PLAYING THE HUNGER GAMES

The nightmare sprung to life: A gang.  Worse, an Asian teen gang. An hour before dawn.  I’m alone.  With a bike.

A dozen or more boys fired up with freedom, yahooing down the lampless highway, bashing bushes, tossing fire crackers, chiacking.

Strife seems likely.  There are no side roads for a speedy escape. Maybe a bashing, a cycle theft?  I'm  less fit, well outnumbered, someone quite different, an easy target. No one else from my tribe’s around ready to rescue.

In an Australian suburb or town, particularly one like Alice Springs if reports of rampant lawlessness are right, the sweat would be stoked by fear.

Curses, too, for straying into a bad area like bond trader Sherman McCoy taking a wrong turn into the Bronx in Tom Wolfe's novel and film The Bonfire of the Vanities. Yet this street is leafy and normally empty.  

Turn and run or push on? The second decision is right, flavoured with a bit of local  slang that sets them laughing as they dash away.

Nothing happens because this is Malang in Central East Java not an Oz city. Though the kids are hyped up they’re not dosed with drugs or grog, just the buzz of being young and fresh and on their own.

This is a yearly event whatever the suburb, even the uni campuses at the start of Ramadan.  Sometimes called Ramadhan it’s the holy fasting month leading to the great Muslim celebration of Idul Fitri on 10 April.

The adults wake around 3.30 am and fill themselves with plates overflowing like those wanted by Palestinians in Gaza.   Then Dad and Mum go back to bed and kick the feisty sons out to roam as they won’t head to school till 9 am, two hours later than usual. Daughters also wander - though seldom with the boys. That age has yet to come.

Around 4 pm queues gather  around the street stalls.  It's takjil (speed up snacks) till the food can be hogged on kerb stones or taken home  once the siren shrieks that the day’s pangs are at an end.

It's a time of communion, the bond being hunger and the belief that all are suffering together while showing devotion. The atmosphere is positive, expectant of pleasures to come, the rewards of religious discipline.

As the four weeks progress the hungry get testy.  Those who give up along the way, offer excuses - they’re sick, spiritually lame.

Restaurants generally shut during daylight hours but joints like KFC and McDonald’s stay open.  Window blinds are closed  so passers-by don't get tempted to abandon their beliefs.

The fast-fooders feed the non-Muslims (about ten per cent of society is Christian - the population of Australia), and those excused for health reasons, pregnancy and menopause.  An astonishing number of young women wearing jilbab (headscarves) have periods at this time.

The pious are also expected to abandon sex and other pleasures, including nicotine.  About 63 million men are hooked so smoke wafting from behind walls where Allah can’t see is a regular sight.  Women seldom use as the noxious  habit is supposed to be a sign of prostitution.

Westerners are advised not to eat in public and women should dress modestly.  Java is not Hindu Bali but visitors should feel untroubled.  The worst is to be called bule, which means a white-skinned European, a Belanda-Dutchman.

Whatever our beliefs or non-beliefs, we get invitations to Buka Bersama (the shared feast at the end of a day's fasting).  The meals are so big that weight gains result.

The worrying message comes from the Australian media creating images of fear. Like a headline this month: Islamists in UK, Australia spreading anti-Semitism, destroying democracy

A few years ago religious thugs enjoyed bursting into restaurants on “sweeping” missions to find fasting  Muslims  feasting. Reports of such outrages are now rare.

Surveys show growing distrust by Australians towards Indonesians.  The Jakarta Post quoted an adage: Tak kenal maka tak sayang - if you don't know you can't love -  in an editorial commenting on  Lowy Institute research.  

This showed we “still lack trust in Indonesia to do good in the world, largely due to a lack of understanding.”  That was in 2020; later annual reports reveal the situation ain’t much better..

That’s sad - and wrong. Here’s the anecdotal takeaway: Better to encounter a mob of Indonesian adolescents on a dark street than their counterparts Down Under.

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First published in Pearls & Irritations, 25 March 2024: https://johnmenadue.com/playing-the-hunger-games/

WHAT'S NOT TO LIKE? EVERYTHING

 THE KRAKEN WAKES - CLOSE BY  

O Judgment ! Thou art fled to brutish beasts, and men have lost their reason. ― William Shakespeare, Julius Caesar

The cross-eyed sidekick in Jokowi's eldest son, Gibran Rakabuming

To lead their nation for the next five years Indonesians have picked a sinister military autocrat with a hideous past masquerading as a comic character.

