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.

Vote puts Anwar’s takeover bluff to bed in Malaysia

PM Muhyiddin Yassin sees down opposition leader Anwar Ibrahim's challenge in what was billed as a make-or-break budget vote

With his political survival on the line, Malaysian Prime Minister Muhyiddin Yassin overcame a key hurdle when lawmakers approved on November 26 his government’s expansionary 2021 budget, the first in a series of votes that will ultimately determine whether the spending plan is passed.

By failing to seize a golden opportunity to put the spending bill through a formal count in Parliament, opposition leader Anwar Ibrahim dismayed his supporters and had little to show for his oft-repeated claims of commanding the parliamentary numbers needed to bring down Muhyiddin’s nine-month-old government.

Passage of the 322.5 billion ringgit (US$78 billion) annual budget, the nation’s largest-ever at 20.6% of gross domestic product (GDP), had been in question with legislators on both sides of the aisle – including those within the premier’s ruling Perikatan Nasional (PN) administration and its allies – voicing opposition to various components of the spending proposal.

Pitched as essential to the nation’s post-pandemic economic recovery, the budget ultimately passed in a voice vote in the policy stage of the voting process. Prior to its approval, Finance Minister Tengku Zafrul Abdul Aziz announced last-minute concessions aimed at meeting certain government backbencher demands.

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.

How China won and US lost the trade war

RCEP trade pact marks beginning of China's and end of America's centrality in Asia-Pacific trade

Signed and sealed in a video conference ceremony after nearly eight years of grueling negotiations, the world’s largest free trade bloc was forged on November 15 in a show of collective defiance against protectionism that sets the stage for China to supplant the United States as the Asia-Pacific’s main trade engine.

Proclaimed as a win for the multilateral trading system, the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) harmonizes regulatory standards and allows member countries to offer themselves as an integrated market for investment, providing a confidence boost to aid a regionwide post-pandemic recovery.

Apart from the promised benefits of trade liberalization, the RCEP has been acknowledged more for its symbolic significance in relation to the world’s two largest economies, only one of which is a signatory to the deal. China’s inclusion in the pact will expand its economic reach and arguably help to solidify its position as a standard-bearer for globalization.

“What the RCEP clearly does is entrench China as the leading player within the free trade architecture of the Asia-Pacific, and it comes at a time when the United States is painted as a regressive force on free trade under Donald Trump,” said Harrison Cheng, an associate director with consulting firm Control Risks.

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.

Muhyiddin faces make or break budget vote

Crucial vote in coming days will double as a no-confidence motion that could upend Malaysian leader's eight-month-old rule

Prime Minister Muhyiddin Yassin will face a political moment of truth when Malaysian lawmakers vote on proposals for the nation’s largest-ever annual budget in Parliament later this month. A defeat of the spending plan would be equivalent to a no-confidence vote and could plunge the country into a leadership crisis.

Muhyiddin’s eight-month-old government intends to spend a record 322.5 billion ringgit (US$78 billion) in 2021 as it seeks to offset the economic ill-effects of the Covid-19 pandemic and bring Southeast Asia’s third-largest economy back from the brink after gross domestic product (GDP) plunged 17.1% year on year in the second quarter.

The expansionary budget, a 2.5% increase in spending from 2020, aims to hasten an already evident recovery from the worst effects of business activity restrictions enacted under an earlier nationwide lockdown. Third quarter data announced by Malaysia’s central bank on Friday (November 13) showed a smaller 2.7% contraction.

A resurgence of coronavirus infections since September has seen infections triple to nearly 44,000 cases. Authorities have in response imposed targeted movement curbs in parts of the country, threatening an economic turnaround that the budget, the first to be presented since Muhyiddin was appointed premier by the nation’s king in March, is designed to spur.

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.

Southeast Asia eyes US democracy stress test

Region looks on as contested election underscores notion America's political system is broken and US leadership is in decline

A bitterly contested US presidential election that is still too close to call has the world on tenterhooks. In Southeast Asia, a strategic region at the center of an escalating rivalry between the United States and China, the contest is being closely watched for signals of what the next four years of American foreign policy will bring.

Mail-in ballots continue to be counted in crucial battleground states, which have given Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden, 77, a clearer path to victory in a knife’s edge election that has failed to deliver the clear repudiation of US President Donald Trump that Democrats had hoped for and national polling had projected.

In a break with presidential norms, Trump, 74, pre-emptively declared victory at the White House in the early hours of November 4 with millions of votes yet to be counted, repeating assertions made throughout the campaign that widespread mail-in voting motivated by the Covid-19 pandemic would lead to rampant voter fraud without presenting evidence.

State-by-state litigation could bring days or possibly weeks of legal uncertainty in an attempt by the president to push the US Supreme Court to weigh in on the race if he is unable to eke out a path to victory as he did in 2016. An eruption of violent protests and civil unrest over disputed election results could occur amid the uncertainty.

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.

Muhyiddin hanging on by a fraying thread in Malaysia

Embattled premier failed to impose an emergency and forestall snap polls that will be triggered if Parliament rejects his 2021 budget

Prime Minister Muhyiddin Yassin is under rising pressure to resign after Malaysia’s king rejected his request to declare emergency rule on Sunday (October 25), a pivotal setback for the premier as he faces a leadership challenge from opposition leader Anwar Ibrahim and divisions within his fragile Perikatan Nasional (PN) ruling coalition.

Parties supporting PN, including the United Malays National Organization (UMNO), which earlier this month threatened to withdraw support for Muhyiddin, have since thrown the premier a political lifeline by continuing to prop up his government. But with a key vote on the 2021 budget looming, doubts remain as to how long his administration will last with a narrow majority of 113 out of 222 seats in Parliament.

Under Malaysia’s parliamentary system, failure to pass the budget would be equivalent to a loss of confidence in Muhyiddin, who fears the prospect of rebel lawmakers within his government voting against the bills to collapse his administration and trigger a snap election. Debate on the forthcoming budget is set to commence on November 6.

Muhyiddin met with the nation’s king, Sultan Abdullah Sultan Ahmad Shah, on October 23 to present his case for the proclamation of a state of emergency, purportedly to combat the worsening Covid-19 pandemic. Coronavirus infections are sharply on the rise across Malaysia, with the total number of cases more than doubling to 28,640 in the past month.

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.

Goldman spends itself free of 1MDB guilty plea

US investment bank agrees to settlement to resolve Malaysian scandal, but sidesteps institutional culpability

Goldman Sachs, one of Wall Street’s most powerful investment banks, agreed to a US$2.9 billion settlement with US federal prosecutors and the Department of Justice (DoJ) on Thursday to resolve a sprawling money laundering and bribery probe involving state investment fund 1Malaysia Development Berhad, or 1MDB.

The agreement brings closure to one of the biggest scandals ever faced by the bank, one which saw the looting of billions raised in bond offerings arranged by Goldman and stolen funds landing in the personal bank account of former Malaysian prime minister Najib Razak, who lost re-election in 2018 due in large part to public anger over corruption.

But whether the long-awaited settlement has delivered justice is another question. The bank has consistently denied institutional culpability in 1MDB’s fraudulent dealings. Though humbling, the multi-billion dollar settlement is less onerous than investors had previously feared and shields Goldman from the consequences of a parent-level guilty plea.

Under the terms, the bank will pay a $2.3 billion fine for violating anti-bribery laws and will disgorge $600 million of ill-gotten gains as part of a deferred prosecution agreement for its violation of the US Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, which bans companies in the United States from paying foreign government officials for help in gaining or retaining business.

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.