In February, a series of sudden political realignments in Malaysia led to the

demise of the Pakatan Harapan (PH) government just two years after a
historic election had brought it to power, marking the first time in history the
country’s opposition formed a government. The rise of the new Perikatan
Nasional (PN) government, led by Prime Minister Muhyiddin Yassin, has
generated a series of broader questions about the evolution of the country’s
political and economic trajectory as Malaysia also confronts more immediate
challenges, including the global coronavirus pandemic.

The Diplomat’s senior editor Prashanth Parameswaran recently spoke to Kai

Ostwald, assistant professor at the University of British Columbia, about
Malaysia under the new PN government and the opportunities and
challenges that confront the country now and in the future.

While there has been a lot of focus on the political maneuvering

and alignment right before Pakatan Harapan’s (PH) eventual
collapse, there were also a series of more structural factors at play
as well, including the fragility of its structural makeup and its
difficulties in delivering on some ambitious reform proposals. How
would you describe the combination and balance of factors that led
to PH’s collapse?

As you suggest, several underlying structural factors set the stage for the
political maneuvering that ultimately brought about PH’s collapse. Two
stand out. As Steven Oliver and I argued in a recently published article, PH
achieved what its predecessors couldn’t – defeating the dominant Barisan
Nasional (BN) – in part by incorporating elements of the BN into the
coalition. Specifically, PH’s inclusion of the UMNO-clone Bersatu party and
East Malaysia-based Warisan allowed it to win seats in BN stronghold areas
that had previously been all but impenetrable to the opposition. This got PH
the votes it needed to form a government, but also left it ideologically
incoherent and unbalanced. That asymmetry was evident in the initial
cabinet formation: PKR and the DAP (the two progressive and multiethnic
parties at the core of previous Pakatan coalitions) received one cabinet
position for approximately every seven parliamentary seats they held, while
the ratio was around one to two for Bersatu and Warisan. In short, the
UMNO-splinter elements of PH were strongly over-represented, which was
reflected in many policy discussions.

PH’s electoral strategy also created a divided and incoherent vote base,
which led to bottom-up demands that seemed irreconcilable at times. Many
progressive voters expected movement towards a “new” Malaysia that was
more inclusive of racial and religious difference. This implied a leveling of
the racial hierarchy in which the Malays and other indigenous Bumiputera
are granted numerous privileges. For most conservative Malay voters,
whose support of Bersatu and Mahathir made PH’s victory possible, anything
that hinted at this kind of social transformation was deeply unpopular.
UMNO, now in partnership with the Islamist party PAS, leveraged this status
loss anxiety among Malays to great effect, regularly accusing PH of trying to
upend Malay and Muslim rights.

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PH responded by taking extreme caution on anything identity related. This

left many in its progressive voter base frustrated by what they interpreted
as inaction on core elements of PH’s manifesto, but conservative Malay
voters nonetheless retreated back to the perceived safety of UMNO, which
together with PAS doubled down on claims of being the true defenders of
Malay and Muslim rights. Several poor by-election performances by PH
appeared to confirm what many in the coalition suspected: its progressive
base was unhappy, while the electorally-pivotal Malay vote was slipping
further and further out of reach. That realization drove figures like Muhyiddin
and Azmin Ali to scheme a new coalition into being.
PH’s sudden collapse and the formation of Perikatan Nasional (PN)
was no doubt a landmark development within the history of
Malaysian politics. How would you frame its significance from a
longer-term context within the country’s political development?

