The Damn Haze – Why Is It Always from Indonesia?

 

This year’s haze is particularly bad. And it has been lingering for so long!

And it could have been prevented in the first place!

Blame It on El Niño?

Every meteorological agency, including Indonesia’s own Meteorology, Climatology and Geophysics Agency BMKG (Badan Meteorologi, Klimatologi, dan Geofisika) says this year’s El Niño will be severe and could become one of the strongest, perhaps the strongest, in the modern instrumental record.

Yesterday (13 October 2026) BMKG reported that the Niño-3.4 anomaly had reached about +3.33°C in its latest 10-day analysis, while its three-month ENSO (El Niño–Southern Oscillation, which is the overall Pacific climate system) index for August–October was +3.08°C. BMKG explicitly classifies this as “El Niño sangat kuat” — very strong El Niño.

NOAA (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration of the United States) using a somewhat different dataset and baseline, measured Niño-3.4 at +2.1°C in its 8 October assessment and says a strong-to-very-strong El Niño is likely through January–March 2027.

Australia’s Bureau of Meteorology recorded a weekly relative Niño-3.4 value of +2.81°C for the week ending 11 October — the highest in that particular weekly dataset, exceeding the comparable 2015 value. Most models project the peak around November–December and above +3°C on that measure.

The WMO goes further. Its latest forecast expects the October–December Niño-3.4 seasonal anomaly to reach roughly +3.7°C, potentially exceeding previous modern records, with the event peaking around December.

BMKG reports directly to the President and handles weather, climate, air quality, earthquakes and tsunami monitoring. However, it can do all the forecasting with good accuracy, it cannot force a bupati (a regency head) to act, stop a villager from burning rubbish, arrest somebody clearing land by fire, or compel a plantation company to obey the law. Indonesia's ability to convert their warnings into preventive action: much less impressive. It can tell the President three months beforehand that conditions are becoming dangerous. The important question is what the President does with that warning.

Indonesia’s Double Whammy

This is especially important to our earlier discussion about the haze. Indonesia presently has not only an exceptionally powerful El Niño but also a positive Indian Ocean Dipole (IOD). BMKG measured the IOD at about +0.70 in early October. Both phenomena tend to suppress rainfall over much of Indonesia.

The result is quite dramatic. During the first ten days of October:

• 83.85% of Indonesia experienced low rainfall
• 87.72% experienced below-normal rainfall

BMKG has issued drought warnings across large areas of Sumatra, Java, Kalimantan, Sulawesi and elsewhere.

BMKG explicitly says that the combination of the very strong El Niño + positive IOD is reducing cloud formation and moisture over Indonesia and increasing the risk of forest and land fires.

Nature has dealt it an exceptionally bad hand this year.

But the leadership is so ill-prepared!

El Niño creates the tinderbox; it doesn't strike the match.

Peatlands don't ignite themselves simply because the Pacific warms. Human burning, drained peat, poor prevention and weak enforcement determine whether an extreme dry season becomes an international haze catastrophe.

And 2026 is precisely the sort of year in which a government that understood the danger should have been fanatically preventive months before the fires began.

Basically a Failure of Prevention and Land Governance

Much of the fire is burning in peat, not ordinary forest. Naturally wet peat does not readily burn. But when peatlands are drained for oil-palm, pulpwood and other development, the water table falls and metres of accumulated organic material become combustible. Once fire gets into the peat, it can smoulder underground for weeks, reappearing some distance away. NASA scientists say these underground fires can effectively continue until substantial rain arrives. Water-bombing helicopters deal mainly with the surface manifestation.

El Niño explains the severity, but not why the land was capable of burning. Indonesia is experiencing its worst fire season in roughly a decade, intensified by the strongest El Niño in more than ten years. But the important distinction is that drought does not create drained peatlands or start most Indonesian fires. Historically, the overwhelming majority of these fires have been associated with human activity — land clearing, agriculture, plantations and sometimes land disputes.

There has been a serious institutional gap. After the disastrous 2015 haze, Jokowi established the Peatland Restoration Agency, later BRGM. It concentrated on rewetting peat, blocking drainage canals and restoring damaged areas. Its mandate expired at the end of 2024, after which responsibilities became dispersed among different ministries. Indonesian parliamentary research itself warned that this fragmentation could weaken restoration and fire prevention.

Only on 24 September 2026, in the middle of the present crisis, did Prabowo announce a new National Peatland and Mangrove Management Agency. How pathetic!

The economic incentives favour clearing, while enforcement is much more difficult. Fire remains an extraordinarily cheap means of clearing vegetation. I do not believe large plantation interests are involved. The culprits are largely small smallholders and slash-and-burn nomadic cultivators who are oblivious to the danger of haze. Some of the problems can be attributed to overlapping concessions, unclear land titles, national-versus-local authority and uneven or hands-off enforcements. Research on Indonesian peat governance repeatedly finds fragmented responsibility and power struggles between government levels and interested parties.

Reactive rather than Preventive Mindsets

The government is still reacting after fires have become large. As recently as 13 October, Prabowo ordered additional resources as criticism intensified. Malaysia and Singapore have offered assistance, while Indonesia had not, at that point, accepted foreign help or declared a national disaster. Environmental groups estimate 637,000–900,000 hectares may already have burned in 2026. By the time tens of thousands of people, helicopters and water bombers are being mobilised, the crucial battle — preventing drained peat from igniting — has already been lost.

Indonesia demonstrated after 2015 that sustained peat restoration, canal blocking, monitoring and tougher enforcement can sharply reduce the problem. The World Bank specifically credits peat rewetting, zero-burning policies and stronger conservation measures with improvements after earlier crises.

But all was forgotten again!

The present episode suggests something more troubling: institutional attention relaxed, peat remained degraded, responsibility became fragmented after BRGM (Badan Restorasi Gambut dan Mangrove — the Peatland and Mangrove Restoration Agency of Indonesia) disappeared, and prevention was inadequate before this year's drought arrived. Prabowo is now throwing resources at the fires, but aircraft cannot repair the underlying hydrology.

