HOBART, Australia: Let the race begin. In the upcoming Malaysia General Election (GE15), the best description for competitive seats is “free for all”.

The Election Commission on Thursday (Oct 20) announced three important dates: Nomination Day on Nov 5, early voting on Nov 15 and Polling Day on Nov 19. There were no real surprises – the general consensus was for Malaysia to go to the polls in mid-November and a two-week campaign period.

What can we expect over the next fortnight before nomination day? Here are the major items to watch out for.

MAD SCRAMBLE ON CANDIDATE ISSUES

First, we can expect a mad scramble to sort out the candidate issue. While the political parties would have settled on most seats, there are problematic seats in both the government and the opposition side. There will always be highly competitive constituencies that all parties want.

This is especially difficult for coalitions where more than one member of the coalition is staking a claim. The golden rule is that the incumbent and his party have first claim.

In the past, this was a manageable problem given that there were really only two big coalitions fighting Malaysian elections – Barisan Nasional (BN) and Pakatan Harapan (PH). This is no longer the case. There are currently about 40 to 50 highly competitive constituencies.

There are three credible coalitions – BN, PH and Perikatan Nasional (PN) – plus a smaller coalition, Gerakan Tanah Air (GTA). GTA consists of Malay nationalists parties led by Mahathir Mohamad, who at 97 is still in the game. On top of this, there are at least two new parties that will put up candidates in these competitive constituencies.

In the meantime, over the next fortnight, party leaders will be holding clandestine meetings with each other to sort out the candidate issue.

Nevertheless, I will not be surprised that on nomination day, there will be seats where members of the same coalition will actually field candidates against each other.

This eventually compelled the generals to look further afield for new arms suppliers. Myanmar approached Russia, other East European countries and even North Korea.

Myanmar generals purchased Russian MiG-29s after a border clash with Thailand in February 2001 showed up the inadequacy of Myanmar’s China-made aircraft, such as the F-7 IIK, against Thailand’s US-made F-16 fighters.

Shortly after the border clash, the Tatmadaw purchased 12 MiG-29s in 2001. In 2009 it negotiated a further purchase of 20 MiG-29s. Then, the acquisition was reportedly Russia’s biggest fighter deal since Algeria scrapped an agreement to buy 34 MiG-29s.

The Tatmadaw also turned to Russia for military modernisation and training. This started before Min Aung Hlaing became Commander-in-Chief in 2011. Vice Senior-General Maung Aye, the second-in-command of the State Peace and Development Council (SPDC), made the overture with the consent of SPDC supremo Senior General Than Shwe, according to military and related sources.

The same retired major-general who divulged the Tatmadaw’s dissatisfaction with China also shared that both Tatmadaw generals – Than Shwe and Maung Aye – fought against the China-backed Communist Party of Burma. He added that they both understood “where the real external threat lay”.

AWKWARDNESS IN MYANMAR-CHINA RELATIONS

There has also been an awkwardness in the junta’s relations with China after the 2021 coup, underscored by China’s concerns to safeguard its economic interests in Myanmar. This may have persuaded the current crop of generals to recall their mentor Maung Aye’s idea of seeking a new partner and arms supplier in Russia.

Unlike other generals who had visited China since taking power, Min Aung Hlaing has not been to China since the coup. The junta has also rebuffed a Chinese request for Sun Guoxiang, its special envoy for Asian Affairs, to meet Aung San Suu Kyi.

Beijing’s endorsement of AVs isn’t part of a fad to keep up with evolving technology. Unlike other parts of the world, where regulatory backing has been one of the biggest barriers, China has actively made way for driverless cars through detailed legislation, permits and special zones since 2015 when the State Council identified it as a key focus area over the following decade.

It’s now looking for mass commercialisation by 2030. State backing matters because if cars are to become truly and fully autonomous then we’ll have to rethink decades-old rules of the road. That won’t be the realm of private companies – no matter how good their technology is.

The government-backed and guided approach has proved effective because the regulation is specific and creates boundaries; it doesn’t just set out a broad, sweeping set of guidelines or rules. There are details around key issues for AVs like road-testing, permits, cybersecurity, high-definition maps, accidents and liability.

In Beijing, for instance, a 60 sq km area that covers around 300,000 residents has been designated to allow driverless cars. That’s giving a framework to companies making software to pilot AVs.