 Through a series of cuddly cartoons, untested promises and silly claims electors were seduced into believing Prabowo Subianto, 72, a cashiered general with a dirty history was really a gemoy,  an adorable and funny guy, fit and proper to run the world’s fourth-largest nation.

Though the two failed candidates (an academic and an administrator) plus 48 civil society watchdogs have alleged  malfeasance, overall the 14 February electoral process seems  likely to withstand challenges.

The campaign had buckets of ballyhoo and thimbles of quality.  The focus was on personalities, not policy.  Avowed piety eclipsed proven merit.

Just as US Republicans backing Donald Trump ignore his gross transgressions and court convictions, so the Indonesian oligarchs, military and big business who run the nation have stamped down a grim past to lift their man into office.

In 2019 President Joko 'Jokowi' Widodo invited his once bitter rival to become Defence Minister, ensuring a platform.  Last month he promoted Prabowo to four-star honorary general giving the disgraced soldier more status and bestowing forgiveness.

That's a gesture not all respect, particularly those who believe electors have been sold more than a pup.  They fear discovering their rights and freedoms have been savaged as Indonesia once again becomes a hard-line military dictatorship.

For 32 years (1966-1998) the country was controlled by General Soeharto, Prabowo’s former father-in-law.  Prabowo and his wife divorced 25 years ago and neither has  remarried.

So who is our neighbour's choice? Is the leader-to-be a fascist, a dictator or a reformed bully?  He's certainly a poor reader claiming a sci-fi novel was a research document predicting the end of Indonesia this decade as rapacious foreigners plundered the archipelago’s riches.

Defence Minister Richard Marles has called him  ‘very much a friend of Australia’.

Not all see him so benignly. One-time UN advisor Pat Walsh doubts Prabowo has the  temperament and skill to govern - or the history.  He’s assembled a backgrounder of Prabowo’s East Timor tours with soldiers and militias under his command allegedly committing murders of unarmed civilians and gross human rights abuses.

Former Australian Senator Rex Patrick and journalist Dr  Philip Dorling have summarised what happened in 1998:  ‘Troops under Prabowo's command kidnapped and tortured democracy activists and the General was implicated in orchestrating mob violence in Jakarta against Indonesians of Chinese descent’.

That same year Prabowo was dishonourably discharged from the army and fled to exile in Jordan. He was banned from the US and Australia till 2014. He eventually returned to his homeland and with family help became a business tycoon and political aspirant.  He has never been charged.

Although it put him in power Prabowo isn’t keen on democracy. He joined the military as a teen. Though he’s been educated in the US, UK, briefly at Duntroon and is a polyglot, these are his Trump-style repetitions  according to The Jakarta Post:

 "I’ve participated in five general elections and let me attest, let me testify, that democracy is really, very, very tiring …very, very messy and costly."

He said much the same a decade ago though better expressed during his first shot at the top job. Two Australian experts on Indonesian politics wrote then that he’d asserted “direct elections were not compatible with the Indonesian cultural character.”

The academics commented: “This is an extraordinary state of affairs. It is very rare in the modern world for would-be autocrats to openly state that they want to destroy the electoral system through which they seek to achieve power.

“They mostly mask such intentions before they’re elected.”

Nor is Prabowo fond of a feisty free media, castigating journalists for allegedly “manipulating democracy”. He’s declined interviews with Western writers (including this correspondent), probably concerned they’d ask about his past and highlight transgressions.  Human Rights Watch said he did not respond to questions.

The real thing

Although his unsubstantiated xenophobia was widely rubbished, the hidden message is that thugs are Christians (the second largest faith group though only ten per cent of the citizenry) or the hated atheists - an even smaller minority. Religion can be an explosive issue.

Western governments have to deal with whoever is delivered by voters. Indonesians have picked Prabowo and Canberra must accept their choice.  That doesn't mean they're right.

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First published in Independent Australia, 17 March 2024: https://independentaustralia.net/politics/politics-display/indonesia-elected-former-military-officer-with-autocratic-streak,18429

THE PIC IS THE TRUTH: BLOKES RULE, OK?

 

THINGS UNSAID, PEOPLE UNSEEN            

The irony was thick as lard, yet seemingly ignored by legacy media.. What an indigestible image for International Women's Day: What an appalling advertisement for the Melbourne ASEAN Summit and its Australian host, a claimed world leader for gender equality.