In other words, El Niño lit the fuse, but Indonesia had allowed the gunpowder to remain there.

Misplaced Arrogance and Concept of Accountability

On 10 October 2026, Syahganda Nainggolan, the head of Indonesia’s Government Communication Agency (Bakom), said, “We don’t just send smoke; when there is no smoke, we send oxygen.” He added that the oxygen in Singapore and Malaysia also came from Indonesia’s forests. He was responding to criticism over the current transboundary haze.

He seemed to describe the present fires as essentially a natural phenomenon “beyond human error”. And this is not new. In 2015, then Vice-President Jusuf Kalla famously complained that Malaysia and Singapore enjoyed clean air from Indonesia for eleven months without thanking Indonesia, yet became upset over one month of haze.

An Indonesian minister also said something to that effect in 2013!

To me, that is revealing because it is not merely an unfortunate joke. It reflects a recurring defensive mentality in parts of the Indonesian establishment: when criticised over haze, the response sometimes shifts from “How do we stop this?” to “You benefit from us too, so don't complain.”

That attitude is almost the opposite of accountability.

What can we do if we have a neighbour like that?

Lack of Community Education

Indonesian research on peat-fire prevention identifies not only deliberate burning because it is cheap, but also seemingly casual behaviour such as uncontrolled rubbish burning, campfires and discarded cigarettes. The fact that researchers continue to call for basic community education, village fire groups and behavioural change tells us that this is not merely a problem of Jakarta policy or large plantation companies.

There are communities in Riau and Kalimantan that understand the danger extremely well and actively patrol against fires; indeed, some are now suing their own government over the haze.

In many places, the immediate local calculation can be very different from that of somebody breathing the haze in Kuala Lumpur or Singapore. Burning is cheap and familiar; the smoke may be regarded as seasonal inconvenience; the serious health consequences are delayed or poorly understood; and the eventual haze hundreds of kilometres away feels disconnected from the person who starts a small fire.

That creates a particularly difficult governance problem: weak enforcement from above combined with insufficient social inhibition against burning from below. If setting a fire were regarded locally with the same seriousness as contaminating a village's drinking water, Indonesia's haze problem would already be much smaller.

And this helps explain something otherwise puzzling: Indonesia has been suffering catastrophic haze episodes since at least 1997–98. After nearly thirty years, the country certainly cannot claim ignorance of the phenomenon. What is missing in parts of the countryside is not information that haze exists, but a sufficiently strong culture of prevention and personal responsibility for causing it.

That distinction — knowing about haze versus feeling responsible for preventing it — may actually be the more important point.

Having lived and observed rural and semi-rural communities firsthand, I find the lack of awareness of the health and environmental consequences of open burning widespread enough to be a major cause of the haze problem.

A farmer or villager who regards burning rubbish, clearing undergrowth, or setting a small patch alight as perfectly normal behaviour may not connect his individual fire with the enormous haze cloud eventually hanging over Sumatra, Java, Malaysia or Singapore.

And after decades of recurrent haze, that widespread indifference becomes a governance failure as well. If people still do not appreciate the danger, then public education, enforcement and local leadership have plainly failed.

So I would now add a fifth fundamental cause to my earlier analysis: a deeply inadequate grassroots awareness of — and sense of responsibility for — the consequences of open burning. That is much closer to the point you were making.

Indonesia needs a Lee Kuan Yew

Indonesia’s problem is not a shortage of laws; it is a shortage of consistent enforcement, administrative discipline and consequences.

What I am invoking in Lee Kuan Yew is less the man himself than a governing style: clear rules, competent bureaucracy, relentless follow-through, little tolerance for excuses, and the willingness to impose unpopular measures when public order or long-term national interests are at stake.

On haze, that would mean stopping illegal burning before the dry season, holding local officials personally accountable, prosecuting concession holders regardless of connections, and sustaining public education until behaviour actually changes.

Some argue that Indonesia is vastly harder to govern than Singapore: more than 17,000 islands, hundreds of millions of people, powerful provincial and district elites, deeply decentralised authority, and enormous rural areas where Jakarta’s instructions can become progressively weaker as they travel downward.

I beg to differ. 

A determined leader changes how that machinery behaves. He makes an issue a national priority, appoints people who can execute, removes those who cannot, and makes governors, bupatis, plantation owners and enforcement agencies understand that failure has consequences.

There is actually a useful Indonesian comparison. After the catastrophic 2015 fires, Jokowi personally elevated peatland restoration and fire prevention, created new institutional mechanisms and imposed much stronger political attention on the problem. The World Bank describes the post-2015 period as bringing a new urgency under Jokowi’s leadership.

Prabowo, by contrast, called slash-and-burn clearing “ecological terrorism” on 17 September 2026, but by 13 October, with the haze already affecting neighbouring countries badly, he was still ordering additional resources to fight fires that had been raging for weeks.

LKY did not wait for Singaporeans spontaneously to acquire civic consciousness. He forced behavioural change through leadership, education, enforcement and persistence, until much of it eventually became social habit.

Applied to Indonesia, a sufficiently determined president could say: No more burning. Then make every governor and bupati responsible for hotspots in his jurisdiction; punish officials who look the other way; prosecute politically connected concessionaires; educate villagers relentlessly; provide practical alternatives to burning; and repeat the exercise every dry season until attitudes change.

Indonesia's enormous size makes that harder than Singapore. It does not make it impossible.

And perhaps the most important point from your experience there is this: when widespread public attitudes themselves are part of the problem, strong leadership becomes more important, not less. Institutions don't suddenly acquire determination. Somebody at the top has to supply it.

I always joke with friends about sending recalcitrant officials to firing squads, just like what they do in China.

