people of Malaysia (all of them) deserve success & peace in our crazy world and must break out of their ethnic shells to cooperate – before it is too late. The eyes of the Chinese cat are twinkling! Mike Foster
This information is impressive. I am inspired with your post writing style & how continuously you describe this topic. After reading your post, thanks for taking the time to discuss this, I feel happy about it and I love learning more about this topic
From civil unrest to terrorism and increasing threats against visitors, together with the inevitable about to happen, Thailand has a struggle to maintain its reputation as a travel destination.
Prostitution, opportunistic robbery, scams, rape and assaults are increasingly an unsavoury feature in Thailand now that the economy is shrinking. Popular nightspots such as Nana Plaza and Pattaya’s Walking Street seem to attract certain tourists who shed their common sense, make them easy targets for opportunistic petty criminals and even violent criminals, we agree. But Thailand is literally banking on significant growth in tourism over the next few years – it is widely forecast that by 2020, 50 million international tourists will visit the country. Maybe, but we disagree given the inevitable.
The military usurped power under the propaganda-managed aegis aimed at “managing” the unspeakable event in its own interests. And its interests are manifest.
Thailand’s military junta has further moved to impose its mighty Hessian boot over the nation’s powerful state-owned enterprises, and for all that Chinese tourism may display, the future is as bright as one discarding ones shades.
And to address your comments on Somyot, his asset declaration stated that as a copper he had amassed 246.4 million baht, with his wife amassing half as much again. So much for transparency.
Somyot Pumpanmuang was famed as a “businessman-cum-police general”, a man one must assume corruption was not only understood as a moral problem but as a biological one: it was the very existence of “bad people”, in other words the working class, the brown people, that had poisoned society.
He is vicious and corrupt and was picked by the NCPO as they knew they could control him as long as they didn’t disrupt his corruption, a source once said.
Politically, the cops had been effectively sidelined and the military have falsely claiming that people at the top of society cannot be criticised by those at the lower end, no matter how corrupt, even in an oligarchic capitalism system.
The nightmare of Sakdina is alive and well, after 500 years of abuse, and the army marched into Nana Plaza to take over the reins of power. We were there to witness it.
It is time to clear out the Herculean fifth labour: wash out the royalists’ Augean Stables permanently. Hercules dug wide trenches to two rivers which flowed nearby. He turned the course of the rivers into the yard, where the animals had been defecating for 30 years.
The rivers rushed through the stables, flushing them out, and all the mess flowed out of the hole in the wall on other side of the yard, whatever that might mean in the Thai context.
Regimes that fall out of touch with their people tend to disappear very quickly, as Louis XVI could only too despairingly attest.
It is difficult to generate much optimism concerning the state of political affairs in Malaysia.
Malaysia’s world is full of chaos, inconsistencies and corruption. But then it has probably never not been so. Most often, it has sought – and been permitted – to indulge in a veneer of modernity and respectability. In reality, Malaysian politics has always been divided along ethnic, racial and religious lines. Malaysian ‘democracy’ has typically been of the sort you have when you wish to pretend to have one. In terms of political culture at least, Malaysia has never been a modern state.
It is hard to conceive of how Malaysia, by itself, can resolve its problems. Those aspects of its political system now attracting international censure – as extraordinary and egregious as they are – are symptoms of a larger malaise. Since independence, Malaysian politics has been characterised by oppressive and autocratic governments. It now lacks the political will and institutional wherewithal to find its own solutions. There is deep rooted institutional failure. Malaysia’s Constitution and parliamentary process are severely flawed. The political Opposition is weak, disunited and arguably dysfunctional. Malaysia’s electoral process is manifestly corrupt. Its mainstream media is owned/controlled by government and is compliant and compromised. There is a corrosive re-writing of its history underway designed to marginalise and reinforce divisions. Arguably, there is increasing pressure on Malaysian royalty to fill a void of effective governance promoting a role not currently accorded them in the Constitution. There is also a relentless and increasing islamisation and a rejection of pluralism and liberalism. There is declining tolerance of religious expression. An Australian academic recently remarked: “In the case of Malaysia, the moderate Islamic image it projects internationally is not reflected in domestic policy that is increasingly sectarian and hostile, not only to minority religious rights but also to progressive Muslim views”.