We can take two perspectives on the [2018] election. On one hand, the BN’s
defeat likely would not have occurred without the deep personal
unpopularity of then-Prime Minister Najib Razak and the unlikely political
reincarnation of then-92-year-old Mahathir Mohamad as an opposition
leader, inviting questions of whether the outcome was just a one-off,
unrepeatable fluke. In any case, most of the key positions within PH were
held by UMNO defectors, which made for a greater degree of continuity in
the underlying political parameters than we might assume given the
unprecedented nature of the outcome. At times, in fact, we might have been
excused for mistaking Bersatu as UMNO 3.0, and thus the 21 months of PH
rule as simply a momentary reshuffle of personnel within the grander
scheme of UMNO’s dominance of Malaysian politics.
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On the other hand, the BN’s defeat has clearly and permanently altered
Malaysian politics. For one, it demonstrates that even if the underlying
parameters of Malaysian politics are highly durable, elections can remove an
unpopular leader and shake up the system in ways that amount to a
meaningful course correction. There have also been important changes
within the state. Several PH ministers and deputy ministers brought
refreshingly new approaches to their roles, which showed pockets of
Malaysia’s vast civil service that different modes of policy engagement than
those they were accustomed to under the BN were possible. Some of the
legislation passed by PH – UNDI-18, for example, which lowered the voting
age from 21 to 18, and thereby (together with automatic voter registration)
expanded the electorate from around 15 million in 2018 to an estimated 23
million by 2023 – also fundamentally alter the dynamic of political
competition.

The process of democratization is typically drawn-out and non-linear. It may

well have been premature to declare the 2018 election as the start of a new
democratic era in Malaysia, but I still see it as a remarkable achievement
that brought positive and likely lasting changes to policy making,
governance, and political competition in Malaysia, regardless of which
coalition holds power.

While PN has taken power, it faces its own political challenges –

including those tied to legitimacy and its support base – that still
remain. How would you characterize these challenges for PN, and
what are some manifestations of how they are playing out or will
play out?

Indeed, as I’ve argued before, as much as the new PN government has

sought to avoid the label, its essentially mono-ethnic composition is without
precedent in multiethnic Malaysia and will create serious legitimacy issues.
The challenges of demonstrating inclusivity in policy making will be most
pronounced vis-à-vis the country’s minorities, but there will be similarly
issues with progressive Malays that have embraced an inclusive Malaysian
identity. In Sabah and Sarawak, the inclusion of PAS in PN exacerbates
anxieties of creeping Islamization and the ongoing erosion of identities
unique to East Malaysia. These challenges will complicate the already
difficult task of governing.

More generally, PN’s composition also makes it fundamentally unstable. Part

of the BN’s resilience over its six decades in power came from the natural
hierarchy within the coalition, in which UMNO was the undisputed hegemon
and the non-Malay parties were clearly subordinate, junior partners. No such
natural hierarchy exists between the triad of Malay parties leading PN. Such
equality can be toxic, as it invites power challenges. Muhyiddin’s massively
oversized cabinet – greater than half of PN’s MPs have some a position in
cabinet – is an attempt to bring everyone to the table, but also makes clear
the fundamentally unwieldy nature of the coalition’s composition. Worse yet,
unlike during BN times when UMNO’s internal elections could bring a
decisive end to intra-Malay disputes, PN will have to resort to drawn out
negotiations that are unlikely to deliver clear resolution when such disputes
inevitably arise again. This will come to a head as the next general election
draws near, since the significant overlap in the electoral appeal of UMNO,
Bersatu, and PAS means that the intra-coalition allocation of seats is likely to
determine the relative power balance between the parties. This is a recipe
for destructive in-fighting.

PN’s composition does not bode well for its stability, nor for its efficacy as a
governing entity during these tumultuous times. That is all the more
problematic because UMNO and PAS spent much of the last two years
suggesting that a Malay-unity government would address many of the ills
that befall that community. Since it cannot count on support from the
country’s progressive voters, widespread disappointment among
conservative Malays will raise alarms about the coalition’s electability come
the next election. It is exactly this kind of concern that triggers defections
and fuels leadership challenges. In short, I think chances are high that the
PN government will be short lived in the grander scheme of Malaysian
politics. Of course it is all speculative at this point, but a merger between
UMNO and Bersatu seems a likely outcome, with the coalition gradually
moving back towards the proven, albeit problematic in recent elections, BN
arrangement.

Malaysia has been consumed by the global coronavirus pandemic

thus far, which has complicated the country’s prior challenges and
served as an almost immediate test for the PN government. What
impact do you think COVID-19 has had on the country’s evolving
political dynamics, and how would you assess the government’s
handling of the crisis thus far? 

