Conjunctures and Continuities in Southeast Asian Politics

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1 Conjunctures and Continuities in Southeast Asian Politics

2 The Institute of Southeast Asian Studies (ISEAS) was established as an autonomous organization in It is a regional centre dedicated to the study of socio-political, security and economic trends and developments in Southeast Asia and its wider geostrategic and economic environment. The Institute s research programmes are the Regional Economic Studies (RES, including ASEAN and APEC), Regional Strategic and Political Studies (RSPS), and Regional Social and Cultural Studies (RSCS). ISEAS Publishing, an established academic press, has issued more than 2,000 books and journals. It is the largest scholarly publisher of research about Southeast Asia from within the region. ISEAS Publishing works with many other academic and trade publishers and distributors to disseminate important research and analyses from and about Southeast Asia to the rest of the world.

3 Conjunctures and Continuities in Southeast Asian Politics Edited by N. Ganesan Institute of Southeast Asian Studies Singapore

4 First published in Singapore in 2013 by ISEAS Publishing Institute of Southeast Asian Studies 30 Heng Mui Keng Terrace Pasir Panjang Singapore Website: < All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies Institute of Southeast Asian Studies The responsibility for facts and opinions in this publication rests exclusively with the authors and their interpretations do not necessarily reflect the views or the policy of the publishers or their supporters. ISEAS Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data Conjunctures and continuities in Southeast Asian politics / edited by N. Ganesan. 1. Southeast Asia Politics and government. I. Ganesan, N. (Narayanan), 1954 DS526.7 C ISBN (soft cover) ISBN (e-book, PDF) Typeset by Superskill Graphics Pte Ltd Printed in Singapore by Markono Print Media Pte Ltd

5 Contents Acknowledgements List of Abbreviations Contributors vii ix xiii 1. Conjunctures and Continuities in Southeast Asian Politics N. Ganesan 1 2. (Re)Assessing the EDSA People Power (1986) as a Critical Conjuncture Rommel Curaming and Lisandro Claudio The Road to Doi Moi in 1986: Domestic Dimensions Ta Minh Tuan The 1988 Uprising in Myanmar: Historical Conjuncture or Praetorian Redux? Tin Maung Maung Than Cambodia s Historical Conjunctures and their Significance Ramses Amer Changing the Rules: Historical Conjuncture and Transition in Indonesia Ehito Kimura The Resistible Rise of Thaksin Shinawatra: Crisis, Change and the Collapse of Thailand s Democracy Federico Ferrara 151

6 vi Contents 8. The March 2008 General Election in Malaysia as a Historical Conjuncture Johan Saravanamuttu Conclusion: Conjunctures and Continuities in Southeast Asia N. Ganesan 217 Index 225

7 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS This edited volume is the outcome of a project that owes its origins to a workshop held in Kuala Lumpur in October The workshop that was entitled Recent Historical Conjunctures in Southeast Asian Politics was generously funded by the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency (Sida) through the Asian Political and International Studies Association (APISA). I am especially indebted to Dr Hari Singh, the General Secretary of APISA for the funding and Ms Patricia Marin for assisting with the administration of the workshop. Thanks are also due to the three discussants at the workshop who robustly engaged the paper writers and challenged them. They are Dr Nguyen vu Tung who is currently with the Vietnamese Embassy in Washington DC, Dr Lam Peng Er from the East Asian Institute and Dr Benjamin Wong from the National Institute of Education in Singapore. At the publication stage I am indebted to the anonymous academic adviser at the Nordic Institute for Asian Studies (NIAS) who provided useful feedback on how to restructure the manuscript. Similarly, the suggestions of a second anonymous reviewer at the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies (ISEAS) in Singapore provided valuable feedback for a second round of revisions. And finally Mrs Triena Ong and Ms Rahilah Yusuf at ISEAS provided the necessary support to publish the manuscript expeditiously. All of them have made the manuscript stronger in its final form. Nonetheless the normal caveat that remaining shortcomings are attributable to me alone obtains. The chapter written by Ehito Kimura entitled Changing the Rules: Historical Conjuncture and Transition in Indonesia was previously published in Asia Pacific Viewpoint 51, no. 3 (December 2010):