As part-time residents and observers of Malaysia for many years, we now suspend rational thought processes when we visit. Yet, we love being there and admire its ordinary people. Sadly, we are inclined to the view that the current crisis will deteriorate much further until such time as the underlying causes are properly dealt with. Past form suggests this may not eventuate. The decline continues.
It is disappointing to see these authors recycling the myth that Jokowi has had no ties to previous regimes and their key actors. How often must one point out that Jokowi’s principal business partner, former presidential chief of staff and current security coordinating minister, Luhut Panjaitan, is a typical TNI product of the New Order? He was trade minister during Gus Dur’s chaotic administration. This is surely a tie with a previous administration.
In retrospect that Brit sounds more prescient than racist, but it is Thais who are complaining the most about Chinese tourists nowadays. Of course not all Chinese tourists behave badly and it is unfair to brand any people by the actions of a minority. God knows Western tourists can and do behave abominably, but it is abundantly clear that a significant portion of Chinese tourist arrivals behave in ways that both Thais and Farangs alike find off-putting and their sheer number amplifies the impact.
Despite the horror of tourism in Thailand, it now has an even greater horror. The TAT, since we arrived in the early Naughties had always invented protractive figures, so to believe the naive junta and its dodgy calulations is perhaps to assume an economic premise of tourist growth.
Let’s just paraphrase the New York Times when it fairly recently warned that one should not be fooled or ingratiated by the “throngs of Chinese tourists clogging the entrance to the gilded Grand Palace, the roads buzzing with traffic or the plastic smiles of hostesses greeting the business lunch crowd at luxury hotels: the economy was moribund as household debt was among the most indebted in Asia.”
Thailand, once the torchbearer of freedom and prosperity in Southeast Asia–a centre of commerce for Indochina and a bastion of free expression–now looked to their neighbours with envy, not pity. “We are moving backwards, and they are running ahead of us,” said a noodle seller who roamed the streets of Bangkok on a motor scooter.
My friend and I were passengers that afternoon on a flight out of Don Muang Airport en route for our intended destinations. As we broke through the clouds, we peered downwards and backwards, and watched the city disappear. It was a place we had once cherished as a haven of financial stability and good times and while the conscious mind reminded us with a sensitive whiff of trepidation, it was with irrepressible relief that we left.
Thailand was undergoing so many self-inflicted tribulations: an inevitable political, social and economic collapse that was sinking the country into destruction and chose to subjugate its populace and polarise Thai society to an unprecedented degree, perhaps not seen since the 1970s.
But what did this mean for the country and a Westerner’s place in it? By the end of 2015, the street bars in lower Sukhumvit had retracted sullenly and recalcitrantly; the mood was somewhat sombre and, as we sat there, subliminally watching tumbleweed rolling down Sukhumvit Road, we pondered on what Westerners would do now that they had built their lives in Bangkok over many years were now facing expulsion.
We started to realise some had no chance of staying any longer and were summarily and involuntarily despatched to Manchester, Phnom Penh, San Francisco and Ho Chi Minh City. Strangely, many of the foreigners living in Thailand had supported the coup and were quite happy with its consequences, as it was said to have brought “stability” to the country. Perhaps they had no idea as to what was being configured behind their backs and had misunderstood the real scene.
As time wore on, it appeared that time for some Westerners who had come to Thailand for a better life, allowing them to escape the climatic and bureaucratic horrors of living in the West, was coming to a ghastly end.
Many middle-aged Western men had, over the years, washed themselves up on Thailand’s shores in search of cheaper living costs and transaction romance and had managed to stay in the country by making “border runs”.
This was no more and the younger expats simply wore their stateside t-shirts and backward-wearing Californian caps in defiance and ignorance, without ever realising what was really going on.
The sister of British backpacker Hannah Witheridge–who was brutally raped and beaten to death–slammed Thai court officials for their “callous” comments about her sister’s death. Laura Witheridge blasted the Thai authorities’ “disregard for human life” after her parents were told by Thai officials, “just go home and make another one”. So much for the promotion of tourism.
She must have wondered how people could be so ruthlessly cruel and uncaring. What is it about certain members of the middle to upper echelons in Thailand that are so utterly, ruthlessly arrogant and unscrupulous?