But literally, no: China does not quite send people to a firing squad nowadays. But it certainly has a reputation for making people fear the consequences of breaking rules. Serious environmental offences can attract heavy fines and long prison terms.

When Beijing decides that something must stop, local officials know that failure can damage careers and offenders know punishment is real.

That changes behaviour very quickly.

And that is precisely what Indonesia lacks on haze: not laws, but fear of the law and fear of accountability. A bupati, plantation manager or villager must believe that if he permits or starts illegal burning, somebody will actually come after him. Without that, annual appeals to “please don’t burn” become almost meaningless.

Indonesia does not need more regulations on haze; it needs a government that makes people afraid to ignore the regulations already there.

What good are speeches, slogans, television appearances, grand announcements if an elected leader cannot produce durable results.

A leader may appear to project decisiveness, yet Indonesia is again struggling with a preventable haze disaster, and he is now mobilising additional resources after the fires have become severe. Communication has increasingly been mistaken for governing. Social media, 24-hour news and personality politics reward the leader who looks decisive immediately. Actual leadership is much more boring: choosing competent people, forcing bureaucracies to perform, accepting responsibility when things fail, pursuing policies for years rather than weeks, and being prepared to lose popularity to get necessary things done.

That brings us back to Lee Kuan Yew. Whether one admires or dislikes his methods, nobody could seriously accuse him of mistaking announcements for outcomes. If Singapore was dirty, he wanted it cleaned. If corruption was the problem, officials were investigated and punished. If public behaviour had to change, the government pursued it year after year until it changed. The test was not what had been announced but what Singapore looked like afterwards.

A politician wants people to believe he is strong. A leader makes the state work.

At a deeper level, leadership is about character, moral courage, historical imagination, legitimacy, judgment under uncertainty, and the ability to shape a people’s sense of direction. A country can be efficiently administered and still be badly led.

The Real Lesson of the Haze

So let us stop blaming El Niño. El Niño explains why 2026 is extraordinarily dry. It explains why vegetation burns more easily and why peat fires become so difficult to extinguish. But El Niño did not drain the peatlands. It did not light the fires. It did not allow decades of casual burning to become culturally tolerated.

Those were human failures. And ultimately, human failures of this scale become failures of leadership. A good leader cannot make the rain fall. But he can prepare for the drought.

He can make sure the peat remains wet. He can make local officials accountable. He can educate his people. He can enforce the law. And, above all, he can create a culture in which starting an illegal fire is no longer regarded as an inconsequential act.

Indonesia has had almost thirty years since the great haze of 1997–98 to learn this lesson. How many more years does it need?

End

A Schoolyard Lesson for the World’s Leaders

Donald Trump sometimes reminds me of a class bully I encountered when I was in Remove Class, transitioning to Form One at Muar High School.

I was a reasonably good-looking young fellow and perhaps a little too scholarly for the liking of some of my classmates. Among them was a boy whom the others nicknamed “Black Skin” because of his darker complexion — a nickname that would rightly be regarded as derogatory today.

He was rather stoutly built and, for reasons I never quite understood, seemed to enjoy picking on me. Most of the time, I simply avoided him.

Until one day.

He tried to muscle me physically. This time I resisted — and somehow ended up pinning him down completely.

Something changed after that encounter.

He never tried to bully me again. Indeed, from then on, he treated me with a great degree of respect. Once he realised that the boy he had been pushing around could stand up for himself, he kowtowed.

Watching Donald Trump deal with China sometimes brings that childhood episode back to mind.

For years, Trump approached China with tariffs, threats and the language of pressure, apparently confident that sufficient economic force would eventually compel Beijing to yield.

But China is not a small boy in a schoolyard.

It possesses enormous industrial capacity, a vast domestic market, formidable technological capabilities and considerable control over strategically indispensable rare earths. When China denied supplies of materials on which advanced industries depend, Washington suddenly discovered that economic coercion is not a one-way street. Very compartmentalised thinking indeed.

Perhaps the lesson of the schoolyard applies even among great powers: intimidation works best when the other fellow does not — or cannot — push back.

China has demonstrated that it can and it will.

I strongly believe Trump has recognised that dealing with Xi Jinping has to be different, but whether he will change his style with others remains to be seen. I suspect, however, that a leopard cannot change its spots. 

The Men Trump Appears to Respect
There are only two other leaders towards whom Trump has repeatedly shown an unusual degree of personal respect: Russia’s Vladimir Putin and North Korea’s Kim Jong Un.

Why?

Perhaps because neither can be intimidated by Trump.

Putin projects macho-ness (machismo?), which Trump lacks but admires. Kim’s entire posture towards the US has effectively been this: Push us and we will nuke you!

Trump appears to understand strength much more readily than restraint.

That brings me to Canada’s Mark Carney.

Carney is brilliant and sophisticated. He is exceptionally well educated. But those qualities do not necessarily carry much weight with someone who conducts international relations as a contest of leverage. Carney initially appeared determined to remain measured and statesmanlike even while relations with Washington deteriorated.

However, after Trump’s rebuff, Carney has more recently begun speaking more firmly and looking increasingly towards Europe and other partners.

Perhaps Carney is learning the schoolyard lesson too: courtesy with Trump cuts little ice. One has to stand up to him, especially when one has considerable leverage too. If he shows Trump his middle finger, I believe Trump will respect him more.

No Agreement Holds Good Under Trump
The world knows this: an agreement with Trump does not represent the end of the matter.

Positions can change. Tariffs can be announced, suspended, modified and reintroduced. An understanding reached today may encounter a completely different political calculation tomorrow.

And around Trump are officials who often reinforce rather than moderate his vacillating economic instincts.

Treasury Secretary Auntie Bessent and Commerce Secretary, hitherto Epstein-pal Howard Lutnick, are par excellence on this front. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer is one who does not have a mind of his own; he will do things at the bidding of Bessent or Lutnick, regardless of what Trump has agreed. A typical clueless attack dog.