9 ABBREVIATIONS ACMES ASEAN BA BCP BIMSTEC BN BSPP CGDK CPK CPP CPP CSA CSO DAP DK DRV EC FDI FRU FUNCINPEC GOLKAR HINDRAF IMF ISA JIM Ayeyawady Chao Phraya Mekong Economic Cooperation Strategy Association of Southeast Asian Nations Barisan Alternatif (Malaysia) Communist Party of Burma/Burma Communist Party Bay of Bengal Initiative for Multi-Sectoral Technical and Economic Cooperation Barisan Nasional (Malaysia) Burma Socialist Programme Party Coalition Government of Democratic Kampuchea Communist Party of Kampuchea Cambodian People s Party Communist Party of the Philippines Civil Society Agent (Malaysia) civil society organizations Democratic Action Party (Malaysia) Democratic Kampuchea Democratic Republic of Vietnam Election Commission (Malaysia) foreign direct investment Federal Reserve Unit (Malaysia) Front de Union Nationale Pour un Cambodge Independent, Pacifique, Neutrale et Co-operatif (Cambodia) Golongan Karya (Indonesia) Hindu Rights Action Force (Malaysia) International Monetary Fund Internal Security Act (Malaysia) Jakarta Informal Meeting

10 KIA KIO KMP KNU KNUFNS KPNLF LDC MB MCA MIC NATO NC ND NGC NLD NLF NPA NPKC PAD PAS PCC PCHR PDIP PDK PKN PKR PPP PRK RAM RGNUC RIT ROV SAARC SAPP SLORC SNC SOC Abbreviations Kachin Independence Army (Myanmar) Kachin Independence Organization (Myanmar) Kilusan ng Magbubukid sa Pilipinas (Movement of Farmers in the Philippines) Karen National Union (Myanmar) Kampuchean National Front for National Salvation Khmer People s National Liberation Front (Cambodia) least developed country Menteri Besar (Malaysia) Malaysian Chinese Association Malaysian Indian Congress North Atlantic Treaty Organization National Convention (Myanmar) National Democratic (Philippines) National Government of Cambodia National League for Democracy (Myanmar) National Liberation Front New People s Army (Philippines) National Peace-Keeping Council People s Alliance for Democracy (Thailand) Parti Islam Se-Malaysia Paris Conference on Cambodia Philippine Committee on Human Rights Indonesian Democratic Party Struggle Party of Democratic Kampuchea Parti Keadilan Nasional (Malaysia) People s Justice Party (Malaysia) People s Progressive Party (Malaysia) People s Republic of Kampuchea Reform the Armed Forces Movement (Philippines) Royal Government of National Union of Cambodia Rangoon Institute of Technology (Myanmar) Republic of Vietnam South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation Sabah Progressive Party State Law and Order Restoration Council (Myanmar) Supreme National Council (Cambodia) State of Cambodia

11 Abbreviations SOE SPDC SSA TOL UDD UMFCCI UMNO UNAMIC UNTAC UPKO USDA USSR UTPP UWSA VCP/CPV state-owned enterprise State Peace and Development Council (Myanmar) Shan State Army (Myanmar) Temporary Occupation Lease (Malaysia) United Front for Democracy Against Dictatorship (Thailand) Union of Myanmar Federation of Chambers of Commerce and Industry United Malays National Organisation (Malaysia) United Nations Advance Mission in Cambodia United Nations Transitional Authority in Cambodia United Pasokmomogun Kadazandusun Murut Organization (Malaysia) Union Solidarity and Development Association (Myanmar) Union of Soviet Socialist Republics United Thai People s Party United Wa State Army (Myanmar) Vietnamese Communist Party (Viet Nam Cong San Dang)/Communist Party of Vietnam (Đaûng Coäng saûn Vieät Nam) xi