Maybe the answer to their hard-bitten character lay earlier in Prayuth’s Ministry of Love to “shore up the military’s image”, but perhaps this designed event was meant to discourage the West, encourage the East, and instead defy any public criticism of his enigmatic subterfuge.
He skilfully erected a platform and carried out his mission by enlisting the help of dancing girls at the ministry’s auditorium, even though he was vehemently opposed to letting the opposite sex get the better of his manly emotions.
And while the Vietnamese government was apparently “confident” Thailand would be able to resolve its lion-tamer problem and show that it would go on very soon, it would take maybe 10 years more rather than “very soon”.
To illusrate this, Khaosod newspaper published a glorious story about a soldier who had taken the Ministry of Love’s message a little bit too much to heart. Armed with an M16 rifle and bulletproof armour, he barged into the dressing room of an anchor-woman at the headquarters of Channel 9 TV station, when a hairdresser asked him why he was there.
To the shock of everyone in the room, the soldier replied by suddenly unzipping his trousers and began to furiously masturbate. He managed to slip away. Neither he, nor his zipper, has ever been subsequently identified.
Perhaps worse, although females might it see it this way, a group of soldiers led villagers in a synchronised dance, chanting the names of fruits and swaying their hips from side to side in praise of the durian tree; they were part of the “training” conducted in Khon Kaen, a hotbed of fruit and vine.
Economically, labour-intensive industries have increasingly become non-viable because of rising wages and skills shortages. It reains to be seen how a semi-octogenarian regime can last in purely Asian circles of support.
I think it was a mistake for the opposition to have alined themselves with Mahathir Mohamed. This was a fight between the Malay community. This was inevitable as the demands made by Non-Malays have become irrelevant over the years. Malay supremacy reigned and was faltering when Malay factions inside UMNO and oustide strating challening the Najib leadership on numerous issues-corruption being one.
When the opposition ( non-Malays) supporting Mahathir entered the arena, Malays feared losing power and consolidated their position. Today, the alliance has made Najib stronger simply because the Malay community is very weary about losing Malay supremacy.
From a Malay vs Malay fight, now it has become a Government vs Opposition fight and Malay supremacy is the issue.
Diplomatically Asean seems to be quite united so far cos the pressure coming from the 9 Dash dispute is not yet fully felt as the US presence in this region has restricted the ambitious Chinese from exercising their big guns take all
Lets not forget the Chinese had once upon a time objected the formation of Asean
Their weiqi mindset is still very much based on the Monguls mentality that they are being anointed by their heaven god to rule the world
.
Crown Prince’s family update?
I belief and respect your testimonies and they are authentic because I was born and grown up with the oppression, classification, and prejudice, and they are existing in that country for centuries. The fact is because your mother was beautiful, and talented when the prince met and marry her, but she was oppressed by high societies and condemned her as a lower class citizen, and it means she does not deserve to be his wife or his mistress. I, as a mother myself, and was born in that county. Therefore, I sincerely appraise your mother as a heroine who loves and sacrifices, for her children, and I am so proud for all of your successful careers which you have earned them with your strength and effort. Further more, you must embrace your mother and your brothers and live your life with the fullest, you will be safe in America.
Stuck fast; review of Troubled transit
which ever way you look at it those going to Indo want to reach 3rd world countries quicker than others who are in camps around the world.
Curtain call for the CNRP?
Love this piece Scott
Really value your continued insights into Cambodia
The benefits of mud houses
I am afraid our learned critics are not as informed as they think or they would know the association of fungi and other pathogens are just as prevalent in modern materials design. Toted as ‘sick building syndrome’ is no less debilitating. For the record I have been a severe asthmatic for most of my life yet in the 6 years I have lived in straw bale & cob house I have not required medication. There are many factors thAt contribute to ill health such as electromagnetic radiation, radon out gassing, out gassing of toxic chemicals from materials used such as laminates, particle boards, carpet etc.
Universities in a democratic Myanmar
One pressing concern. Free the students!
Horror headlines, tourism and the Thai junta
It’s interesting to see that TAT’s web site for the statistics of tourist arrivals (http://www2.tat.or.th/stat/web/static_download.php?Rpt=nmt) says that they have no information after 2007!