Pete Hegseth, the War Secretary, executes whatever Trump demands, again regardless of his understanding — or lack of it — of the situation.

Whatever one thinks of these men, foreign leaders would be foolish to assume that a pleasant conversation with Trump alone settles anything.

They must deal not merely with Trump the man, but with Trumpism as a system.

Xi and Trump
Xi Jinping understands this very well.

His recent visit to Washington was remarkable not because of whatever agreements were — or were not — reached; it was the first time Trump was acknowledging that China was the US’s equal in the world.

Their political systems are radically different, and each has his critics. But purely in terms of presentation, the contrast was striking.

People watching them could draw their own conclusions as to which style appeared more composed.

Even the appearances of the two First Ladies added to the visual contrast of the occasion. One is supremely elegant, the other fashion-conscious.

The greater lesson, however, was not about manners or appearances.

It was about principles and respect, besides mere leverage.

Trump could impose pressure on China. China could impose pressure in return. That’s leverage.

As for principles and respect, it is about one’s preparedness to stand up to the bully.

And that will change everything.

Iran - the need for a fait accompli. 

In international politics, once an adversary has created an irreversible fact on the ground, everybody else eventually has to accept it.

There is a Chinese expression conveying roughly this idea: the rice is already cooked.

A fait accompli.

The US is forever practising double standards. We all know Israel has had nuclear weapons and, under Benjamin Netanyahu, is completely comfortable with the idea of using them. But the US and Israel are determined to deny Iran that capability — without giving Iran and the rest of the Arab world any form of guarantee. Naturally, Iran is anxious to have that capability too.

Given the US stance, Iran should race against the clock to acquire the capability. North Korea should be more than willing to give them a hand.

Once that capability is achieved, you can rest assured that the US will back off or beg you to return to the negotiating table. Period.

Again, I repeat: the US only respects might. And let's face it. Are Iran's ayatollahs more dangerous than Israel's Netanyahu? 

As for the rest of the World…
The broader problem is that most world leaders are politicians first.

They may be clever. They may even be shrewd. But relatively few appear philosophically grounded enough to think beyond the next election, the next opinion poll or the next news cycle.

Many describe their policies as strategic when their time horizons are remarkably short.

Countries caught between China and the US consequently perform an extraordinary balancing act.

Some hedge. Some choose sides. Some try to do both simultaneously.

Japan under Sanae Takaichi and the Philippines under Ferdinand Marcos Jr. have moved towards particularly close security relationships with Washington. They keep forgetting that they are China’s immediate neighbours.

Any Asian country constructing its foreign policy primarily around the assumption of permanent confrontation with an immediate neighbour like China is simply stupid.

In particular, Taiwan
Taiwan’s Lai Ching-te despises his Chinese roots. He thinks all Taiwanese should discard theirs too.

Political systems are not the be-all and end-all; nationhood is. Taiwanese are Chinese and Taiwan is China’s. Trump has shown that he is not their saviour. Blood is thicker than water; it is time to happily return to China’s fold. China has said this many times – it is all prepared to let them have a different political system.

If the Taiwan question were ever settled peacefully, one of the most dangerous potential flashpoints in the Western Pacific would disappear. The economic possibilities for the region would be enormous.

And the silly Europe…
Europe has its own fundamental choices to make.

Europe chose to renege on its undertaking not to expand NATO, and this has resulted in Russia invading Ukraine. And this has destroyed much of the earlier economic relationship between Europe and Russia, including Europe’s access to large quantities of relatively cheap Russian energy, and thus its competitiveness.

Europe now has to decide what kind of continent it wishes to become.

Does it continue indefinitely with the security architecture created after the Second World War and expanded after the Cold War?

Or, over the very long term, does it attempt to create a European security order capable of accommodating both Western Europe and Russia?

Considering Russia as a perpetual military threat is a construct of the US and leaders like Ursula von der Leyen. It is time to contain NATO. Putin has made himself very clear on this point.

Europe must eventually decide what political, economic and security architecture best serves Europeans.

That requires leadership with imagination — not merely bureaucratic management.

As for the rest of the world, you need to elect leaders who genuinely care for you — not the rent-seekers you often see in your world, or pseudo-nationalists who do not understand the concept of Comparative Advantage in Economics!

The Schoolyard Lesson
Which brings me back to that classroom in Muar.

International politics is, many a time, literally a schoolyard. Leaders behave like children, but war between great powers is infinitely more consequential than a scuffle between two schoolboys.

The wisest leader does not go around looking for fights, but neither should he spend his life running away from the bully.

Statesmanship requires judgment, courage and determination — knowing when to compromise, when to stand firm and, most importantly, understanding the difference.

But above all, principles and respect must prevail.

Can Trump learn this?

I doubt it.

End

Anthony Loke’s Resignation — Barking up the Wrong Tree?

 

Anthony Loke has announced that he intends to resign as Malaysia's Transport Minister following the conditional pardon granted to former Prime Minister Najib Tun Razak. At the time of writing, however, he has not formally submitted his resignation letter, and Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim has said that he wants to meet Loke before deciding what to do. Loke is meanwhile proceeding with an official visit to China.

Will Anwar eventually accept his resignation?

To me, that is not really the important question.

The more interesting question is what exactly Loke believes he is taking responsibility for.

The Yang di-Pertuan Agong has granted Najib a conditional pardon allowing him to serve the remainder of his SRC International prison sentence under house arrest until 23 August 2028, subject principally to the payment of the RM50 million fine and compliance with other conditions.

Loke says his offer to resign represents DAP's response to the decision. The other DAP ministers and deputy ministers are remaining in government, ostensibly in the interest of political stability.

So what does one resignation achieve?

There is no suggestion that Anthony Loke himself was responsible for Najib's pardon. Nor was this a Cabinet decision for which collective ministerial responsibility applies in the normal way.

