Lee family still just can’t get along in Singapore

Singapore’s simmering ‘first family’ feud could come to a new head as related court verdicts are handed down in 2021

When the fifth anniversary of the death of Singapore’s founding prime minister Lee Kuan Yew was observed earlier this year, his estranged children mourned apart. An acrimonious dispute among the siblings that began over the fate of their late father’s estate has not yet been put to rest and has since taken on political dimensions.

Related legal proceedings are set to be heard in 2021, including a defamation case brought by the late Lee’s eldest son, incumbent Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong, 68, against a local news editor who repeated an allegation made by his younger brother Lee Hsien Yang and sister Lee Wei Ling, neither of whom the premier has sued directly.

With the prime minister now expected to retain power and push back a leadership transition that was set to happen by 2022 in order to see the nation through the Covid-19 crisis, it remains to be seen how a bitter family feud could play out in the final years of Lee’s litigious rule.

Unprecedented public sparring between members of Singapore’s first family began in earnest in 2017 when the premier’s siblings accused him of abusing his executive powers to impede their efforts to demolish the family bungalow, a five-bedroom residence at 38 Oxley Road, as their elder statesmen father had wanted and stipulated in his will.

Read the full story at Asia Times.

Nile Bowie is a journalist and correspondent with the Asia Times covering current affairs in Singapore and Malaysia. He can be reached at nilebowie@gmail.com. 

Global Britain ditches EU for an Asian future

UK has clinched Singapore and Vietnam free trade deals that will serve as templates for its post-Brexit Asian trade relations

With the future of Britain-European Union (EU) trade on a precipice, simmering post-Brexit uncertainty hasn’t deterred the United Kingdom (UK) from projecting itself as a re-emerging force in global and particularly Asian trade.

Ahead of what some fear will be a chaotic end to the five-year Brexit process, with the UK set to break with the EU’s single market on December 31, London is already casting its gaze eastward, eyeing bilateral deals and membership in a regional trade bloc.

Last week, the UK announced new trade pacts with Singapore and Vietnam, which International Trade Secretary Liz Truss said would be “vital for the UK’s future as an independent trading nation,” and help make Britain a “global hub for services and technology trade.”

Touted as symbolically extending the UK’s foothold in Asia, both deals largely replicate existing trade agreements that Singapore and Hanoi have with the EU, and could pave the way for similar pacts with nations in the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) as Britain pledges to take a more active role in regional affairs in the Indo-Pacific.

Read the full story at Asia Times.

Nile Bowie is a journalist and correspondent with the Asia Times covering current affairs in Singapore and Malaysia. He can be reached at nilebowie@gmail.com. 

First notes of Anwar’s swan song in Malaysia

Opposition leader's strategic missteps and questionable tactics have his coalition partners looking for new leadership ahead of polls

Anwar Ibrahim, long seen as a champion of national reform and multiracial unity, is under pressure from his coalition partners to step aside as frustration with his strategies and leadership mount in the aftermath of a watershed budget vote in Parliament that failed as promised to topple the government.

After pillorying the government’s expansionary 2021 budget and intimating he would not cooperate with Prime Minister Muhyiddin Yassin’s “back-door government”, opposition leader Anwar allowed the draft expenditure bill to pass in a walkover as per an eleventh-hour strategy shift that has apparently ignited an intra-coalition revolt.

The Pakatan Harapan (PH) coalition had intended for the bill’s November 26 vote to serve as a do or die test of Muhyiddin’s nine-month-old administration, which has clung to power with a razor-thin two-seat majority. Instead, the vote has resulted in a legitimacy crisis for the opposition, one that could knock Anwar out as PH’s prime ministerial candidate at the next election.

“The mood in the last week since the vote is one of anger and frustration,” said a senior figure from Anwar’s Parti Keadilan Rakyat (PKR). “Everyone is angry, especially with Anwar’s last-minute U-turn. And until now, Anwar has failed to provide a satisfactory explanation to his coalition partners about why he did that.”

Read the full story at Asia Times.

Nile Bowie is a journalist and correspondent with the Asia Times covering current affairs in Singapore and Malaysia. He can be reached at nilebowie@gmail.com.

Malaysia looks high, China hides Low

China denies but Malaysia insists fugitive 1MDB fraudster Jho Low is living quietly and comfortably in Macau

When will Jho Low finally be brought to justice? It’s a question many in Malaysia are asking since new revelations about the country’s most wanted man came to light, including China’s apparent role in providing him refuge to evade global authorities seeking his arrest.

Low, whose full name is Low Taek Jho, has been on the run for nearly five years and is widely viewed as the mastermind behind the multi-billion-dollar 1Malaysia Development Berhad (1MDB) corruption scandal.

Earning infamy for his extravagant spending and penchant for partying, the elusive 39-year-old financier has avoided the limelight and kept largely silent as a fugitive, spending millions on legal fees and public relations services. He has continued to travel internationally despite having two Interpol Red Notices and an active US arrest warrant out against him.

The long-running search for Low hasn’t let up amid a year that has seen Malaysia gripped by political turmoil and an ongoing health crisis. Police officials have lamented making no discernible headway in repatriating the Penang-born fugitive at the center of one of the biggest ever financial heists, though they claim to know where he is.

Read the full story at Asia Times.

Nile Bowie is a journalist and correspondent with the Asia Times covering current affairs in Singapore and Malaysia. He can be reached at nilebowie@gmail.com.