Universities in a democratic Myanmar
Oxford is Sainsbury-ly medieval suppose. Heard about it from Carroll.
http://www.carrollquigley.net/pdf/Tragedy_and_Hope.pdf
Not business as usual in Malaysia
Totally agree with this assessment. The opposition have been doing a lot of things right in recent years, but now has manage to put both feet in a pile of mahathir’s excrement.
A very sad day indeed.
Islam and the state in Myanmar
For centuries muslims lived in Europe. Does this make Europe an ensemble of muslim states? What I find surprising is that a significant percentage of those refugees trying to find a save heaven in Europe come from muslim states! Does this mean that the conditions for muslims to live a religious live are better in secular Europe then in islamic states?
Not business as usual in Malaysia
The people of Malaysia (all of them) deserve success & peace in our crazy world and must break out of their ethnic shells to cooperate – before it is too late. The eyes of the Chinese cat are twinkling! Mike Foster
Articles on web censorship in Asia
This information is impressive. I am inspired with your post writing style & how continuously you describe this topic. After reading your post, thanks for taking the time to discuss this, I feel happy about it and I love learning more about this topic
Horror headlines, tourism and the Thai junta
From civil unrest to terrorism and increasing threats against visitors, together with the inevitable about to happen, Thailand has a struggle to maintain its reputation as a travel destination.
Do you not see that this coup was somehow different. Perhaps a refresh of a relevant article on NM is worth revisiting: http://www.newmandala.org/2016/03/09/challenging-times-for-thai-tourism/.
Prostitution, opportunistic robbery, scams, rape and assaults are increasingly an unsavoury feature in Thailand now that the economy is shrinking. Popular nightspots such as Nana Plaza and Pattaya’s Walking Street seem to attract certain tourists who shed their common sense, make them easy targets for opportunistic petty criminals and even violent criminals, we agree. But Thailand is literally banking on significant growth in tourism over the next few years – it is widely forecast that by 2020, 50 million international tourists will visit the country. Maybe, but we disagree given the inevitable.
The military usurped power under the propaganda-managed aegis aimed at “managing” the unspeakable event in its own interests. And its interests are manifest.
Thailand’s military junta has further moved to impose its mighty Hessian boot over the nation’s powerful state-owned enterprises, and for all that Chinese tourism may display, the future is as bright as one discarding ones shades.
And to address your comments on Somyot, his asset declaration stated that as a copper he had amassed 246.4 million baht, with his wife amassing half as much again. So much for transparency.
Somyot Pumpanmuang was famed as a “businessman-cum-police general”, a man one must assume corruption was not only understood as a moral problem but as a biological one: it was the very existence of “bad people”, in other words the working class, the brown people, that had poisoned society.
He is vicious and corrupt and was picked by the NCPO as they knew they could control him as long as they didn’t disrupt his corruption, a source once said.
Politically, the cops had been effectively sidelined and the military have falsely claiming that people at the top of society cannot be criticised by those at the lower end, no matter how corrupt, even in an oligarchic capitalism system.
The nightmare of Sakdina is alive and well, after 500 years of abuse, and the army marched into Nana Plaza to take over the reins of power. We were there to witness it.
It is time to clear out the Herculean fifth labour: wash out the royalists’ Augean Stables permanently. Hercules dug wide trenches to two rivers which flowed nearby. He turned the course of the rivers into the yard, where the animals had been defecating for 30 years.
The rivers rushed through the stables, flushing them out, and all the mess flowed out of the hole in the wall on other side of the yard, whatever that might mean in the Thai context.
Regimes that fall out of touch with their people tend to disappear very quickly, as Louis XVI could only too despairingly attest.
Not business as usual in Malaysia
It is difficult to generate much optimism concerning the state of political affairs in Malaysia.
Malaysia’s world is full of chaos, inconsistencies and corruption. But then it has probably never not been so. Most often, it has sought – and been permitted – to indulge in a veneer of modernity and respectability. In reality, Malaysian politics has always been divided along ethnic, racial and religious lines. Malaysian ‘democracy’ has typically been of the sort you have when you wish to pretend to have one. In terms of political culture at least, Malaysia has never been a modern state.