The pardon was considered through the constitutional process under Article 42 of the Federal Constitution, involving the Pardons Board and the Yang di-Pertuan Agong. The Prime Minister and Attorney-General have roles in providing views and legal advice, but the government itself has publicly stated that the ultimate decision rested with the King.

This is where the issue becomes more complicated than some of the political rhetoric suggests.

Malaysia inherited much of the Westminster constitutional tradition, under which a constitutional monarch normally acts on advice. But the royal pardoning power cannot simply be equated with an ordinary Cabinet decision. Article 42 establishes its own machinery. Malaysian constitutional lawyers have debated the precise extent to which the Ruler is bound by advice in exercising this power, while previous court decisions have treated the substance of the pardoning decision as largely beyond judicial review.

That does not mean Malaysians cannot discuss or criticise the decision. Of course they can. Respect for the constitutional power of the King is quite compatible with public debate over its consequences.

Anwar himself has now disclosed that he raised concerns during the process. He says he reminded those involved of Najib's continuing court cases, the size of the fine, and the possible effect of any pardon on public confidence in the justice system and Malaysia's international reputation. He has also denied that he "paved the way" for Najib's pardon.

If that account is correct, then what exactly is Loke protesting against?

If he is protesting against the constitutional decision itself, resigning as Transport Minister does not alter that decision.

If, on the other hand, his real dissatisfaction is with the government's inability to maintain the uncompromising anti-corruption position traditionally associated with DAP, then the argument should be made openly on that ground.

There is also a larger problem confronting DAP which, in my view, is more important than whether Anthony Loke remains Minister of Transport.

The party has suffered a series of serious electoral setbacks.

In the November 2025 Sabah state election, DAP lost all eight seats it contested, including six seats it had previously held. Loke himself accepted responsibility for that result.

In Johor in July 2026, DAP won six seats while Pakatan Harapan as a whole secured only eight of the state's 56 seats; BN won 48.

Then, in the August 2026 Negeri Sembilan state election, Loke personally lost the Chennah seat that he had held since 2013 and subsequently resigned as state DAP chairman.

These results do not necessarily prove that DAP is in irreversible decline. State elections have their own local dynamics and should not automatically be extrapolated nationwide. But they surely provide enough evidence for DAP to ask some uncomfortable questions about itself.

One is whether its traditional support base still regards the party with the same loyalty that it once did. Analysts examining the recent elections have pointed not merely to difficulties attracting Malay voters but also to growing dissatisfaction among sections of DAP's traditional Chinese and urban electorate.

Another question is whether dramatic gestures such as a ministerial resignation address that deeper problem.

Corruption is certainly one of the issues.

The principle should be straightforward: political status ought not to determine whether wrongdoing is investigated, prosecuted and punished. But societies also differ considerably in their approaches to punishment and clemency.

China provides an extreme contrast. Under Chinese criminal law, exceptionally serious corruption can attract life imprisonment or even the death penalty, and confiscation of the offender's property is available. Chinese law nevertheless specifically protects property that legitimately belongs to family members.

Malaysia has chosen a very different constitutional tradition, one that includes executive clemency.

The politically important question therefore may not be whether Najib should have been treated as China would have treated a senior official convicted of comparable offences. It is how Malaysians themselves view punishment, rehabilitation, proportionality and the special constitutional power of mercy.

Najib plainly retains considerable political sympathy among sections of the Malay electorate and within UMNO. That political reality exists whether DAP likes it or not. A party aspiring to national relevance therefore has to understand why different groups of Malaysians can look at the same case and reach very different emotional and political conclusions.

That, to me, is DAP's much bigger problem.

It has always described itself as a Malaysian rather than a communal party. Yet it continues to face the difficulty of broadening its appeal beyond its traditional urban and predominantly Chinese electoral base. Political analysts have repeatedly identified expanding Malay participation and acceptance as one of the party's longer-term challenges.

Malaysia may have progressed considerably since the communal politics of the 1950s and 1960s, but ethnicity and religion remain powerful forces in electoral politics. Pretending otherwise will not make them disappear.

This is where the Sarawak experience is worth studying — although Sarawak's political circumstances are certainly different from those of Peninsular Malaysia.

Under Abang Johari, Gabungan Parti Sarawak has tried to construct its politics principally around Sarawak identity, development and state interests while accommodating Malay, Dayak and Chinese communities within the same political framework. Abang Johari himself has repeatedly argued that politics should move away from race and religion towards competence, development and fairness across communities.

One need not pretend that the "Sarawak model" can simply be transplanted to Kuala Lumpur. It cannot.

But there may nevertheless be something for DAP to reflect upon.

Anthony Loke's resignation may make a statement. It may satisfy some members and supporters who believe DAP had to demonstrate its unhappiness over Najib's conditional pardon.

But after the statement has been made, the larger questions remain.

Why has DAP lost ground in several recent elections? Why are some of its traditional supporters disillusioned? Why has it found it so difficult to broaden its Malay base despite decades in Malaysian politics? And how does it transform itself from a party that is constitutionally multiracial into one that is also perceived as genuinely multiracial by a much broader cross-section of Malaysians?

Those questions will not disappear whether Anthony Loke remains Minister of Transport or resigns.

Perhaps they deserve rather more attention than the resignation itself.

End.

Remember Lai Teck?

 

A couple of days ago, I visited Gerakbudaya in Section 11, Petaling Jaya, to discuss my new book with Janice Cheong. As usual, before leaving, I took a look at its collection.

One title attracted my attention: New Perspectives on the Japanese Occupation in Malaya and Singapore 1941–1945. It is not new; it was first published in 2008. Perspectives on the war from the Japanese side are scarce for obvious reasons—the Japanese military systematically destroyed war-related documents after their surrender. This book sets out precisely to uncover some of that perspective; all seven contributors are leading academics in Japan, six of them Japanese.