In some ways, COVID-19 has given Muhyiddin desperately needed breathing

room, as nearly all attention has shifted to limiting the terrible toll the virus
is taking on life in Malaysia. That momentary halt to internal wrangling
within PN may last through the apex of the crisis, as most potential internal
challengers seem content on biding their time for now. Helming a ship
during a major health crisis and economic downturn is a personally risky
endeavor, after all.

The timing does invite contrasts between the two governments, however,
which are certain to be drawn out once politics returns to a more normal
state. Malaysia’s initial responses to COVID-19, which arrived in the final
weeks of PH’s rule, were widely praised by the international community,
with the health minister – Dzulkefly Ahmad – seen as especially competent
in leading a coordinated government response. PN’s first few steps in
managing the crisis have appeared quite clunky in comparison – widely
mocked tips from the Women and Family Ministry, for example, suggested
that wives wear make-up, dress sharply, avoid nagging, and speak to their
husbands using a cartoonish “Doraemon” voice followed by a coy and
feminine laugh in order to keep their households peaceful during the
quarantine period. Another directive ambiguously stated that only household
heads – which was widely interpreted as the senior male – should make
shopping trips, leading to stories of disoriented men wandering grocery
store aisles, apparently for the first time, bringing home clusters of
lemongrass rather than the green onions they were sent out to fetch. The
comparison between the COVID-19 responses of two governments is
somewhat unfair, as the full force of the pandemic did not hit until after the
transition, when the PN’s ministers were still settling into their new roles.
And in the grander scheme of things, Malaysia’s response remains quite
competent, especially from a regional comparison. But the contrast will
nonetheless remain vivid for many voters and will further hinder the PN’s
efforts to win skeptical progressive voters to its side.

By now it is clear that COVID-19 will have a major economic impact, likely
greater than that of the 1997-98 Asian Financial Crisis. That crisis
fundamentally upended politics throughout the region. It led to the downfall
of the decades-long, Suharto-led, New Order era in Indonesia. It changed
Thai politics in ways that the country has not yet stabilized from more than
20 years later. And in Malaysia, it triggered the Reformasi movement that
spawned the various Pakatan coalitions, making it the ultimate origin of the
BN’s 2018 defeat. We are still in the early days of the current crisis, so it is
too early to speculate on precisely how the COVID-19-induced downturn will
affect politics, but it is a reasonable assumption that the impact in Malaysia
and throughout the region will again be profound.
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Further ahead, what are some key general signposts that you will
be looking to in order to assess the government’s performance in
the coming months and how politics may evolve up to the next
general elections, which will be held before September 2023?

It will be interesting to see how PN functions as its attention turns to

recovery once politics-as-usual resumes. There will presumably be added
urgency as the corruption trials of Najib, UMNO party leader Ahmad Zahid
Hamidi, and others make headlines again. How will Muhyiddin try to secure
ongoing unity? Will the leadership challenges be immediate? How will the
pressure of the economic crisis be dealt with?

In some ways, Pakatan’s component parties have it easier, as they resume

their familiar opposition role. What is left of the coalition nonetheless faces
several existential questions. First, who will Pakatan settle on as its leader?
At nearly 95, Mahathir is no longer a viable option going into the next
election. Anwar may also not be viable: rightly or wrongly, many have lost
faith in him and it may well be the case that the coalition is unelectable with
him at its head. But there is also no one within the coalition who could
immediately step into that role and lead the movement. There are many
competent younger figures, but such a generational transition is risky and
often bumpy in the short term, which some within the coalition may not
have the patience for following their brief taste of power. It is also unclear
what state PKR will be in when it emerges from this crisis, as the defection of
Azmin and those associated with him have deeply destabilized the party.

