Ian Buruma in Japan MAY – JULY 2018 VOLUME 3, NUMBER 3 Laurel Fantauzzo Thomas A. Bass Anjan Sundaram Duterte’s The ghost of Writing Cambodia’s deadly war Vietnam genocide 32 9 772016 012803 - VOLUME 3, NUMBER 3 MAY – JULY 2018 mekongreview.com THE PHILIPPINES 3 Laurel Flores Fantauzzo The Rise of Duterte: A Populist Revolt against Elite Democracy by Richard Javad Heydarian POETRY 5 Phung Khac Bac “The first day of peace”, “The leaning houses” SOUTHEAST ASIA 6 Michael Vatikiotis Warring Societies of Pre-colonial Southeast Asia: Local Cultures of Conflict within a Regional Context by Michael W. Charney and Kathryn Wellen (eds) VIETNAM 7 Thomas A. Bass The Road Not Taken: Edward Lansdale and the American Tragedy in Vietnam by Max Boot INTERVIEW 9 Norman Erikson Pasaribu Eka Kurniawan SINGAPORE 12 Gareth Richards World War II Singapore: The Chōsabu Reports on Syonan by Gregg Huff and Shinobu Majima (translators and eds) POETRY 13 Theophilus Kwek “Marginalia” NOTEBOOK 14 Richard McGregor Leaving America CAMBODIA 15 Anjan Sundaram Dogs at the Perimeter by Madeleine Thien ASIA 16 Kishore Mahbubani The End of the Asian Century: War, Stagnation, and the Risks to the World’s Most Dynamic Region by Michael Auslin RELIGION 17 Camille Devries Cold War Monks: Buddhism and America’s Secret Strategy in Southeast Asia by Eugene Ford Buddhism, Politics and Political Thought in Myanmar by Matthew Walton SOCIETY 19 Francis Wade Precarious Belongings: Affect and Nationalism in Asia by Chih-Ming Wang & Daniel P.S. Goh (eds) Belonging Across the Bay of Bengal: Religious Rites, Colonial Migrations, National Rights by Michael Laffan (ed) VIETNAM 21 Peter Zinoman Censorship in Vietnam: Brave New World by Thomas Bass WILDLIFE 22 Scott Ezell The Extinction Market: Wildlife Trafficking in Asia by Vanda Felbab-Brown POETRY 23 Michael Freeman The Red Years by Bandi MALAYSIA 24 Marc de Faoite A Stranger to Love by K.S. Maniam FICTION 25 Pim Wangtechawat Crazy Rich Asians by Kevin Kwan JAPAN 26 Peter Tasker A Tokyo Romance by Ian Buruma ARCHAEOLOGY 27 Aedeen Cremin Claude Jacques PROFILE 28 Erin Handley Prumsodun Ok MUSIC 30 Beth Yahp Rosalie and Other Love Songs by Saidah Rastam CARTOONS 31 Michael L. Gray Thuong Nho Thoi Bao Cap (Memories of the Subsidised Era) by Nguyen Thanh Phong and Nguyen Khanh Duong TRAVEL 32 Rupert Winchester Forgotten Naga FOOD 33 Robert Carmack Eating amok THE BOOKSELLER 34 Peter Guest Ibrahim Tahir EDITORS Minh Bui Jones, Gwen Robinson CONTRIBUTING EDITORS Rupert Winchester (fiction), ko ko thett (poetry) SUB-EDITORS Allen Myers, Ben Wilson READERS Mina Bui Jones, Izzy Souster COVER Damien Chavanat ARTISTS Elsie Herberstein, Oslo Davis, Janelle Retka SUBSCRIPTION MANAGERS Siti Aishah Kamarudin, Helena Dodge-Wan Contact: PO Box 847, Leichhardt NSW 2040, Australia; [email protected] Mekong Review is published four times a year; next issue August 2018 2 THE PHILIPPINES Deadly populism Laurel Flores Fantauzzo RICHARD JAVAD HEYDARIAN The Rise of Duterte: A Populist Revolt Against Elite Democracy Palgrave Pivot: 2018 he world knows his name now. Newsreaders mention him often — his latest joke about sexual violence, his latest curse at world leaders, his Tlatest injunctions to destroy part of the population of his country. But in the years before the world knew his name, I heard it murmured in the Philippines in different tones, with dread-tinged admiration. He was the mayor who cleaned up Davao City, on the southern Philippine island of Mindanao, giving it peaceful, orderly, smoke-free streets; the guy who took drug dealers up in helicopters and pushed them out over the ocean; the leader who used official lists to exterminate petty criminals, journalists and political opponents. The stories grew from unsubstantiated rumours and reports by human rights researchers. Yet such legends, factual or not, struck the hearts of long- suffering Filipino voters and their desires for safety, prosperity and security. I often heard that if he could force security on Davao Inquirer/Raffy Lerma City, he could do it for the country. I wasn’t sure about that. But when Rodrigo “Rody” Roa Duterte entered Jennelyn Olaires hugs partner Michael Siaron, 30, a pedicab driver and alleged drug pusher, who was killed by motorcycle-riding gunmen the Philippine presidential race in late 2015, I didn’t brush him aside as a showman or a madman. There was quite the passion Duterte has — and Filipinos are among Those Filipinos who did make fragile gains during something in his trajectory that gave Filipinos hope. I the most emotional citizens in the world, according to the Aquino years — small business owners and call was sure he would win. one study. centre agents, for example — were frightened of losing In the two years since Duterte’s victory, a new The Rise of Duterte divides its dispatch into three them, especially to petty criminals. They had little political order has ascended in the Philippines — parts, examining