Isabelle Chua

Private Investment, Public Burden: Indonesia’s ‘Whoosh’ Lesson

Indonesia’s first high-speed train project is historic but its government now has to prevent it going off the rails as costs spiral and boomerang onto the state and taxpayers.

Sabah First? 2025 State Election Shows Voters Want Results Not Slogans

The 17th Sabah elections evinced a mix of the predictable and the surprising. Despite the show of support for the ‘Sabah First’ slogan, the fragmented politics of the state will continue.

Reconstructing Indonesia’s Pesantren: Moving Beyond Concrete Matters

Tragedies like the collapse of an Islamic boarding school in mid-September in West Java require nuanced solutions and hard soul-searching. Hope and inspiration may come from within the country, indeed, within the same province.

COP30: Highlighting the Importance of the Agri-food and Forestry Sectors in Southeast Asia

ASEAN member states can work together to strengthen their national agri-food sectors, building on the outcomes of the 30th Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change.

Money in the Air: The Mirage of the Get-Rich-Quick Online Culture in Thailand

Thai netizens are fuelling a get-rich-quick online culture but the lavish lifestyles they flaunt are often illusory and mask the heavy costs of maintaining visibility to satisfy platform algorithms.

Indonesia’s Problematic Criminal Procedure Code Revision

Indonesia’s new Criminal Procedure Code might make it harder for justice to be done.

ASEAN’s Regional Ambitions for the Semiconductor Industry

A new non-binding framework for relevant ASEAN member states to ramp up their semiconductor industries and supply chains has the potential to provide some relief against a darkening geopolitical outlook.