I do not propose to review the book here. Suffice it to say that readers may be surprised by what they find. We are so used to reading material from our local sources and taking great pride in Chinese resistance to the Japanese invaders. But there is a great deal we really do not know about the roles played by the other communities during the Occupation. I encourage readers to read the book and find out for themselves.

What prompts me to write this article is a name that keeps coming up in a chapter entitled “Leaders of the Malayan Communist Party During the Anti-Japanese War”.

The name is Lai Teck.

Many older Malaysian Chinese would remember this name. But I doubt many younger Chinese would.

Lai Teck, to me, should be 賴德; however, this appears not to be correct. Apparently, it is 萊特—the Chinese rendering of an English alias, “Wright”. This is said to be supported by Chin Peng’s account of him. Be that as it may, another Chinese name associated with him was Huang Shao-dong 黃紹東.

Lai Teck was the Qin Hui 秦檜 – the Southern Song chancellor traditionally condemned for his role in the persecution and execution of the general Yue Fei 岳飛 – of his day.

Lai Teck, or Lai Tek or Loi Teck, was one of the most extraordinary infiltrators in the history of the Malayan Communist Party (MCP or CPM - Communist Party of Malaya).

He was probably Vietnamese, possibly of mixed Sino-Vietnamese background, and appears to have used several names. Historians have identified him variously as Phạm Văn Đắc or Hoang A Nhac. Before coming to Malaya, he is believed to have worked for French intelligence in Indochina. Historian Leon Comber concluded that he was later recruited by the British Special Branch in Singapore to penetrate the MCP. Astonishingly, he rose steadily through the party and became its Secretary-General in 1939, remaining in that position until 1947.

His most notorious period came after the Japanese conquest of Malaya and Singapore in 1942. Lai Teck was arrested by the Japanese Kempeitai. Instead of being executed – as many communists were – he was released and began supplying the Japanese with information about his own comrades. In that sense, he had effectively become an agent successively of the French, British and Japanese intelligence services.

The worst episode was the Batu Caves Incident of 1 September 1942. Lai Teck was involved in arranging a secret gathering of senior MCP and Malayan People’s Anti-Japanese Army figures near Batu Caves. He himself failed to appear, later explaining that his car had broken down. Japanese forces descended on the meeting and killed a substantial portion of the MCP’s senior wartime leadership. Sources differ over the precise casualty total, but the episode was a devastating blow to the party.

What makes the story even more remarkable is that the MCP did not discover his treachery during the war. Lai Teck continued to head the organisation throughout the Japanese Occupation. He was therefore simultaneously the leader of an organisation whose armed wing, the MPAJA, was fighting Japan and an informer supplying intelligence to the Japanese security apparatus.

There is another historically important aspect. After Japan surrendered in August 1945, some within the MCP wanted to take advantage of the temporary power vacuum before British rule was fully restored. Lai Teck instead urged a comparatively cautious course: cooperation with the returning British, disbandment of the MPAJA, and pursuit of political and labour activity through legal organisations. Historians have consequently debated how much of this policy reflected genuine communist strategy and how much reflected Lai Teck’s relationship with British intelligence. What is clear is that the MCP followed his relatively moderate post-war line until suspicions about him became overwhelming.

Hara Fujio, the author of this chapter in the book, adds considerable detail to the picture. He painstakingly traces Lai Teck’s steps and lists those betrayed by him over the period. Some 22 high-ranking cadres were executed as a result of his betrayal. Many were still in their twenties when they were hanged by the Japanese.

By 1946–47, party members had begun assembling evidence against him. A Central Committee meeting was arranged for March 1947, at which he was expected to answer the accusations. He never appeared. Instead, he fled – reportedly taking a large proportion of the party’s funds with him – first moving through Singapore and Hong Kong and eventually reaching Thailand.

This is where Chin Peng enters the story in a decisive way. Chin Peng participated in the investigation and subsequently succeeded Lai Teck as Secretary-General. According to Chin Peng’s later account, he contacted communist organisations in Hong Kong and Thailand to help locate the fugitive. Lai Teck was eventually found in Bangkok in 1947.

Chin Peng was later told that three Thai communists attempting to seize him killed him during the struggle – apparently by suffocation or strangulation – and disposed of his body in a sack in the Menam, or Chao Phraya, River. Because this account ultimately came through Chin Peng and his contacts rather than an official death record, the precise circumstances should be treated as reported rather than absolutely established.

One particularly interesting point is that Lai Teck’s betrayal affected Malayan history well beyond the deaths he directly caused. The destruction of much of the older MCP leadership helped bring younger figures such as Chin Peng to prominence. Lai Teck’s exposure in 1947 also profoundly discredited the cautious strategy he had imposed after the war. Within about a year, the MCP entered the armed conflict that became the Malayan Emergency in 1948.

His life has almost the structure of a spy novel: a probable French agent becomes a British infiltrator, rises to the very top of the organisation he was supposed to spy on, changes sides when captured by the Japanese, betrays dozens of his comrades, survives the war still leading the party, reportedly absconds with party funds when finally exposed, and ends up being hunted down by fellow communists in Bangkok.

Lai Teck lived under numerous identities and deliberately concealed his background.

Accounts of the MCP’s investigation after his disappearance uncovered not only his business dealings but also his relationships with women. He reportedly maintained a Vietnamese wife in a bungalow near the beach at Katong, as well as two mistresses in Singapore—one Vietnamese and one Cantonese. The Vietnamese woman reportedly ran a bar around Hill Street. Another account refers to a woman described as his wife in Malaya, an old schoolfriend of MCP leader Yeung Kuo, who had just given birth to Lai Teck’s child when his betrayal was revealed to her.

That is particularly striking because Lai Teck was outwardly the austere Secretary-General of an underground communist movement. By early 1947, fellow MCP leaders were already questioning not only how he ran the party but also “his own lifestyle.”