the grievances that led to voters’ choice reason to trust the glacial pace of the Philippine justice passionately disputed, intermittently mourned and of Duterte, unpacking the method behind the seeming system, which has one overburdened court for every often celebrated. Supporters call it a fresh age of swift madness of Duterte’s foreign policy decisions, and 50,000 citizens. Duterte’s violent rhetoric, promising change and economic opportunity; critics label it an exhorting readers not to reduce Duterte to any single instant death to criminals and drug addicts, spoke undemocratic era of horror and violence, harkening characteristic. The man is not simply his mouth. Or as to voters’ hopes and fears. “Duterte built his entire back to past dictatorships. Into this fraught rhetoric and the sociologist Nicole Curato puts it, “there is value in campaign,” Heydarian writes, “on the basic principle political tempest enters Richard Heydarian’s The Rise of observing the firebrand with the mute button on.” of going farther than any of his competitors in terms Duterte: A Populist Revolt Against Elite Democracy. Heydarian frames the book with Marxist philosopher of breaking orthodoxies in favor of a bolder and more As one of the most called-upon pundits of the Antonio Gramsci’s lament: “The old [order] is dying and audacious messaging, particularly on combatting Philippines, with no shortage of controversial flashpoints the new cannot be born … in this interregnum, a great corruption and crime.” to address, Heydarian regularly offers reflections on variety of morbid symptoms [begin to] appear.” Like Perhaps the most intriguing element of the book the president, revealing the hints of history and old other Filipino thinkers, Heydarian sees the country’s is its discussion of Duterte’s foreign policy, much of it grievances layered in Dutertisms that, to onlookers, may democracy as fragile, suffering an onslaught of fatigue gleaned from several of the author’s personal interviews seem like absurdities. The Rise of Duterte is Heydarian’s and aggressive, populist symptoms — a familiar plight with insiders in the present and past administrations. scholarly account of the leader’s ascendance. At just globally. “Similar to leaders of Turkey, Russia, India, As Heydarian says, foreign policy was not a key under 130 pages, the work reads like an urgent dispatch, and Indonesia,” he writes, “Duterte promised decisive, voting concern, but in Duterte’s apparent warmth and hastening to map an unstable landscape. single-minded leadership as a one-stop, swift solution to concessions towards China, he shook the Philippines’ This is not to say The Rise of Duterte was written in a all the maladies of emerging market democracies.” old paradigm of alliance to the US. “In 2016, Chinese careless rush. The book offers important, deep context to He follows with a convincing portrait of the ambassador to Manila, Zhao Jian, met Duterte more a man and his methods at a time when the volume and conditions that placed Filipinos in the thrall of than any other foreign dignitary,” he reports. speed of incendiary rhetoric render such deep research Duterte’s promises to eradicate crime and upend the old Heydarian places Duterte’s foreign policy shifts in and thinking all the more necessary. order. Many details are striking: though the previous context with past administrations’ choices regarding Heydarian conveys in the introduction the personal administration of Benigno Aquino III had placed the conflicts with Beijing, particularly with respect to risk any writer undergoes by default when writing country on an apparent upwards swing, making it the China’s usurpation of land and waters in the Philippines. critically about Duterte: “Some pages of this book were fourth fastest-growing economy in the world in 2015, Joseph Estrada neglected the Chinese relationship, not written while I came under a barrage of systematic the poverty level failed to move. In addition, “the forty wanting an armed conflict he knew the country would cyber-harassment — mostly from pro-Duterte trolls richest families swallowed up 76 per cent of newly lose; Gloria Macapagal Arroyo made a high-profile visit — including death threats and myriad of insults levied created growth” and the number of Filipinos who to China, securing several investments. against my loved ones and me … There were times when became overseas workers to escape low national wages The Aquino administration, on the other hand, I felt like the whole country was on the verge of crashing “more than doubled” during Aquino’s term. brought a case against China under the United Nations into a frenzy of anarchy, swallowed by a mindless orgy of In a country of over 100 million citizens, only 178 Convention on the Law of the Sea and won recognition violence, hatred, and intolerance.” entrenched political families rule seventy-three of its of Philippine sovereignty against Chinese encroachment.