The ABE initiative professes to promote regional economic integration via greater intra-ASEAN investments, but ASEAN should focus on attracting high-quality investment, enhancing industrial upgrading, and mitigating geopolitical risk.
Category Archives: Commentaries
ASEAN Power Grid: Gleaning Best Practices from Worst Cases
As Southeast Asia focuses on building the ASEAN Power Grid, there will be a higher chance of success if interconnections are designed to be modular and embedded within a broader regional integration agenda.
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.
Indonesia’s Slow Disaster Response: President Prabowo Constrained by His Own Agenda
Poor advice and a seeming refusal to acknowledge the reality and scale of the problem have hampered the Indonesian president’s response to the disastrous floods across Sumatra.
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.
Building BRICS? Anwar’s Worldview and Malaysia’s Foreign Policy
Malaysia’s decision to join BRICS demonstrates its long-standing adherence to strategic equidistance. It also bears Anwar Ibrahim’s personal imprimatur.
Flood Control in the Philippines: When Corruption Bedevils Climate Change Mitigation
The fact that the Philippines requires flood control measures is beyond dispute. But the problem goes far deeper.
Momentum or Mirage? Anutin’s Risky Road to Re-Election
Anutin Charnvirakul’s recent dissolution of the Thai Parliament is a tactical move to preserve incumbency advantages going into elections next year. Still, he might end up with an unwieldy “grand compromise” coalition that will give him little wiggle room.
Rebalancing Indonesia’s Trade Policy: After Prabowo’s First Year
Indonesia has its work cut out for it given tough headwinds in global trade, but the present government’s attempts to tack its sails may give the country a chance to move in the right direction.
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.