The week ahead: Paetongtarn makes it through — for now
Aung San Suu Kyi's dire birthday celebrations
Hello friends!
I took a month off to work on another project and get back over to Substack. The move is still in process, so things will look a little silly for a while, and I may have lost five years of posts into the ether. But can’t think about that or else I’ll be seized with hyperventilating. I am pleased to be back on Substack for a few reasons, the largest being that it’s a good platform for if you just want to write and not worry about computer-y things.
Of course, my break nearly entirely coincided with the Thai-Cambodian border crisis. This will be going on for a while yet, so here’s where we’re at as of today.
See you Thursday!
Erin Cook
🇹🇭🇰🇭 Hun Sen unbothered, Paetongtarn holding on
This was not an ideal time to take a break, not that there ever is! Catching up on why this all happened is now insurmountable. The deadly border skirmish! The nexus of it all seems so long ago, but with Cambodia taking Thailand to the International Court of Justice, we need a nod to it. I, personally, love this piece from Kouprey, which dug into the border as well as some of the historical spats.
The last few weeks have been a bit argy-bargy, a definite downturn in relations but nothing ground-shaking, exactly. That changed after the now infamous phone call between Thai Prime Minister Paetongtarn Shinawatra and Cambodia’s senate president/former prime minister Hun Sen (that Prime Minister Hun Manet is barely a bit player in all this is merely confirmation of what we all already knew).
In the phone call between the pair on June 15, Paetongtarn is heard essentially blaming the Thai army for the border dispute and referring to Hun Sen in an overly deferential tone. He leaked the call on the 18th. “It was just a negotiation technique. I was conducting myself with the purpose of maintaining peace and our sovereignty. It’s clear now that his true desire is to win popularity in his country without caring about the impact on bilateral relations,” she told media, as per the Straits Times.
Yeah, sure. Maybe. But it’s the military and you’re a Shinawatra prime minister — wise up!
The whole scandal looked like it would fell the government after the Bhumjaithai Party withdrew its support on Wednesday. Paetongtarn’s hold on power has always been tenuous. The supporting coalition is an unwieldy combination of forces that are natural enemies, joined together only to block out Move Forward/People’s Party after the last election. Paetongtarn herself hasn’t been on the job for a year yet, after taking over from Srettha Thavisin. “Paetongtarn’s inexperience has been on full display this week,” wrote Susannah Patton for the Lowy Institute’s Interpreter. And how!
Pateongtarn holds on — for now. Thaksin must’ve been hitting the phones like a Machiavellian telco mogul (hang on!) because what looked like a near-certain fall for both the Prime Minister and Pheu Thai on Friday had become a shaky truce by Sunday.
Ken Lohatepanont at Coffee Parliament, who has been so productive during this mini-crisis he’s warned subscribers he doesn’t usually hammer the inbox quite like this, took a look at it Sunday evening. He points to the United Thai Nation Party, a hyper-conservative party linked to the Prayuth Chan-o-cha military-backed government, and its decision to stick with Pheu Thai’s coalition as crucial. How this played out is up for debate and Ken teases out the theories, but a key take-away for us is that the move will come at a ‘great electoral expense’ for the party, which will certainly pile on the pressure. Few UTN supporters have much love for the Shinawatra or their antics and many have a lot of love for the military. I think we’ve reflected a lot on Pheu Thai potentially losing support for getting into bed with military-aligned parties, but it certainly goes both ways.
Ken’s done the numbers and, if everything stays as it was Sunday, Paetongtarn and Pheu Thai will hold on to 251 ‘reliable’ votes within parliament with a few erratic faces outside of the coalition likely to often back the government, bringing it up to more or less 260. “It’s still quite a slim majority, and while it could go up if more defectors come, it could also go down,” Ken writes.
Still, he foreshadows, if Hun Sen were to release anything else — well, who knows what would happen!
Speaking of. While Paetongtarn clambered for survival, Hun Sen hit the links.
How long he can remain unbothered is another question. Tit for tat responses between the two countries saw a ban on Thai fruit and vegetable imports introduced last week have taken effect and hits the age-old question of how to balance nationalism with not messing with people’s kitchen tables. So far, so good, for Cambodian leadership, but let’s see what happens this week.
“I don’t have much fruit to sell since the ban on Thai fruit [imports], but that’s okay — I support the government’s decision,” Chhun Kamon, a fruitseller at Neak Meas Market in Phnom Penh, told CamboJA. Another fruitseller told the outlet he’s got about $5,000 of orders in with Thai farmers and is struggling: “I haven’t had any fruit to sell for three or four days. Nothing is coming in, and I don’t know what to do. The fruit in the truck [at the border] are all rotten.”