Perhaps more fundamentally, it is unclear how Pakatan will react to the

defection of Bersatu. On one hand, Pakatan must recognize that it is nearly
impossible – at least in the foreseeable future – to win an election without an
UMNO-like vehicle to compete directly against UMNO in its strongholds. On
the other hand, the betrayal felt by many within the coalition and its support
base will make it difficult to bring another UMNO-clone party into the fold.
This leaves Malaysia at a deep impasse: Pakatan may be unelectable in its
present state, while PN looks dangerously unstable. With the full shock of
COVID-19 to unfold over the coming year, the stage looks set for an
extended period of tumultuous politics.
Nothing is more global than a pandemic. And there is no individual more
quintessential to globalization than the migrant worker. Today, Singapore
has 1.4 million foreigners working in-country, out of a total workforce of 3.7
million. Of these, 981,000 are low-wage migrant workers on temporary
visas, many of whom remain in Singapore even though most work has
ceased.

International commentators deem Singapore a success story in pandemic

management, but the extent to which this success extends to migrant
workers is doubtful. On April 6, in a widely-shared Facebook post, a
prominent civil servant called migrant dormitories a viral “time bomb
waiting to explode.” He was referring to the migrant workers quarantined in
dormitories after authorities noticed COVID-19 transmission on the
premises. By now, the government has fenced off four dormitories
containing 50,000 workers, in effect protecting the surrounding local
population while risking the health of the migrants.

This is not the first time that the Singapore government has treated migrant
workers as a threat to be contained. In 2013, an Indian migrant worker was
killed in a bus accident, reportedly causing 400 workers to react violently.
The Singapore government immediately instituted a two-day alcohol ban in
the vicinity. Today, alcohol sales are still restricted in the area, while
recreational facilities in dormitories have been built to divert migrant
workers from public spaces. COVID-19 has heightened similar anxieties over
the need to restrict migrant workers to designated spaces.
But the pandemic has also exposed a longstanding callousness toward this
population. A letter by the local NGO Transient Workers Count Too (TWC2)
pointed out the “undeniable” need for the government to announce plans to
rehouse workers to “give reassurance to the resident and non-resident
community.” The letter was prescient, appearing in the national newspaper
a week before cases first appeared in migrant dormitories. The coronavirus
has revived concerns for the health and safety of workers crammed onto the
backs of open-deck lorries, yet these concerns have been voiced for at least
10 years.

Migrant dormitories have contributed 345 COVID-19 cases so far. On April 8,

the Singapore government announced that all migrant workers staying in
“non-quarantined” dormitories would “not be able to move out” for at least
a month. Singaporeans, too, are now largely confined to their homes, but
can access parks, supermarkets, and “essential services.”

Pandemics Exacerbate Precariousness

The primary risk that the pandemic poses to migrant workers is, of course,
infection itself. Dormitories usually house male construction and shipyard
workers from India and Bangladesh. Building codes indicate that workers in
these facilities need only have 4.5 square meters of “living space,” including
living quarters, dining, and toilet areas. In practice workers share showers
and sleep on bunk beds, separated from each other by less than a meter.
The WHO’s social distancing guidelines are near-impossible to achieve under
these conditions. These living conditions affect approximately 200,000
workers in purpose-built dormitories and 100,000 in “temporary dormitories”
converted from disused industrial sites.
Unlike hundreds of thousands of travelers who have flown home to wait out
the pandemic, most of Singapore’s migrant workers remain there. One
reason for this is the debt incurred by incoming migrants. Bangladeshi
migrants to Singapore pay up to S$17,000 (US$12,000) for their first job in
Singapore. This can take between one to two years to pay off, with 74
percent of Bangladeshi migrants earning less than S$25 a day. Another is
migrant families’ reliance on remittances, with nearly half of Bangladeshi
migrants providing for their families’ basic needs. Wages are hence of
utmost importance to migrants and their families.

Singapore’s pandemic containment strategies may amplify pre-existing

wage issues. The Ministry of Manpower has announced that “affected
workers” will continue to be paid basic salaries in dormitories officially
designated as quarantine sites. However, it is unclear whether salary
deductions will be used to pay for catered food in these dormitories. This is
concerning as employers are known to take unauthorized deductions,
including for food and lodging, from workers’ wages. Existing
research criticizes Singapore’s labor laws for condoning errant employer
behavior, such as the manipulation of evidence for salary claims.