It is hard to conceive of how Malaysia, by itself, can resolve its problems. Those aspects of its political system now attracting international censure – as extraordinary and egregious as they are – are symptoms of a larger malaise. Since independence, Malaysian politics has been characterised by oppressive and autocratic governments. It now lacks the political will and institutional wherewithal to find its own solutions. There is deep rooted institutional failure. Malaysia’s Constitution and parliamentary process are severely flawed. The political Opposition is weak, disunited and arguably dysfunctional. Malaysia’s electoral process is manifestly corrupt. Its mainstream media is owned/controlled by government and is compliant and compromised. There is a corrosive re-writing of its history underway designed to marginalise and reinforce divisions. Arguably, there is increasing pressure on Malaysian royalty to fill a void of effective governance promoting a role not currently accorded them in the Constitution. There is also a relentless and increasing islamisation and a rejection of pluralism and liberalism. There is declining tolerance of religious expression. An Australian academic recently remarked: “In the case of Malaysia, the moderate Islamic image it projects internationally is not reflected in domestic policy that is increasingly sectarian and hostile, not only to minority religious rights but also to progressive Muslim views”.
As part-time residents and observers of Malaysia for many years, we now suspend rational thought processes when we visit. Yet, we love being there and admire its ordinary people. Sadly, we are inclined to the view that the current crisis will deteriorate much further until such time as the underlying causes are properly dealt with. Past form suggests this may not eventuate. The decline continues.
Horror headlines, tourism and the Thai junta
Junta effect on crimes involving tourists?
I challenge anyone to rigorously prove that this exists.
Change in national police chief effects are obvious.
The previous national police chief Somyot was way more transparent, some even saying he should have controlled the flow of information better.
Sustaining anti-Chinese sentiment in Jakarta
There are many things to be said from his post and comments but in the end it comes down to “Pathetic”.
Jokowi’s Papua policy deeply flawed
It is disappointing to see these authors recycling the myth that Jokowi has had no ties to previous regimes and their key actors. How often must one point out that Jokowi’s principal business partner, former presidential chief of staff and current security coordinating minister, Luhut Panjaitan, is a typical TNI product of the New Order? He was trade minister during Gus Dur’s chaotic administration. This is surely a tie with a previous administration.
Horror headlines, tourism and the Thai junta
In retrospect that Brit sounds more prescient than racist, but it is Thais who are complaining the most about Chinese tourists nowadays. Of course not all Chinese tourists behave badly and it is unfair to brand any people by the actions of a minority. God knows Western tourists can and do behave abominably, but it is abundantly clear that a significant portion of Chinese tourist arrivals behave in ways that both Thais and Farangs alike find off-putting and their sheer number amplifies the impact.
Horror headlines, tourism and the Thai junta
Despite the horror of tourism in Thailand, it now has an even greater horror. The TAT, since we arrived in the early Naughties had always invented protractive figures, so to believe the naive junta and its dodgy calulations is perhaps to assume an economic premise of tourist growth.
Let’s just paraphrase the New York Times when it fairly recently warned that one should not be fooled or ingratiated by the “throngs of Chinese tourists clogging the entrance to the gilded Grand Palace, the roads buzzing with traffic or the plastic smiles of hostesses greeting the business lunch crowd at luxury hotels: the economy was moribund as household debt was among the most indebted in Asia.”
Thailand, once the torchbearer of freedom and prosperity in Southeast Asia–a centre of commerce for Indochina and a bastion of free expression–now looked to their neighbours with envy, not pity. “We are moving backwards, and they are running ahead of us,” said a noodle seller who roamed the streets of Bangkok on a motor scooter.
My friend and I were passengers that afternoon on a flight out of Don Muang Airport en route for our intended destinations. As we broke through the clouds, we peered downwards and backwards, and watched the city disappear. It was a place we had once cherished as a haven of financial stability and good times and while the conscious mind reminded us with a sensitive whiff of trepidation, it was with irrepressible relief that we left.
Thailand was undergoing so many self-inflicted tribulations: an inevitable political, social and economic collapse that was sinking the country into destruction and chose to subjugate its populace and polarise Thai society to an unprecedented degree, perhaps not seen since the 1970s.
But what did this mean for the country and a Westerner’s place in it? By the end of 2015, the street bars in lower Sukhumvit had retracted sullenly and recalcitrantly; the mood was somewhat sombre and, as we sat there, subliminally watching tumbleweed rolling down Sukhumvit Road, we pondered on what Westerners would do now that they had built their lives in Bangkok over many years were now facing expulsion.