The above pic appeared last week just before Minister for Women Katy Gallagher released the  government’s Working for Women strategy to “ensure women are better represented in leadership and decision-making roles.”

The lineup of a dozen leaders representing nine of the ten members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations  plus PM Anthony Albanese were all men wearing trousers tailored to allow stand-up use of urinals. This apparently bestows wisdom and authority.  

The total population they allegedly represent is 700 million human beings.  About half would be women, though not one was on the jolly pix of delegates awkwardly holding hands and weirdly labelled “family”. That usually means Dad and Mum.

Meanwhile, Albanese's fiancee Jodie Haydon took "spouses" (PM's Department term) to the Melbourne Museum where they could see how things used to be done and maybe get selfies with koalas.

Women at the conference did get a look-in at some of the breakaway sessions like Digital Transformation Entrepreneurship, but they were battling against the flood of testosterone.  

The summit was supposed to celebrate half a century after the first meeting between ASEAN Secretaries-General and Australian officials in Canberra.  Photos from the 1974 original show an all-bloke chat, so nothing’s changed for 50 years.

        One woman who should have been at the Summit in her own right was Nobel Laureate Aung San Suu Kyi,  Her National League for Democracy won the November 2020 Myanmar general election with 346 seats against the opposition’s army-backed Union Solidarity and Development Party that took just 25 of the available seats.

The USDP claimed the vote was neither free nor fair.  Three months later the army ripped up the ballot, seized the government and arrested Suu Kyi.

The Thailand-based Assistance Association for Political Prisoners claims 4,650 people have been killed and more than 20,000 detained since the coup.

 Suu Kyi was tried in a closed court and sentenced to a total of 33 years in a secret jail for "corruption" and a swag of other charges.  The 78-year-old will probably die behind bars.

The UN has condemned the sentences.  US Secretary of State Antony Blinken has reportedly called her convictions “affronts to democracy and justice”.

Did any of this disturb Australia and the ASEAN delegates? (Myanmar was unrepresented).  They never mentioned Suu Kyi in their 55-point Melbourne Declaration. Instead, it was choked with warm words like 'welcoming" and "supporting", "underscoring" and "looking forward".

In the section on Myanmar delegates “strongly condemned the continued acts of violence and called for immediate cessation … effective humanitarian assistance, and inclusive national dialogue.”  But the lady’s name didn’t appear.

      The generals in Naypyidaw must be quivering, fearing a force of ASEAN peacekeepers - like those led by Australia that secured East Timor in 1999 after a referendum backed independence from Indonesia.  The brigades might be assembled at the Melbourne    meeting and rush to rescue the rule of law.

Such interference is a fantasy, because ASEAN has no collective standing army and works on consensus. So the tiny Sultanate of  Brunei (pop below 500,000) can kibosh a resolution from giant Indonesia, (pop above 277 million) rendering any decision useless.

It seems the violence in the once-British colony of Burma deserves less attention than the former colony of Portugal.  

The Summit could have been, but wasn't about promoting democracy and women’s rights; the idea was never mentioned in the 4,660-word Declaration.  It was all about business - selling more Aussie goods into an expanding market now with enough money to pay for our goodies beyond grains and beef.

US political scientist Dr Prashanth Parameswaran who calls himself an “ASEAN Wonk” wrote that the Albanese government “has consistently put strengthening ties with Southeast Asia at the core of its foreign policy …as an invested middle power contributing to the twin pillars of peace and prosperity in the Indo-Pacific.”

This is a long-winded code for trade first, human rights somewhere else.  

ASEAN is a party to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights which includes women as equals.  The man who introduced HR into the discussions was not the Aussie PM who likes to promote freedom, but Anwar Ibrahim from a flawed democracy.

The Malaysian PM has deep personal knowledge of the topic having been jailed twice (1999-2004 and 2015-2018) on charges of sodomy believed to have been engineered by his political rivals.  He has since been pardoned.

In Melbourne Anwar lobbied Albanese to restart funding of the UN Agency for Palestinian Refugees, suspended after allegations that some workers for the agency took part in the Hamas attack on 7 October. The stoppage has directly impacted women and kids.  Resumption is likely.

Domestic violence in Australia has only recently been recognised as a national scourge. Laws, shelters, police re-training and other measures are now in place, making us a leader in reform.