Debbie Fordyce of TWC2 is concerned that workers living outside of the

quarantined dormitories are falling through the cracks. “The government
says they will get food,” she says, “but this is on the assumption that
employers are providing food.” Indeed on April 7, authorities announced that
“employers should be able to continue to pay their salaries and provide
accommodation and food,” urging employers to pass support measures onto
workers. This statement shifts responsibility for the basic needs of migrant
workers onto employers, without saying whether authorities will enforce
their provision. Migrant workers who are recuperating from a workplace
accident are in a particularly precarious position. As they cannot work,
employers are disincentivized from providing them with food. “We know of
many people like this who are not getting food,” Fordyce says. “We are
overwhelmed with requests.”
The Mental Health Toll

Singapore’s migration regime ensures that migrant workers do not sink

roots in the country. Work Permits, issued to workers earning less than
S$2,200 a month, bar migrant workers from applying for permanent
residency or citizenship, and must be renewed every two years.  This deters
migrant workers from forming permanent social bonds in Singapore.

The coronavirus affects migrant workers’ relationships with parents,

children, and spouses in their home country. A migrant
worker interviewed by TWC2 recounts how his mother calls several times a
day, to ask if he is washing his hands and going out. Precarious wage
situations also create significant emotional stressors: migrants are out of
work, in crowded living conditions, and uncertain of how they can provide for
families. Research shows that 62 percent of Indian and Bangladeshi migrant
workers exhibit signs of significant psychological distress. Most in this group
had unpaid debt or were off work due to a workplace injury. Current
conditions reproduce these problems for an even larger proportion of
migrant workers.

Phone calls are a lifeline for migrant workers in difficult times. To stay in
touch with family, most migrant workers rely on WiFi where they can find it.
This, too, is a livelihood strategy that allays the costs of debt-financed
migration. However, workers in dormitories have little or no WiFi access, nor
do they have the money to top up prepaid SIM cards. In response,
TWC2 launched a SIM card campaign, aiming for S$20,000 in donations.

The response was astronomical: in five days, TWC2’s SIM card

campaign raised S$127,000. More broadly, concerns that quarantined
migrant dormitories would become “Diamond Princess all over again” –
referencing the quarantined cruise ship in Japan that became a hotspot for
infections — created a groundswell of sympathy for migrant workers.
A spreadsheet collating cash and kind donation drives for migrant workers is
circulating among Singaporeans. It attests to the range of initiatives seeking
to alleviate migrant workers’ needs, ranging from masks and hand sanitizer
to legal help and counselling.

However, organizers worry that a lack of transparency hampers relief

efforts. Besides the four dormitories designated as quarantine sites, the
government has not set clear guidelines for migrant dormitories, where
individual dormitory operators decide what donations can be received.
Organizers coordinating donations are constantly catching up with the dos
and don’ts enforced on each site.

The migrant worker situation is symptomatic of Singapore’s model of

economic growth. Migrant workers cannot buy SIM cards and worry
constantly about remittances because they make barely enough to save.
Densely packed dormitories result from an unflinching desire to keep wages
low and profits high. Hence, the threat that large coronavirus clusters in
migrant dormitories pose to the larger population directly relates to
Singapore’s economic strategy too. Moreover, the current crisis exposes
how the costs of this model are externalized into the public domain. “Now
the costs are here, in terms of infection and costs to protect against
infection,” Alex Au from TWC2 points out, “and they are public costs. This is
the big picture.”
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Live-in Domestic Workers Are Especially Vulnerable

Like migrants in the construction and shipyard sectors, migrant domestic

workers face debt issues and maintain long-distance relationships with
families back home. Singapore’s 256,000 domestic workers come
predominantly from Indonesia, Myanmar, and the Philippines. They live with
their employers, and remain under this roof as social distancing measures
tighten.

