Endgame with Gita Wirjawan - Jacques Bertrand: Southeast Asia’s Unresolved Conflicts

Episode Date: February 24, 2023

Southeast Asia expert, Jacques Bertrand, takes us to wander across nations and observe the true cause and consequences of the current democratic recession in some parts of the region. Jacques Bertrand has written 6 books on Southeast Asia, the topics ranging from political change, ethnic conflict, to democratization. He is currently a visiting scholar at the Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center, Stanford University; Lee Kong Chian NUS-Stanford Fellow on Contemporary Southeast Asia, Stanford University; and professor of political science and director of the M.A. program in Asia-Pacific studies at the Asian Institute, Munk School of Global Affairs, University of Toronto. Hosted by Gita Wirjawan: entrepreneur, educator, and 2022-23 visiting scholar at Stanford University at the Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center (APARC). #Endgame #GitaWirjawan #JacquesBertrand Recorded at Stanford University, 27 October 2022. ---------------- SGPP Indonesia Master of Public Policy March 2023 Intake: admissions.sgpp.ac.id [e-mail] https://wa.me/628111522504 Other "Endgame" episode on ASEAN: https://endgame.id/scotmarciel https://endgame.id/martynatalegawa https://endgame.id/kishoremahbubani Visit and subscribe: @sgppindonesia @visinemapictures

I mean, I have admiration for Southeast Asians wanting to build a community of like-minded peoples and states and ASEAN in many ways is, you know, aspires to being that, right? And yet, as I said, you know, you go from one country to the next and the differences are so stark that it's amazing that one can't have that dialogue in that sense of community. Hi, friends and fellows, welcome to this special series of conversations involving personalities coming from a number of campuses, including Stanford University. The purpose of the series is really to unleash thought-provoking ideas that I think would be of tremendous value to you. I want to thank you for your support so far, and welcome to the special series. Hi, today we're visited by Jean Bertrand, who is a great person. a visiting scholar at Stanford University, but he's also a professor of political science at the University of Toronto. Hi, Jacques. Hi, thank you. Thank you so much for coming. Well, thank you

for having me on your podcast. It's a pleasure to be here. You're well known as an expert on Southeast Asia, and you've done a lot of work on many parts of Southeast Asia. Before we deep dive into the beef, tell us a little bit about yourself. And you know, you're Canadian. where you were born and how you ended up getting interested or hooked up with the topics of Southeast Asia. Great. Well, I have not a very personal story to tell about how I got interested in Southeast Asia. If I were to say something about my background, you know, I grew up in Quebec, mostly. and in a family where we moved around a lot in Canada, different places. I was born, ironically, in France, but from Canadian parents who were posted in France at the time.

And whether that was that small experience of having started abroad before going back to Canada and moving a lot, whether that gave me the sort of impetus to discover the world, I don't know. But that was a little bit of the spark, I think, that probably started my curiosity towards the world. So I don't have a background of parents who were in Southeast Asia or posted in Southeast Asia, who had any link to Southeast Asia, actually. It's really a journey of discovery for me. It was after going to university, getting interested in the world, generally in political science.

I was in international relations student at some point. And I just got frustrated at not knowing places more deeply. So as a Canadian understanding the rest of the world in broad terms, and Indonesia was one of those countries that I just got attracted to. This has sort of been during your undergraduate years? Actually, I was a graduate student already. And I had started to work on issues of development and democracy, comparative or more generally in the region in Asia, wrote some papers.

And Indonesia was attractive to me because it was an enigma in many ways. It was a large country with a vast number of peoples of different origin, and yet a country that I found was fascinating because it had this unity to it, right? And coming from a Canadian background, maybe that touched some sensitivity in that, coming from Quebec, where diversity of French speakers in Canada

was certainly a high political question for many years and where Canada moved in directions of multiculturalism, maybe that background is something that sparked my curiosity with Indonesia, wanting to understand more about this country that not very well known, right, in North America. And so I started going, and I learned Bahasa Indonesia. And then I... Which year was this? The first time you visited Indonesia.

Probably in the early 90s. Yeah. Wow. And so from there, I thought I would. would probably just study Indonesia for a few years, and I ended up being quite invested for the first part of my career, basically, writing and working Indonesia before I started to branch out to other parts of Southeast Asia and my work. Right.

