How COVID-19 fractured Southeast Asia’s stability
How COVID-19 fractured Southeast Asia’s stability
WRITTEN BY ZACHARY ABUZA
1 February 2021
COVID-19’s impact on public health in much of Southeast Asia has been stark, with a few notable exceptions like Vietnam and Singapore. In Indonesia, which just surpassed a million cases, and the Philippines, with over a half-million cases, the medical systems are at breaking point. The pandemic has led to sharp economic contractions, and the slow rollout of the vaccines across the region is likely to further exacerbate political and social fault-lines.
There have been dramatic contractions in the economies of Southeast Asia, due to declines in exports and the collapse of tourism. Only Vietnam and Myanmar had positive growth rates in 2020; though at 1.8 per cent, this is well below their rates over the preceding two years. Indonesia’s economy, which still has sufficient domestic consumption and export of raw materials, contracted by just 1 per cent. Thailand’s tourism-dependant economy, however, contracted the most, at a staggering 8 per cent. Malaysia and Singapore saw 6.3 and 6.5 per cent contractions respectively while the Philippine economy shrunk by 7.3 per cent.
None of these states has extensive social safety nets or the resources for prolonged stimulus programs.
COVID-19’s devastating impact
The ongoing pandemic has the potential to impact political stability across Southeast Asia. The pandemic has led to a spike in anti-minority scapegoating, exacerbated already high levels of inequality, and led to democratic backsliding. The scapegoating of minorities is to be expected. In Indonesia, where it is the default mode of the Islamists to quickly blame the ethnic Chinese community for any problem, the scapegoating began immediately. Ethnic Chinese were blamed for the spread of the virus, even though major super spreader events were held by militant groups such as the Islamic Defenders’ Front (FPI).
Then there is the issue over what vaccine people are getting: elites and wealthy states will dominate the highly effective vaccines by Pfizer, Moderna and AstraZeneca, while poorer people will have to make do with Chinese vaccines that have significantly lower efficacies.
Malaysia also saw scapegoating of ethnic Chinese. But people also began to blame poor migrant communities, such as the downtrodden Rohingya for spreading the disease. In wealthy Singapore, the government handled the virus with the competence one would expect of the city-state. Yet migrant workers made up the vast majority of cases during the surge in April-2020. Though the COVID outbreaks were largely contained in their cramped guest worker compounds, the rapid spread reinforced stereotypes of the poor migrants who keep the city-state running.
While the governments may not have been behind the scapegoating, many were willing to turn a blind eye to it, especially when it deflected from their incompetence or mishandling of the pandemic. Importantly, migrant groups have stepped up their provision of social services to broaden their appeal and to further discredit the state. Central to their messaging is blaming of out-groups. The second way that the pandemic has impacted stability is that it has exacerbated the soaring economic inequality that was already rife in the region. Although Southeast Asia has seen high rates of economic growth in the past decade, the Gini coefficients of almost every country have concurrently arisen.
Thailand was the most unequal country in the world, accord to Credit Suisse. Inequality has soared since the military’s 2006 coup d’etat, with 67 per cent of the wealth held by 500 families. The concentration of wealth amongst ultra-royalist elites and security forces has been a key driver of protests. In the name of political stability, military leadership has enriched themselves. Since mid-2020, there have been the largest anti-government protests since the 2014 coup, and the protests have increasingly turned anti-monarchy. The Thai king took control over the Crown Property Bureau, turning what was once a public trust worth between $45-65 billion, and turned it into his piggy bank. The monarch, known for his scandalous and lavish lifestyle, spent much of the pandemic holed up at a luxury German resort in the alps, while the Thai economy reeled from the collapse of exports and tourism. The income of average Thais fell by 50 per cent.