Domestic workers bear the brunt of housework in one-fifth of Singaporean

households. This means that extra cleaning and sanitizing work is likely to
fall onto their shoulders. Employers are understandably anxious about the
pandemic, and hygienic homes benefit domestic workers too. However,
domestic workers are unsure if they will be overworked and
undercompensated. At present, Singapore does not have provisions for
overtime work for domestic workers, but the law does stipulate that
domestic workers be paid for work done on weekly rest days.

In March, the Ministry of Manpower advised that domestic workers remain in

their employers’ homes on rest days. The Humanitarian Organization for
Migrant Economics (HOME) has observed an increase in coronavirus-related
calls to their helpline since. Domestic workers were unsure if they would be
paid for working on rest days. Some felt compelled to work as they did not
have their own room, and were under the constant scrutiny of employers,
who were working from home themselves. A small number of domestic
workers also reported salary issues and terminations as a result of the
coronavirus. Employers have understandably been hit hard by the pandemic
too. This is where government “advisories” are insufficient. Clear
enforcement of rest days and wage protections for workers — and their
employers — are critical to mitigating the impact of the pandemic on
domestic workers.

The pandemic is particularly concerning for the minority of domestic workers

subject to abuse. In the past, HOME’s shelter received domestic workers
who had run away from these conditions and asked strangers to help them
call HOME. Now safe distancing guidelines and “circuit-breaker” regulations
make this impossible: domestic workers do not know where to run to, as few
people are out on the street. Already, domestic abuse is on the rise in
countries under lockdown. For domestic workers that are restricted from
making phone calls, the pandemic poses the risk of abuse going unnoticed.
Domestic workers’ role in care work and housework is critical during these
times. Yet whereas migrant dormitories draw public attention due to anxiety
over rates of infection in crowded quarters, pandemic containment
strategies shunt domestic workers into homes and out of sight. Without
appropriate regulations that protect domestic workers’ wages and living
conditions, tensions will rise in homes, hurting both employers and domestic
workers in the process.

Migrant Workers Require a Redefinition of Vulnerable Groups

COVID-19 lays bare the relationships that sustain us. Around the world,
people feverishly discuss trust in government, the place of family and
friends amid crisis, and how Skype helps to weather the storm. Labor
migration turns these issues on their head: the pandemic asks migrant
workers to trust governments that are not their own, and to connect with
family members at a distance, even when access to the internet is limited.

Right now, countries all over the world are turning inward, to protect the
most vulnerable among them. Singapore too has sought to protect the
elderly and the unemployed. But Singapore’s demography is unique: one in
four members of its workforce are low-wage migrant workers, who are
exceptionally vulnerable but not citizens. Moreover, vulnerability in
coronavirus terms tends to be defined by age and immune systems. This
obscures how the pandemic worsens migrant workers’ existing
vulnerabilities to precarious work, mental health issues, and abuse. Indeed a
limited, technical definition of health seems out-of-sync with everyday life
itself. News outlets hurry to publish epidemiological models and
pharmaceutical advances, as if these offer solace. Everyday life in isolation,
sustained by being cared for and caring for others, says otherwise.

Societies should redefine pandemic management in wider terms. COVID-19

does not distinguish between migrant and citizen; hence migrant workers
require the same access to safe distancing strategies as everyone else.
However the coronavirus, and strategies to contain it, can have particularly
adverse effects on this vulnerable group. For governments, this means
tackling the pandemic in a way that addresses its toll on migrant workers’
livelihoods and wellbeing. Migrant workers must be assured that their wages
are protected and that their basic needs for food and rest will be met. It is
not enough to pass this task on to employers, who are also experiencing
trying times. As Dr. Stephanie Chok points out, in Singapore the taxes that
employers pay to hire migrant workers amount to more than S$2 billion per
year. This money can sustain the welfare of migrant workers during this
time.

Migrant workers expose the boundaries between the beneficiaries of

Singapore’s coronavirus “success story,” and those who are systematically
excluded from it. Sadly this is business as usual in a system that pursues
growth at the expense of workers’ wellbeing.