GETTING RIDERS ON BOARD

With policy tailwinds, firms that develop software for smart cockpits and fancy central control panels for drivers are all the rage. Drivers too want more: Sales of vehicles equipped with these features have been rising in China.

It had done this in the religious violence in eastern Indonesia in the late 1990s, and communal strife was what JI had planned to foment within and between Singapore and Malaysia as well.  

This is why today’s various grassroots initiatives, ranging from the Inter-Racial and Religious Confidence Circles (IRCCs) to the current SG Secure campaign, have been designed precisely to strengthen the social resilience of Singapore’s multicultural fabric in the event of a terror strike.

A RE-EMERGING THREAT

With the rise of social media today, the tech-savvy propagandists of the Islamic State – an Al-Qaeda offshoot and global rival – promote the current significant threat of self-radicalisation. Violent ideology can thrive in a vast online space that often makes monitoring a deadly cat and mouse game.

Even more recently, the relatively nascent challenge of far right extremism has emerged in Singapore as well.

Adding to the complexity of the threat picture, JI itself, following its near-decimation by regional security forces in the 2000s, is gradually re-emerging, emphasising not violence but rather low-key infiltration of societal and political institutions. Ominously, JI appears to retain regional ambitions.

Twenty years after Bali, the threat of transnational terrorism remains but continues to evolve. So does the need for continued vigilance and not taking our social resilience for granted.

Professor Kumar Ramakrishna is Associate Dean and Head of the International Centre for Political Violence and Terrorism Research at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore.

Growth in potential GDP has continued to rely on capital. That cannot go on forever because returns on capital have been declining, when funds have mainly been funnelled into infrastructure and housing, and less in the private sector. So more and more investment would be needed to get the same growth.

Moreover, the debt with which those investments were partially financed has grown faster than GDP. China’s debt now stands at 300 per cent of GDP, which is very high for its level of development.

On the demand side, investment and exports have been relied on too heavily as growth drivers. Consumer demand only contributes less than 40 per cent of GDP, barely 3 percentage points more than decade ago.

ECONOMIC PRIORITIES HAVE SHIFTED

These issues have been well known for some time. In 2013, the 18th Central Committee of the CPC laid out ambitious reforms in fiscal, industrial and social policies to catalyse innovation, productivity, and domestic demand.  It also said the market would be a “decisive” force in allocating resources.

But since then, priorities have shifted. President Xi Jinping has placed more emphasis on the leading role of the state, national security and stability rather than growth.

Under the banner of common prosperity, authorities have made a xiaokang society – (moderately prosperous society) their social goal, which justifies scrutiny of China’s lucrative tech giants.

Meanwhile, party reforms have centralised decision power in Beijing and reinvigorated party discipline. Enforcer of anti-corruption rules, the Central Disciplinary Inspection, reduced incentives for local officials to make deals with businesses, for instance on land allocation and subsidies, thereby limiting officials’ entrepreneurial activities and policy innovation.

CALM DOWN, EVERYONE

Everyone probably needs to calm down a bit. The US may feel it has justifiable reasons to complain about India’s equivocation on Ukraine, but it would be wiser not to do so by transparently cosying up to Pakistan. Every now and then someone in Washington thinks it is time to reset relations with Islamabad, and within a decade their successors discover it was a terrible idea.

Meanwhile, we in India should also consider more carefully whether alienating the US and the West is really worth it. It won’t hurt us immediately, sure. Right now, India’s economy looks stable enough for the government to feel certain that the West needs us more than we need them.

But, if the next decade is to transform our economy and young Indians’ futures, we will need Western investment, technology and markets. If we are to secure ourselves against Pakistan and China, we will need Western weaponry, at least in the short term.

Perhaps Washington really wasn’t reminding New Delhi last week that two can play the game of balancing interests. We in India should nevertheless remember why we have, for more than a decade now, stressed “shared values” with the West. It’s a way of papering over temporary disagreements – one that isn’t available in a cold, transactional, “interests”-based relationship.

Over the coming decades, we will need the West even as we disagree with it. Sticking to our values may just be India’s real national interest.

South Korean public support for indigenous nuclearisation has been steady, and growing, for more than a decade. This has opened policy space for nuclearisation advocates to make the case for nukes at the elite level.