Thailand is not alone: Indonesia, the Philippines, and Malaysia all have staggeringly high levels of concentrated wealth and growing poverty rates. Jakarta and Manila have tens of millions of people living in slums, with little access to medicine. With rising levels of un- and under-employment, we have seen increased rates of hunger and food insecurity, with tens of millions under-nourished. While poverty itself is not necessarily a cause of political instability, the rapid loss of economic security and growth in relative depravity is. Were it not for the pandemic, millions would have been lifted from poverty, today's tens of millions are slipping back into extreme poverty.
Healthcare systems are so inundated with COVID-19, that they have no capacity for the provision of basic health services. And yet, the elite always gets the care and treatment they need. While Indonesia's hospitals are at the point of collapse, the elite can always travel for their healthcare. Inequality has manifested in other ways, in particular with the digital divide. This was particularly acute during the long periods of lockdown in the education sector and will exacerbate income inequality in the future.
The third way that the pandemic is leading to political instability is the acute democratic backsliding that has transpired in the past year. We have seen democratic reversals in Malaysia, following the fall of the Pakatan Harapan government, replaced by a coalition of ethnic Malay parties with diminished legitimacy. The problem is particularly acute in the Philippines, which has seen a militarized response to COVID, all at a time when its police have engaged in a four-year campaign of extrajudicial killings. The rule of law had already been severely weakened under the presidency of populist Rodrigo Duterte.
Indonesia’s militarized response to COVID-19, including a general officer-heavy response team, was part of a growing trend of the TNI clawing back civilian authorities, as part of Bela Negara, that it ceded in 1998-99. Thailand recently filed additional legal charges, including lese majeste, against a leading opposition figure for simply questioning the awarding of a vaccine production contract to a firm that has no experience but is owned by the king. Over 40 people have been charged for lese majeste in the past few months. States across the region have used new tools, such as fake news laws, to silence both fake news, such as anti-vaxxer conspiracies and legitimate criticism of government policies.
Vaccines to the rescue?
The vaccine rollout has commenced in Southeast Asia and unsurprisingly it has gone more smoothly in better-governed states than others. Yet the slow rollout of the vaccine is already exacerbating inequalities both within and among states. Who gets the vaccine first? Who are deemed essential workers? Many jobs deemed essential are done by the poor and minorities who may live in close quarters. Does that change the calculus as governments have scarce resources and are under political pressure to immunise citizens first?
According to the latest projections by the Economist Intelligence Unit, there is an enormous time disparity when each country will be able to vaccinate 60 per cent of its population, enough to achieve herd immunity. While the wealthy city-state of Singapore will achieve that by Q4 of 2021, Vietnam is not expected to achieve it until Q2 of 2022, Brunei and Thailand in Q3 of 2022, and Malaysia in Q4 of 2022. The poorer states of Southeast Asia will not achieve herd immunity until the latter half of 2023 at the earliest: Indonesia Q3, Philippines Q4, while Cambodia, Laos and Myanmar will not achieve that until 2025.
And those delays call into question the rosy economic forecasts for 2021 and beyond by the Asian Development Bank and others. Then there is the issue over what vaccine people are getting: elites and wealthy states will dominate the highly effective vaccines by Pfizer, Moderna and AstraZeneca, while poorer people will have to make do with Chinese vaccines that have significantly lower efficacies. And yet, China’s aggressive push for its vaccines raise very real concerns about elite capture.
Faultlines within and among Southeast Asia were already evident in 2020 but were largely papered overdue to steady economic growth. The prolonged pandemic is only widening those fissures to the point that they cannot be hidden anymore. The security landscape in the region will be shaped by states far more inwardly focused, confronted with ethnic tensions, increased inequality, and political disenfranchisement.
DISCLAIMER: All views expressed are those of the writer and do not necessarily represent that of the 9DASHLINE.com platform.
Author biography
Zachary Abuza is a Professor at the National War College in Washington, DC, where he teaches Southeast Asian politics & security. The views expressed here are his own and not represent the National WarCollege, Department of Defense, or the US Government. Image credit: Flickr/ILO Asia-Pacific