The world is facing a global health crisis, with COVID-19 confirmed cases
reaching more than 2.1 million as of April 17, with more than 147,000
deaths around the globe. Nearly every country in the world has been
affected by the virus and the Southeast Asian region is no exception. 
All ASEAN members have reported cases of COVID-19 in their territory;
Thailand was the first country in the region with confirmed cases. Up to this
point, each state has implemented different regulations and mechanisms to
stop the spreading of the virus. In Jakarta, for example, the government has
imposed strict limitation for activities in the city — it has the highest number
of cases in Indonesia. Meanwhile, Singapore fines individuals not wearing
masks in public as a preventive measure.

Despite different policies designed by member states, ASEAN as a regional

organization should play a central role in confronting the outbreak. The term
“ASEAN centrality ” is frequently used in various narratives related to the
group. For instance, the ASEAN Outlook on Indo-Pacific (AOIP) issued last
year proposes “ASEAN centrality” as the basis of cooperation within the
region. 

Regardless of ill-defined terminology, ASEAN centrality is urgently needed

during this pandemic.

For the last two months, ASEAN has organized collective actions to contain
the spread of the coronavirus, such as a special meeting of ASEAN
Coordinating Council on COVID-19, joint statements by ASEAN Foreign
Ministers, Economic Ministers, Defence Ministers, Health Ministers, ASEAN
Plus Three Health Ministers as well as initiative for cooperation with the
United States and European Union. On April 14, the organization conducted
an ASEAN Special Summit on COVID-19. These attempts are solid starting
points for further collaboration.

ASEAN with should lead cooperation among member states. COVID-19 is a

threat that crosses borders, it’s unlikely that a country can stand alone
against the threat. At the beginning, the disease was identified in Wuhan,
China, but now it has infected more than 2 million of people across the world
in just few months. This indicates that the virus is easily transported from
one place to another. An “imported case” of COVID-19, which means that an
individual got the virus elsewhere and returned to their home country with
it, is commonly reported. In Bali, Indonesia, a popular destination for
tourists, imported cases have dominated reports.
Southeast Asian countries are geographically close, thus the movement of
people — and its potential to spread the virus — should be a top concern for
governments. Despite current travel restrictions in several countries,
information regarding citizens crossing national borders is still crucial.
Governments also need to be well-informed on the development of the
COVID-19 crisis across the region and particular in neighboring countries.

Exchanging data on government regulations in response to the outbreak is

much needed. In regard to this matter, ASEAN has been playing a central
role, particularly ASEAN BioDiaspora Virtual Center (ABVC) which compiles
the latest statistics and regulations during pandemic in Southeast Asia. The
report is available on the ASEAN website and accessible to the public.
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ASEAN members also could learn from each other’s domestic measures.
Globally, there have been several success stories of how other countries
have slowed the spread of COVID-19 and reduced mortality rates. South
Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong and Singapore have all received international
appreciation for their methods of handling the virus. As part of ASEAN,
Singapore is a valuable resource for the rest of the grouping.

Supporting Multilateralism

Collaboration among ASEAN countries, along with their external partners, is

a bright side of international cooperation under a regional organization. This
mechanism promotes multilateral discourse at the global level and ASEAN
could be a role model. For the last few years, multilateralism has been
threatened. Disbelief in the value of international organizations and global
norms is increasing ,with many countries acting against this type of state
interaction. Some argue that the election of Donald Trump in the United
States and Brexit in the UK are real signs of diminishing multilateralism. This
trend is likely to alter the current international order, which relies on
multilateral institutions, such as the United Nations and the World Trade
Organization.

Nevertheless, ASEAN could counter this narrative through its close

connectivity, especially during this global health crisis. Effort to work
together facing COVID-19 symbolizes the power of multilateralism where
member states are willing to join forces for achieving common goals.
Despite multiple domestic problems caused by the spread of the
coronavirus, ASEAN countries still put much hope on regional partnership.
Their cross-sectoral collaboration initiatives indicate that they strongly
believe on collective action to address the COVID-19 issue. This strategy
supports the view of multilateralism as solution for global problems.
Therefore, the centrality of ASEAN really matters and is urgently needed.