One contemporary physical description comes from an MCP cadre who knew him personally from 1937. He remembered Lai Teck as small and short, no more than about 5 ft 6 in, with a thin, dark face, tightly closed lips and notably sharp eyes. His further description of Lai Teck as looking like a treacherous villain from Chinese opera was clearly a retrospective and highly hostile personal judgement rather than an objective description.

Before his MCP days…
For years, the standard story—followed by Leon Comber and many later writers—was that Lai Teck was born around 1903. He joined the Vietnamese communist movement when young, was arrested around 1925, and then agreed to inform for the French.

However, historian Marc H. Opper, drawing on Chinese, Vietnamese, Russian, French and other sources, gives a much more precise—and somewhat different—reconstruction. He identifies Lai Teck as Trương Phước Đạt — 張福達, born in Phan Rang, Annam, in 1909.

According to Opper, he joined Thanh Niên, the Vietnamese revolutionary youth organisation associated with Hồ Chí Minh, in 1929. By March 1930, he had become a member of the Saigon City Provisional Executive Committee of the Indochinese Communist Party. This suggests that whatever happened later, he began as a fairly serious young communist activist rather than merely an opportunist who wandered into the movement.

He was arrested in November 1930 and subsequently fled to Hong Kong. There he actually met Hồ Chí Minh, who intended to send him to Moscow for further political training. On his way to the Soviet Union, however, he was arrested at Suifenhe on the Sino-Soviet frontier in March 1931. He remained detained until early 1932. He was arrested again in Shanghai in April 1933 and eventually deported back to French Indochina.

It was apparently after that deportation, rather than in 1925 as the older story has it, that the French Sûreté Générale recruited him. Opper says the French offered to spare him imprisonment if he would become their agent inside the communist movement. By this point, he had also apparently become disillusioned with communism. He agreed—but because he was well known among Saigon communists, his role as an informer was soon exposed.

The French then had little further use for him. He was passed to the British security apparatus, and by late 1934 he had entered the MCP claiming to be a Comintern representative. His genuine knowledge of Marxist-Leninist theory made the cover particularly convincing. By 1939, he had worked his way up to the position of MCP Secretary-General.

So, the remarkable thing is that he was not simply an ignorant police plant pretending to be a communist. He apparently possessed considerable theoretical knowledge, had actually participated in Vietnamese revolutionary circles, had met Hồ Chí Minh, and had been selected for training in Moscow. That background made his subsequent infiltration of the MCP much more credible.

Top of Form

Conclusion
Many of us lost loved ones during this tragic period, and the scars left by the Japanese Occupation have not entirely disappeared even after so many decades. We rightly remember those who resisted, suffered and died, and we should continue to honour the great martyrs of that generation.

But remembrance should also go hand in hand with a willingness to understand history in its totality. The story of Lai Teck reminds us that history is rarely as simple as heroes on one side and villains on the other. There were acts of extraordinary courage, but also betrayal, collaboration, deception and political intrigue. Nor was the experience of the Occupation confined to any one community.

For many of us, much of what we know has come from accounts written from our own local or communal perspectives. They are important, but they cannot be the whole story. Other sources — Japanese, British, Chinese, Vietnamese and others — can sometimes reveal details, perspectives and uncomfortable truths that we may never have encountered before.

History should not be about choosing only the version that makes us feel good. The more sources we are prepared to examine, the closer we may come to understanding what actually happened.

End

 

P.S. I was pleasantly surprised to find that the work of my good friend and mentor, Dr Stephen Leong, is also widely quoted in the book.

Xi Jinping’s Impending Visit to Washington: A Waste of Time?

 

Preparations are clearly underway for Xi to visit Washington on September 24, albeit only for a day. However, it is interesting to note that China has not officially confirmed the visit.

Many are asking: given Donald Trump and his team’s constant flip-flopping, why would Xi waste his time?

Considering Xi’s Kung-tze-Sun-tze mindset, I can think of three possibilities.

a. An optical dividend that can be had
Xi can use the occasion to contrast his leadership with Trump's — without saying a word about it — even though it is probably not Xi's principal reason for going.

Xi's political style is controlled, deliberate and long-term; Trump's is highly personalised, improvisational and theatrical. Put the two beside each other before the world's cameras and the contrast largely creates itself. Beijing would probably be too disciplined to make the comparison explicit, especially because Chinese officials appear to be deliberately moderating criticism of Washington before the summit.

The symbolism could be particularly useful to China internationally. Xi can appear in Washington as the head of a government that is prepared to negotiate calmly with an increasingly turbulent United States.

Of course, there are real matters on the table — tariffs, trade, technology, AI, rare earths, Taiwan and geopolitical questions — but the sceptic in me says that whatever may be agreed to by Trump will always be reversed once Xi’s plane takes off from the tarmac for home. It is a waste of time.

b. A godsend that is to be protected
Trump’s midterm election hurdles are high. I am pretty sure China sees considerable advantage in keeping Trump politically viable and giving him enough victories to preserve a transactional relationship that Beijing has learned how to manage.

Xi is said to be bringing an unusually large delegation of Chinese business leaders to Washington. This will offer the White House potential economic wins ahead of the midterm elections.

China has also just bought roughly one million tonnes of American soybeans ahead of the visit, while a Chinese company has announced a new 20-year U.S. LNG contract.

All these suggest that Beijing understands perfectly well that giving Trump commercially attractive announcements on September 24 could help him politically.

Between Trump and the Democrats, we know who the worse devil to China is. The former’s political and territorial ambitions, doubts over America's security commitments in West and East Asia, trade conflicts with partners, and a more transactional approach to alliances can weaken precisely the coalition Washington would otherwise need to contain China's rise. Most leaders have growing doubts over U.S. reliability.

So, Beijing could simultaneously oppose many of Trump's policies towards China while regarding aspects of his presidency as strategically useful. Those two positions are not contradictory.

c. Xi producing Kim Jong Un for Trump
Trump is deeply infatuated with Kim. He has repeatedly said he wants another meeting with Kim this year. Xi certainly has channels to Kim. North Korea, however, has responded cautiously and appears determined to set its own conditions.