The curse of DV is also widespread in ASEAN countries, though little discussed because of cultural shame. The Indonesian Ministry of Women’s Empowerment and Child Protection reported 18,000 cases of violence for the first nine months of 2023. Women were almost always the victims.

A national survey by the ministry recorded 18 per cent of married women  experiencing physical or sexual violence.  Twenty-one per cent reported emotional violence, while a quarter had experienced economic violence where the man exploits his partner’s assets.

Here was a chance for this largely hidden crime to be exposed and discussed in the calm of Melbourne. West Australian scholar and Indonesian speaker Dr Kate O’ Shaughnessy has written that Indonesian law “does not properly address ideological, religious and cultural definitions of gender roles.”

Albanese has acknowledged business between his nation and the bloc has been "underdone".  At the summit, he spruiked an AUD 2 billion fund "to boost trade and two-way investment (focusing on) infrastructure and green-economy transition projects."

The facility will provide loans, guarantees, equity and insurance for projects that will boost Australian trade and investment in the region.   Australia will also give $140 million to a Partnerships for Infrastructure Programme for "governments to deliver projects with expertise such as planning and procurement".  

Women should benefit,  but who’ll get the money? Minister Gallagher has already said companies that want government contracts must meet gender equality targets. Only in the Wide Brown - or everywhere?

Also not aired at the ASEAN Summit was pay equality - an issue getting wide coverage in Australia. A UN report on  leadership found less than half the women have paid work in Indonesia and adjacent states:

"Women's share of managerial positions across ASEAN countries remains below parity. With the exception of Laos and the Philippines, women remain underrepresented in management in all countries… representation in middle and senior management is even lower, at 26 per cent."

Though not on the stage.  While the ASEAN Summit delegates in Melbourne were trying to get noticed, US superstar Taylor Swift was sucking out all the available news space in Singapore.  Her performances forced fans from elsewhere in ASEAN to travel to the island state that’s earned big money on her success.

While 12 men who think they’re special yarned in Melbourne about their plans to earn, independent Swift sang in Singapore and coined millions.  That’s woman power, and it’s a lot more cheering and effective.

It’s a pity she didn’t make the ASEAN Summit. Then the HR issues she promotes would have been raised to the roofs.

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First published in Pearls & Irritations, 14 March 2024: https://johnmenadue.com/things-unsaid-people-unseen/

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

HISTORY IS BUNK - AGAIN

 INDIFFERENCE KILLING DEMOCRACY

A reason for Indonesians overwhelmingly supporting cashiered general Prabowo Subianto and a likely military dictatorship is because the electorate rarely reads; voters haven’t been taught to think critically so know little of their new president’s past.

In 1998 Prabowo was stripped of his rank and discharged from the Army for disobeying orders.  His squad arrested student dissidents and 13 have never reappeared.  He fled to Jordan and returned earlier this century to become a hugely successful businessman.

Australian author and academic Max Lane, who translated the works of political prisoner Pramoedya Ananta Toer into English last century,  says Indonesia is the only country in the world that doesn’t require students to read their own nation's literature:  

“This was deliberately created so that the Indonesian people would not understand their own nation so they would not have any imagination for the future.” As Spanish-American  philosopher George Santayana (1863-1952) said: ‘Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.’

The condemnation of intellectuals and creatives, heavy censorship and book banning during second president Soeharto’s rule (1966 - 1998) caused a great slump in reading history. A US university study of The World’s Most Literate Nations ranked Indonesia at 60 of the 61 states surveyed. (Top is Finland; Australia is 12th).

A Melbourne University commentary concluded: “Culturally, Indonesians have a very strong oral tradition, and the country is not going to transform into a nation of bookworms overnight (but) … to recognise that creativity and innovation are urgently needed to address the reading crisis.”

Although  World Bank data shows Indonesian literacy above 96 per cent, knowing how to read and using that skill widely are separate issues.

Indonesian public schools are in a mess. One Australian academic review blamed “inadequate funding, human resource deficits, perverse incentive structures, and poor management”  adding: “Problems with education quality and learning have also been, at their root, a matter of politics and power.”

In the past liberal Muslim parents ignored crucifixes nailed above doorways to get a better education in Catholic schools; this trend is waning as independent schools develop.   However, the curriculum is still controlled by the government which is again rewriting history.

The first version of the 1965 coup, widely and uncritically taught,  had naked Communist women dancing on the castrated corpses of murdered generals.  The brief uprising was savagely suppressed by General Soeharto who went on to become the nation’s second president.  