We started to realise some had no chance of staying any longer and were summarily and involuntarily despatched to Manchester, Phnom Penh, San Francisco and Ho Chi Minh City. Strangely, many of the foreigners living in Thailand had supported the coup and were quite happy with its consequences, as it was said to have brought “stability” to the country. Perhaps they had no idea as to what was being configured behind their backs and had misunderstood the real scene.
As time wore on, it appeared that time for some Westerners who had come to Thailand for a better life, allowing them to escape the climatic and bureaucratic horrors of living in the West, was coming to a ghastly end.
Many middle-aged Western men had, over the years, washed themselves up on Thailand’s shores in search of cheaper living costs and transaction romance and had managed to stay in the country by making “border runs”.
This was no more and the younger expats simply wore their stateside t-shirts and backward-wearing Californian caps in defiance and ignorance, without ever realising what was really going on.
The sister of British backpacker Hannah Witheridge–who was brutally raped and beaten to death–slammed Thai court officials for their “callous” comments about her sister’s death. Laura Witheridge blasted the Thai authorities’ “disregard for human life” after her parents were told by Thai officials, “just go home and make another one”. So much for the promotion of tourism.
She must have wondered how people could be so ruthlessly cruel and uncaring. What is it about certain members of the middle to upper echelons in Thailand that are so utterly, ruthlessly arrogant and unscrupulous?
Maybe the answer to their hard-bitten character lay earlier in Prayuth’s Ministry of Love to “shore up the military’s image”, but perhaps this designed event was meant to discourage the West, encourage the East, and instead defy any public criticism of his enigmatic subterfuge.
He skilfully erected a platform and carried out his mission by enlisting the help of dancing girls at the ministry’s auditorium, even though he was vehemently opposed to letting the opposite sex get the better of his manly emotions.
And while the Vietnamese government was apparently “confident” Thailand would be able to resolve its lion-tamer problem and show that it would go on very soon, it would take maybe 10 years more rather than “very soon”.
To illusrate this, Khaosod newspaper published a glorious story about a soldier who had taken the Ministry of Love’s message a little bit too much to heart. Armed with an M16 rifle and bulletproof armour, he barged into the dressing room of an anchor-woman at the headquarters of Channel 9 TV station, when a hairdresser asked him why he was there.
To the shock of everyone in the room, the soldier replied by suddenly unzipping his trousers and began to furiously masturbate. He managed to slip away. Neither he, nor his zipper, has ever been subsequently identified.
We know it sounds remarkable, but see http://www.khaosodenglish.com/detail.php?newsid=1401968918§ion=14&typecate=06 if you don’t believe us.
Perhaps worse, although females might it see it this way, a group of soldiers led villagers in a synchronised dance, chanting the names of fruits and swaying their hips from side to side in praise of the durian tree; they were part of the “training” conducted in Khon Kaen, a hotbed of fruit and vine.
Economically, labour-intensive industries have increasingly become non-viable because of rising wages and skills shortages. It reains to be seen how a semi-octogenarian regime can last in purely Asian circles of support.
Not business as usual in Malaysia
I think it was a mistake for the opposition to have alined themselves with Mahathir Mohamed. This was a fight between the Malay community. This was inevitable as the demands made by Non-Malays have become irrelevant over the years. Malay supremacy reigned and was faltering when Malay factions inside UMNO and oustide strating challening the Najib leadership on numerous issues-corruption being one.
When the opposition ( non-Malays) supporting Mahathir entered the arena, Malays feared losing power and consolidated their position. Today, the alliance has made Najib stronger simply because the Malay community is very weary about losing Malay supremacy.
From a Malay vs Malay fight, now it has become a Government vs Opposition fight and Malay supremacy is the issue.
ASEAN deconstructs
17 Mar 2016
Diplomatically Asean seems to be quite united so far cos the pressure coming from the 9 Dash dispute is not yet fully felt as the US presence in this region has restricted the ambitious Chinese from exercising their big guns take all
Lets not forget the Chinese had once upon a time objected the formation of Asean
Their weiqi mindset is still very much based on the Monguls mentality that they are being anointed by their heaven god to rule the world
.