13 Contributors N. Ganesan is Professor of Southeast Asian Politics at the Hiroshima Peace Institute in Japan where he has been since He concurrently serves as Visiting Professor at the National Graduate Institute for Policy Studies (GRIPS) in Tokyo. His research interest focuses on sources of intrastate and interstate tensions and conflict in Southeast Asia. Ramses Amer is Senior Research Fellow at the Department of Oriental Languages, Stockholm University, Stockholm and Research Associate, Swedish Institute of International Affairs, Stockholm. Major areas of research include (a) security issues and conflict resolution in Southeast Asia and the wider Pacific Asia and (b) the role of the United Nations in the international system. His most recent books are Conflict Management and Dispute Settlement in East Asia (Farnham and Burlington: Ashgate, 2011) (co-edited with Keyuan Zou) and The Security-Development Nexus: Peace, Conflict and Development (London: Anthem Press, 2012) (co-edited with Ashok Swain and Joakim Öjendal). Lisandro E. Claudio is Assistant Professor in the Department of Political Science, Ateneo de Manila University. He obtained his doctorate from the School of Historical and Philosophical Studies, the University of Melbourne. Rommel A. Curaming is Programme Leader and Lecturer in History and Southeast Asian Studies Programme at the University of Brunei Darussalam (UBD). Prior to joining UBD, he was Postdoctoral Fellow at the National University of Singapore (NUS) and Postdoctoral Research Fellow under Endeavour Awards (2008) at La Trobe University. He completed his PhD in Southeast Asian Studies at the Australian National University (ANU) with a thesis on state-scholar relations in Indonesia and the Philippines.

14 xiv Contributors His recent research and publications focus on history and memory of political violence, Filipino Malayness, and politics and ethics of knowledge production. Federico Ferrara is Assistant Professor in the Department of Asian and International Studies of the City University of Hong Kong. He is the author of Thailand Unhinged: The Death of Thai-Style Democracy (2011) and numerous articles on comparative elections and party systems. Ehito Kimura is Assistant Professor of Political Science at the University of Hawai i at Manoa. His research interests include contemporary Indonesian and Southeast Asia politics. He is the author of Political Change and Territoriality in Indonesia: Provincial Proliferation (2012) as well as articles in journals such as Asian Survey, Southeast Asia Research, Indonesia, and Asia Pacific Viewpoint. Johan Saravanamuttu is Visiting Senior Research Fellow at the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, Singapore and was formerly Professor of Political Science at Universiti Sains Malaysia (USM) in Penang where he served as Dean of the School of Social Sciences ( ). In 1997 he was the Visiting Chair in ASEAN and International Studies at the University of Toronto. His publications include New Politics in Malaysia (ISEAS, 2003) (edited with Francis Loh) and March 8: Eclipsing May 13 (ISEAS, 2008) (with Ooi Kee Beng and Lee Hock Guan). His latest books are Islam and Politics in Southeast Asia (editor) (Routledge, 2010) and Malaysia s Foreign Policy, the First 50 Years: Alignment, Neutralism, Islamism (ISEAS, 2010). Tin Maung Maung Than, a Myanmar national, is a Senior Research Fellow at the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies (ISEAS) Singapore. He is the author of State Dominance in Myanmar: The Political Economy of Industrialization (ISEAS, 2007); and more recently Myanmar s 2010 Elections, Continuity and Change, in Southeast Asian Affairs 2011 (ISEAS, 2011). His research interests include political economy of development, democratization and civil-military relations in developing countries, human security, nuclear proliferation, Myanmar politics and economics. Ta Minh Tuan is Director General and Assistant to the Deputy Prime Minister, Vietnam. He also holds an Associate Professorship at the

15 Contributors xv Diplomatic Academy of Vietnam. His research and teaching includes U.S. foreign policy, security in the Asia-Pacific, Vietnam s politics and foreign policy, nuclear non-proliferation and Vietnam s nuclear energy policy. Dr Tuan was a Fulbright fellow at the University of South Carolina (2004), a fellow at the Asia-Pacific Center for Security Studies in Hawaii (2006), and a fellow at the Center for Northeast Asia Policy Studies, the Brookings Institution (2011). He is a member of CSCAP Study Group on Countering the Proliferation of WMD in the Asia Pacific and a member of CSCAP Vietnam. Dr Tuan earned his PhD in political science from the Polish Academy of Sciences, Poland in 2002.

The ISEAS Yusof Ishak Institute (formerly Institute of Southeast Asian Studies) is an autonomous organization established in 1968.

The ISEAS Yusof Ishak Institute (formerly Institute of Southeast Asian Studies) is an autonomous organization established in 1968. Reproduced from The Post-Colonial Security Dilemma: Timor-Leste and the International Community, by Rebecca Strating (Singapore: ISEAS Yusof Ishak Institute, 2019). This version was obtained electronically