The lewd story was untrue - a pre-internet hoax to foment hatred towards the Communist Party and its supporters seeking land reform. It worked - and an estimated half-million were slaughtered in a military-engineered genocide. 

Soeharto (who died in 2008) is known overseas as the greatest kleptocrat in the Republic’s history, though never charged.  He allegedly stripped US $35 billion from the public purse.  This is also not taught in schools.

Now Golkar Party Deputy Chair Melchias Markus Mekeng reckons  Soeharto should be made a national hero.  That’s reportedly because he “did a lot of good work and was dedicated when he served as president.”  No details.

The motive for trying to canonise a villain comes after the current and seventh president Joko 'Jokowi' Widodo last month suddenly smoothed the facts by rehabilitating his rival.

He awarded his cashiered successor Prabowo with the honorary rank of four-star general. When kicked out of the military 26 years ago he had three stars.

The promotion dismayed civil society groups that claimed Prabowo’s promotion was a ”betrayal of the 1998 Reformation.”

A career military man educated in the UK and US,  Prabowo's meteoric rise in the army was boosted by serving with alleged brutality in East Timor and marrying Soeharto's second eldest daughter Siti Hediati Hariyadi.  The couple have since divorced.

He then tried to be elected president, crashing both times against the current holder of the title. To widespread astonishment Jokowi made his bitter opponent Prabowo Defence Minister, giving the failed candidate a platform.

On his third try on 14 February Prabowo convincingly won the presidency, sweeping the stage of his two main candidates with close to 60 per cent of the vote. (Jokowi had already served two five-year terms and was prevented by the Constitution from standing a third time.)

There are 24 political parties registered in Indonesia, including Golkar, the vehicle for  Soeharto who served for 32 years before he quit in 1998 during an economic crisis and massive student protests.

Golkar (Party of Functional Groups) was formed by the military in 1964.  It's now the second-largest party and claims to be democratic and nationalist. It backed Prabowo's candidacy in this year's election so will get some of the ministries.

Merit and skills in a specific portfolio are not required.

So far the priority is not education but military bases in every province.  There are 14 at present.  During the election campaign, Prabowo pledged to increase these to all 38.

Any chance the schooling situation will change for the better with Prabowo as president?  It’s unlikely though it depends on who’s appointed Education Minister and how much clout they carry. In the Indonesian system, a minister can be recruited from outside politics.

The current education minister is billionaire businessman Nadiem Anwar Makarim who started the Gojek motorbike taxi service in 2009.  He's not known as a member of a political party.

Dr Anies Baswedan, once a university rector and failed presidential candidate, was a former Education Minister.  He tried to reform the system but soon encountered opposition and was sacked by Jokowi in 2016.

Monash University’s Dr Sharyn Davies reportedly said Prabowo’s nationalism “could affect higher education policy – including appetite for overseas university campuses.

“No Indonesian university apart from Monash Indonesia has foreign academics employed in anything other than guest adjunct positions.

“It’s a very insular, ultra-nationalist kind of education system and…my sense (is that) Prabowo will move that even more towards the nationalist insular side.”

First published in Pearls & Irritations, 11 March 2024: https://johnmenadue.com/indifference-killing-democracy/

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THE CLUB TO NOT JOIN

A PARADE OF TALK MARCHING NOWHERE

Count the women

ASEAN has been around for so long media outlets rarely spell the full name - Association of Southeast Asian Nations.  That sounds significant and grand.  It’s not.

A better title for the acronym would be Association of Supercilious Egoists and Nationalists.  Even that snide put down wouldn’t do enough injustice to a ten-member group that likes to think it’s a local version of the European Economic  Community.

ASEAN is not Asia’s Common Market, but this week Australians will be bamboozled into thinking otherwise.

Summit delegates will meet in Melbourne this morning for a two-day bun fight that will generate indigestion, photos of ranks of mostly plump men and a mass of verbiage.  The taxpayers of the region who fund this knees-up will be served commentary that means nothing because ASEAN does nothing.

"The African Union has shown it can take “collective action against coups and other breaches of democratic rule, as well as taking collective action in the face of other political crises.” ASEAN can’t,  according to US journalist Joshua Kurlantzick, a Senior Fellow for Southeast Asia at the Council on Foreign Relations.

