This piece is co-published with AcademiaSG, a scholarly site promoting scholarship of/by/for Singapore. •••••••• Singapore’s public housing program is sui generis, un-replicable in its entirety anywhere. During the 1959 election campaign for the first fully elected parliament for domestic self-government, the People’s Action Party (PAP) promised to improve the living conditions of Singaporeans. One year after being elected, it established the Housing and Development Board (HDB) to undertake a public housing program to fulfil its promise. From the outset, the housing program was a political goo ..read more

On 14 February Indonesians did not only elect a new president, but also 580 members of the parliament, the Dewan Perwakilan Rakyat (DPR). The first four post-Suharto parliamentary elections were subject to great scrutiny, being scheduled months before the appointment of the president (in 1999) and the direct election of the president (from 2004). But as a result of a 2013 Constitutional Court decision, both legislative and presidential elections have been held on the same day, all but ensuring that interest in the DPR elections has been buried in the avalanche of attention on who would prevail ..read more

Myanmar has two national-level matriculation examinations now: one administered by the Ministry of Education under the State Administration Council (SAC) military junta, the other conducted by the Ministry of Education, National Unity Government (MOE, NUG), a parallel government constituted on April 17, 2021, in the wake of the February 2021 military coup. The matriculation examination is the gateway for high school students to continue their studies at one of the more than 170 universities in Myanmar. The students take the exam once they finish their Grade 11, the final grade of high school ..read more

On 3 January 2024, the Indonesian Broadcasting Commission (KPI), the state agency authorised to oversee broadcast television content in Indonesia, issued a warning to Ivan Gunawan, a prominent male Indonesian fashion designer. The warning was prompted by his perceived feminine appearance (kewanitaan) on the Brownis variety show on a leading TV station, Trans TV. Both Brownis and Trans TV were reprimand for what the KPI said was a violation of the 2012 Broadcasting Code of Conduct and Program Standards. As per the regulation, the KPI prohibits the normalisation of men dressing, grooming, and wa ..read more

Ten years have passed since the signing of the Vietnam–Saudi Arabia Bilateral Labour Agreement (BLA) in 2014, which governed the sending of women from Vietnam to do domestic work under the Kafala system, a visa sponsorship system common in Saudi Arabia and other Gulf countries—one that gives the workers’ kafeel (head of household and employer) complete control over the lives of these female domestic workers. In 2019, both governments quietly renewed this 5-year bilateral agreement without any public announcement. The agreement is up for renewal in 2024. The secrecy around the 2019 renewal was ..read more

“Data! Data! Data! ― I can’t make bricks without clay,” Sherlock Holmes was described saying in Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s The Adventure of the Copper Beeches. For students of Indonesian politics, public opinion data is the clay we need to make sense of this year’s national and local elections. The stakes are high: over the past few years, Indonesia has experienced what many observers regard as a democratic erosion. Consider the recent Constitutional Court ruling that paved the way for Gibran Rakabuming’s inclusion on the ballot as a vice presidential candidate. Was this episode a simple case of ..read more

On 3 February, 2024, the Manila City Government marked the 79th anniversary of the Battle of Manila with a solemn but subdued ceremony. The event was attended by a select group of dignitaries, including ambassadors and representatives from various Philippine government entities and civic organisations. The site of the gathering was the Memorare Manila Monument, a poignant memorial erected in 1995 through the effort of the survivor group Memorare Manila 1945 and dedicated to the memory of the over one hundred thousand non-combatant civilians who tragically lost their lives during the intense mo ..read more

Editor’s note for new subscribers: this piece appears as part of New Mandala’s ARTSEA series. Edited by the Australian National University’s Dr Elly Kent, ARTSEA features regular commentary and essays on art, design and architecture in Southeast Asia. You can visit the ARTSEA homepage here. It has long been the case that art biennials are almost impossible to witness in their entirety. Since the proliferation of media, contemporary art has been characterised by lively projects rather than static monolithic works, including artistic-research approaches and collaboration with non-artistic practi ..read more

According to all credible quick counts, Prabowo Subianto will be the next president of Indonesia. He and his running mate, President Joko Widodo’s son Gibran Rakabuming Raka, won the three-way race with a convincing 58% of the votes, easily clearing the 50% threshold required to win in a single round. The losing candidates, former Jakarta governor Anies Baswedan and former Central Java governor Ganjar Pranowo, may challenge these results in the Constitutional Court, and some protest from civil society groups is expected. But it is unlikely that the outcome will change given the large margin of ..read more

Readers who received the email notification of the new post “Indonesians want a more diverse legislature” should know that this piece was published under the wrong byline. The piece wasn’t authored be me, as the previous email from New Mandala would have you believe, but rather Eve Warburton, Edward Aspinall, Diego Fossati, Burhanuddin Muhtadi and Sally White. My apologies to readers and the authors for the error, which has been corrected on the New Mandala website. Liam Gammon | the editor The post Erratum: “Indonesians want a more diverse legislature” appeared first on New Mandala ..read more