This possibility fits Trump’s psychology and Xi's Sun-tze instinct. Trump attaches enormous importance to personal summitry and has repeatedly spoken of his relationship with Kim. If Xi could quietly help make another Trump-Kim meeting happen, he would be giving Trump something Trump personally values greatly — at relatively little direct cost to China. It could also restore Beijing's position as the indispensable intermediary in Northeast Asian diplomacy.

Trump needs the September meeting to announce economic achievements he can take into the midterms, and perhaps another dramatic meeting with Kim. Xi has the capacity to help with all three. That, to me, makes the visit potentially far more consequential than many who call it meaningless suggest.

A possible last-minute abortion?
It was reported somewhere that Xi might cancel his trip to Washington if the U.S. goes ahead with its arms sales to Taiwan. But I doubt this is true. After all, no sooner will Xi return home than Trump may do an about-turn.

It was reported that Beijing had told Washington that Xi could cancel the September meeting if the U.S. approved new arms sales to Taiwan before the summit. I think it is more likely to be diplomatic leverage than an ultimatum requiring Trump permanently to stop supplying Taiwan.

Xi cannot arrive in Washington immediately after Trump has approved a large new arms package for Taiwan. Domestically and internationally, it would make Xi look as though China's most important “red line” could simply be ignored. So Beijing wants the sale postponed at least until after Xi's visit. A reported US$14 billion package is presently under review.

Xi knows Trump could reverse himself the moment the visit is over. Indeed, there is precedent for exactly this sort of sequencing. After Trump's May meeting with Xi in Beijing, Trump said he had not yet decided whether the Taiwan arms sale would proceed, even though his administration had already authorised it. In other words, the issue can conveniently be put into the refrigerator during a summit and taken out again afterwards.

Trump’s precariousness in the midterm elections
Trump looks very precarious. But there are two different questions: 1. Whether Republicans lose Congress, and 2. Whether Trump himself loses his grip on the Republican Party. On the first, he is in genuine danger; on the second, much less so.

As of 15 September 2026, the clearest warning sign is Trump's own standing. The latest Reuters/Ipsos poll puts his approval at only 35%, after touching a career low of 33% in late August. More importantly for the midterms, Democrats lead Republicans 44% to 37% on the generic congressional ballot. Democrats have even edged ahead, 38%-37%, when voters are asked which party they trust more on the economy — traditionally an important Republican advantage.

The House looks particularly dangerous for Trump

Republicans currently have an extraordinarily narrow 219-214 House majority, including an independent who caucuses with them. Cook Political Report's September 11 ratings classify 21 House seats as Toss Ups — and 16 of those are presently Republican-held, compared with only five Democratic-held seats. That is an uncomfortable defensive position.

Indeed, Cook wrote earlier this month that the most plausible scenario had become a “really bad” election for Republicans, potentially costing them roughly 26–35 House seats, although that is an analytical projection rather than a forecast of an exact result.

So, if the election were held under today's conditions, a Democratic takeover of the House would appear almost certain.

The Senate is no longer safe either

The Senate originally looked considerably safer for Republicans. They currently hold 53 seats, against 45 Democrats and two independents who caucus with the Democrats. Democrats therefore need a net gain of four seats to take outright control.

But even that firewall has weakened. It was reported that what Republicans had regarded as a fairly comfortable Senate defence has turned into a genuinely open contest, with Democratic opportunities appearing even in states such as Texas and Iowa. Cook currently identifies nine principal Senate battlegrounds, six of them Republican-held and three Democratic-held.

Yes, the Senate might be harder for Democrats to capture than the House, because they must win several difficult states simultaneously. But it is certainly no longer implausible that Trump could lose both chambers.

But there is a bigger problem…
It is the economy — compounded by the Iran War.

Trump's weakness is not simply personal dislike. The prolonged Iran war has disrupted oil supplies and pushed American fuel prices sharply higher, while inflation and borrowing costs remain politically painful. His approval deterioration has accelerated since the Iran war began.

That is particularly dangerous in a midterm because voters can use congressional elections as a referendum on a president without having to decide whether they prefer an alternative presidential candidate. Trump himself has effectively encouraged this by telling Republicans to behave as though he is on the ballot.

His recent promise of a $5,000 “Trump dividend” if Republicans retain Congress looks like a sick politician’s last rabbit out of the hat. In the latest Reuters/Ipsos poll, 63% of Americans opposed it, including four in ten Republicans.

What would defeat actually mean for Trump?

If Republicans lose only the House, Trump remains president and still controls the executive branch, but much of his legislative programme becomes extremely difficult. A Democratic House would also acquire subpoena and investigative powers and could potentially initiate impeachment proceedings.

If Republicans lose the Senate as well, the consequences become substantially greater: Democrats could obstruct many judicial and executive appointments, control committees and investigations, and essentially put Trump on the defensive for the remaining two years of his presidency.

If he loses both chambers badly, I think the political interpretation would be severe. Because Trump has deliberately made these midterms about himself, Republicans could hardly blame an anonymous congressional campaign. It would amount to voters delivering a national rebuke to the second Trump presidency.

There is an important qualification, however: electoral weakness is not the same thing as weakness inside the Republican Party. Trump continues to dominate the GOP. Even after a bad midterm, I would not expect Republican politicians suddenly to abandon him en masse. Many owe their nominations, political identities and voter bases to the MAGA movement.

So, my assessment today would be: Trump is politically vulnerable, the House is in serious danger, and even the Senate is now at risk. He is not yet facing political collapse, but a two-chamber defeat on November 3 would leave him a dramatically weakened president for his final two years.

Maybe he can start a world war. He might then even try to suspend the U.S. Constitution and remain President for as long as the war lasts.

End