Some background: In 1967 during the Vietnam War Indonesia with US support set up ASEAN with Thailand, the Philippines, Malaysia and Singapore.  The idea was to block the advance of Communism.

 Ironically two latecomers are Red – Vietnam - subtly backing Russia - and Laos, with feudal Cambodia sticking close to China. The absolute monarchy of tiny Brunei  (population less than half-a-million) signed up in 1984.  Despotic Myanmar now a military dictatorship became a member in 1997.

Talk of Australia joining this  Cold War relic long past its use-by date is academic because decisions must be unanimous.

We’re a Western nation aligned with Northern Hemisphere powers, superior and racist - an image already hardened by the Voice result.  On the other side we’re democratic and follow the rule of law.  That makes us out of place in ASEAN.

Only Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore and the Philippines follow forms of ‘flawed democracy’ as assessed by the Economist Intelligence Unit.   That doesn’t mean they’re goodies,  just not so bad as the rest.

 The US found AUD$ 142 million this year to support ‘the robust implementation of the ASEAN Outlook’ whatever that’s supposed to mean.

The only frayed twine stringing the ten disparate nations together isn't language (meetings are in English), culture, history, ideologies, total population (672 million) or economies. It's geography.

Is the continent and Commonwealth of Australia in Southeast Asia?  Most ASEAN citizens and Australians wouldn't think so despite our politicians from Whitlam onwards claiming otherwise.

Eleven years ago then PM Julia Gillard released Australia in the Asian Century White Paper ’nurturing deeper and broader relationships … by taking advantage of the opportunities offered by the Asian century.’

It vanished from government websites following the election of Tony Abbott but has now reappeared.

The truth is we relate better to New Zealand and the Pacific Islands, countries that provide us with visitors and workers mainly using the same language and having similar faiths.

To soften up Melburnians to tolerate traffic snarls caused by summiteers’  sightseeings, locals have been told by the PM’s office that the show celebrates Australia becoming ‘ASEAN's first Dialogue Partner in 1974.’  There’s more:

‘Australia and ASEAN have worked together to address the complex challenges facing our region. Our practical cooperation contributes to making the region more peaceful, open, stable and prosperous.’

Maybe the words will comfort the activists fighting for their lives, villages and a return to democracy in Myanmar, a member state of ASEAN and now a vile military dictatorship.

The PM's office blurbs use the word 'bloc' as though all member states coalesce.  That's another misnomer - distrust among neighbours is widespread and ancient.

In 2021 Australia and ASEAN set up a ‘Comprehensive Strategic Partnership’. What this means in terms of dollars spent, paid and understood by citizens is another blur of obfuscation:

‘We've been working with our ASEAN partners on giving effect to our partnership, agreeing shared priorities, increasing resources and advancing new programs. Our Plan of Action guides the implementation of the goals and objectives of the partnership.’

There is some business underway but whether this has much to do with ASEAN is doubtful. Our trade in 2021 with ASEAN states was AUD178 billion, but almost a third was with or through Singapore.

Two-way investment with that tiny island nation (population six million) was AUD 225  billion.  The figure for ASEAN is AUD 249 billion - and that includes Singapore. Whoops.  Not a stat the host nation wants to spread.

Supporters of ASEAN rightly promote the importance of  regional unity, but warn: ‘Diversity, divisions and disputes remain consequential features of the region that pose a significant threat to unity.’

In 2012 ASEAN delegates declared they supported human rights.  Fifty-five civil rights organisations were furious, claiming the statement implied ‘their people are less deserving of human rights than the people of Europe, Africa or the Americas.’.

Cambodia is this year's ASEAN chair and  PM Hun Sen seems indifferent to the Myanmar coup that so distresses Western democracies. ‘He has essentially invited Myanmar's military leaders to just return to the ASEAN fold, provided they meet laughably easy markers,’ writes Kurlantzick.

The truth behind the hoopla is that Australia has no idea of how to relate to the region.  It has a Free Trade Agreement with Indonesia, the burgeoning and largest state in ASEAN with a population 500 times bigger than Brunei. But this FTA is moving so slowly that Canberra regularly pushes businesses to do more.

Western investors are reluctant because of political instability and corruption throughout ASEAN.  Today’s show will be another attempt to breathe some purpose into the old pact while hoping some other more credible association can arise.

That’s unlikely.

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First published in Pearls & Irritations, 4 March 2024: https://johnmenadue.com/the-parade-of-talk-going-nowhere/