A persistent Track II discourse among nongovernmental national security analysts will, in turn, pressure a formal, Track I response. Already in 2017, the then-leader of the main opposition party publicly suggested South Korea needed nuclear weapons.

CHINESE AND NORTH KOREAN PRESSURE FORCING MORE RADICAL CONSIDERATIONS

Polling regularly returns support for this option for the reasons one would expect – China and North Korea.

China is a large, powerful state on Seoul’s doorstep. It has increasingly tried to bully South Korea, regarding, for example, missile defence or Chinese travellers during the pandemic.

And North Korea, obviously, is an ongoing, arguably existential threat. It is an opaque nuclear weapons state that routinely threatens South Korea and rejects even the most basic arms control regarding its warheads and missiles.

It has fired a flurry of seven missile launches in just over two weeks, with one that flew over Japan in blatant disregard for Japanese sovereignty.

On Monday (Oct 10), North Korean state media said that the exercises involved ballistic missiles with mock nuclear warheads, and were meant to deliver a strong message of war deterrence.

“Even though the enemy continues to talk about dialogue and negotiations, we do not have anything to talk about nor do we feel the need to do so,” KCNA quoted North Korean President Kim Jong Un as saying.

The next most important question is the vote in East Malaysia. Sabah and Sarawak have 57 members of parliament, or about 25 per cent of the seats.

But politicians there care mainly about being part of the federal ruling coalition, so that they can get maximum developmental funding and autonomy under the Malaysia Agreement 1963. They will become more significant once the numbers are put together to form the federal government on election night.

GE15 CRUCIAL FOR MALAYSIA’S FUTURE

This will be a crucial GE for Malaysia’s future for two simple reasons. First, this is the first post-COVID-19 general election. Malaysians will want a strong stable government to steer Malaysia back to normality after the pandemic severely damaged the economy and uneven growth is expected.

Second, Malaysians are sick and tired of the political instability – three prime ministers and two ruling coalitions – since 2018. They understand the need for stability for the country to thrive.

The opposition is too divided at this point to offer a strong challenge nationally. It clearly lost momentum during the pandemic and I do not see any signs that they can reverse this trend in the next 60 days.

This is probably why the opposition tried hard to delay the election, including offering political support to Ismail Sabri in parliament so he could withstand the pressure from Ahmad Zahid and Najib to call for an early election.

SECURITY FORCE REFORM?

This massacre has happened just ahead of the next election, which is scheduled for the first half of next year. Politicians are starting to get into campaign mode.

In the past, opposition parties have occasionally campaigned on issues around reforming the security forces, and in recent years there have been signs the government wants to be seen to be doing things on this issue.

One such topic has been that of military conscription – all men over 21 years of age in the country must register for the draft, which takes the form of a lottery every April.

This practice is very unpopular, and became a political issue in the last election. The military has floated ways to scale back conscription, but whether changes will actually be implemented is another matter.

My studies of the Thai military over a long period suggest such announcements are often quietly shelved later.

Indeed there’s relatively little oversight of the security forces, because of the country’s governance – in many respects, the military is the government. Other agencies of the government are reluctant to put any pressure on the security forces, as is the country’s anti corruption commission. Military reform is left to the military itself.

Investors are bullish on the potential of plant-based fish, with alternative seafood companies raising US$175 million in 2021 – nearly double the amount raised in 2020.

In total, more than 120 companies are now developing alternative seafood products around the world, including many in East and Southeast Asia. For example, Singapore-based Growthwell, which is backed by Temasek and other investors, recently outlined plans to export their alternative proteins, including seafood products made of konjac, to China and the UK.

As the old adage goes, “the customer is always right”. When it comes to alternative seafood, customers want products that can match or exceed the taste, texture, nutritional value and affordability of the conventional seafood they know and love.

These are not unreasonable requests, but satisfying them will require substantially more investment from public and private stakeholders into open-access research and development. These funds should go towards improving the quality, variety and cost of plant-based seafood products beyond what’s currently available.

For the sake of securing Asia’s increasingly fraught food supply and preserving the richness of our oceans amid a world of surging protein demand, we should all hope that alternative seafood producers can live up to consumers’ high expectations.

Ryan Huling is the senior communications manager of alternative protein think tank Good Food Institute APAC.