That’s just the start of it. Last night, Prime Minister Hun Manet (oh yeah, that guy) announced a ban on Thai oil and gas into the country as of midnight, Al Jazeera reports. Energy companies can “import sufficiently from other sources to meet domestic fuel and gas demands,” he added. Elsewhere, the foreign ministry told nationals to stay out of Thailand if they can avoid it.
🇮🇩 This week on Reformasi
On Reformasi this week, Kevin and I chatted a different kind of border dispute — who owns four islands? The national government says it’s Aceh, but not without some controversy first. Elsewhere, Prabowo Subianto heads to Russia, not the G7 and nickel mining in Raja Ampat highlights the tricky balance of resource development and environmental protections.
🇲🇲 A birthday in Myanmar
Aung San Suu Kyi marked her 80th birthday last week inside a Naypyidaw prison. “We’ve learnt to endure when it’s been going on so long,” son Kim Aris said from the United Kingdom. New reporting from the Guardian has shed some light on the conditions in which she’s being held. Long-running concerns over ASSK’s health persist and the footage viewed by the Guardian, dated late 2022, appears to back that up.
“I am extremely concerned. A lot of the world seems to think she’s under house arrest, and that’s just not the case. I don’t even know if she’s alive or not — there’s no way to confirm that,” Aris told the Guardian.Hell of an exclusive from Reuters earlier this month. The wire reported Chinese militia have been tasked with securing the country’s rare earth mineral mines, particularly in Shan state, and under the protection of the Wa. Oh my days.
‘Now, in the hillsides of Shan state in eastern Myanmar, Chinese miners are opening new deposits for extraction, according to two of the sources, both of whom work at one of the mines. At least 100 people are working day-to-night shifts excavating hillsides and extracting minerals using chemicals, the sources said,’ Reuters reports.A report from the United Nations University Institute for Water, Environment and Health and reported by Phys.org found that many of the deaths in March’s enormous earthquake were the result of poor construction.
‘The report identifies the primary cause of the catastrophic losses as the prevalence of non-engineered structures, such as unreinforced masonry, which are highly vulnerable to seismic shaking. These technical deficits were worsened by systemic governance challenges, including inadequate enforcement of the 2016 Myanmar National Building Code, and the complexities of the country's ongoing political and security situation,’ Phys reports.
Reading list:
Indonesia's rock 'n' roll fantasy comes true in Japan — Marcel Thee, Nikkei Asia
With meager funds to spare, and often limited financial assistance from sponsors, none of the mostly indie Indonesian bands that have made their way to Japan in the past few years have done so seeking rock 'n' roll riches. Instead, such trips have been more like self-funded holidays with music instruments and a tight itinerary of performances in small clubs.
"Japan has always been a dream destination for many bands due to its culture and the vibrancy of the music scene," says Dylan Amirio, who performs as Logic Lost, a one-man experimental electronic act. Amirio has toured Japan twice — in 2022 and 2024 — and performed in Tokyo, Nara, Koza and Ginowan.
In Singapore, Grandmothers Dive Into Aging With a Splash — Sui-Lee Wee, New York Times
Like nearly all the women on the team, Ms. Lee said she did not have time to exercise while raising her children. One woman learned to swim at 60. Another, the goalkeeper, said she learned at 71. For many of the women, it was the first time they had ever played a team sport.
After I watched the team play, I joined the women for a meal at a nearby hawker center, one of the several open-air food complexes ubiquitous to Singapore. There I chatted with Koh Nguan Keng, who first started swimming at 60. She had been preparing for a second knee replacement when her neighbor suggested that she start swimming.
Fifteen years later, she is in the pool about five or six days a week and no longer has pain in her legs, she told me.
The $10 billion delivery empire built on Shein and TikTok orders — Lam Le, Rest of World
Broken roads, chaotic traffic, nameless alleys, and fragmented island provinces make Southeast Asia a tough terrain for online deliveries – tough enough that even Amazon has struggled to expand there. Yet, a Chinese entrepreneur saw an opportunity in the region, launching J&T Express in Jakarta in 2015.
Today, the company holds a 28.6% market share in Southeast Asia, generating $10 billion in revenue globally and turning its first profit in 2024. It has since expanded into 13 countries, from China to Latin America and the Middle East, striking deals with regional players like Noon and Salla. Noon is one of the Middle East’s largest e-commerce platforms, while Saudi-based Salla helps merchants run their own online stores with integrated sales and delivery tools.
Hey, welcome back over here!