You spent time in Myanmar, in the Philippines and other places, right? Myanmar has been my most recent discovery, again, curiosity leading me there in an interesting way, having worked on issues of ethnicity, ethnic diversity, ethnic conflict in Indonesia at the beginning. And then more comparatively, I was drawn to Myanmar when, of course, political events started to allow some more opening in Myanmar. I was fascinated by the challenges that Myanmar was facing. And then I had a colleague who one day said, you know, with all the time, you spend studying issues of ethnicity and conflict and democracy in the rest of Southeast Asia, you know, you should come to Myanmar.

And again, I thought I would go and have a workshop together for a few months, maybe a few months of exploration. I ended up basically in the last, that whole decade of opening in Myanmar being quite invested in trying to understand the challenges there. writing about them. I want to go through, you know, almost each one of the, you know, issues that you've sort of like brought up in a number of your books. I mean, you've written like six books, right? But the last couple of ones would have been about, you know, what it takes to win. And winning by process is more important as opposed to winning by other

means. And the other one would have been about democracy and nationalism. And you try to build those in a context of some of the stuff that's happening in Southeast Asia. Talk about it. Okay. Well, maybe I'll start. Take us, you know, from one geography to another in Southeast Asia and and then Peelionion. Okay. So, I mean, I'll try to contextualize those two books. Because the books get into a fair amount of detail. And we can talk about this. I mean, it goes in a fair amount of detail in two related, but slightly different directions. One had to do, I mean, the one book on democracy and nationalism in Southeast Asia was for me trying to understand at a broader level.

Having started, my first book on this question was on Indonesia only. And the Indonesian context to me was fascinating because the conflicts that occurred in the early 2000s, which is really the focus of this book I published in 2004, were significant and violent in Aceh. And there were other conflicts that were erupting in 2000 that worried a lot of people in Indonesia. But it was fascinating to me that they were occurring at a time where Indonesia was facing its greatest challenge, which was democratizing, right? And it was pessimism at the time as to whether Indonesia was going to be capable of surviving the kind of conflicts that were occurring against the backdrop of a lot of skepticism that democracy was going to work in Indonesia. Indonesia after 1998. So in my mind, what was interesting with the Indonesian case is that you had both over time,

a fairly successful ability of a democratic context, as faulty as it is in Indonesia. And I would agree there are many faults with it. But it was able to come to a fairly successful resolution of the conflict in that shape and other conflicts that were occurring, for instance, in Kalimantan sort of died down. There was not this kind of impression that ethnic secessionism was on the rise. In fact, it died down pretty quickly, except in Papua. We can certainly talk more about that. So that triggered in my mind the question, what is it about the democratic context in Southeast Asia

or the challenges under these democratic periods where you can potentially reach a resolution of some of these conflicts or attenuation of these conflicts. And so that was the focus, basically, of asking myself, what is it about democracy that is specifically useful or not in these kinds of contexts? And so that brought me to think more deeply and comparatively about the cases of the Philippines and Thailand, which in today we barely remember that Thailand had a decade of democratic governance, where it was seen actually as one of the countries that was most promising in terms of its democracy.

And it was asking myself the question, you know, did it make? matter in the case of the Malay Muslims in the south of Thailand. And in the Philippines, well, there'd been longstanding conflict in Mindanao and the Sulu archipelago under what was Southeast Asia's longest lasting democracy, again, with a lot of flaws. So that was the context that really drove me to think more comparatively about these books, about the region, I mean, about these countries. And that drew me to write that book on democracy and nationalism in Southeast Asia. The other book on Myanmar was related in that, you know, there was this moment of opening in Myanmar

where after 60 years of civil war, was there a chance that finally, with a little bit more political opening and leading to elections and a democratic context, was there going to be the ability for Myanmar to start reaching some agreements with ethnic armed groups that have been fighting the state for many decades? And so it was a slightly different question, but relating. I want to pause a bit because, you know, we take a look at Southeast Asia. Just about every member of Southeast Asia is pretty ethnically diverse. I would argue Myanmar has the kind of diversity

that we're seeing in Indonesia, Philippines, and other parts of Southeast Asia, right? Let's go back to the Ache situation, right? In terms of or in the context of how we were able to get resolution on this, to what extent would you put weight on how the different ethnic groups

were able to converse with each other? And to what extent would you put premium or weight on the institutionalization of decisions, be it at the level of regional government or at the federal government or at the central government? Just, you know, I want to hear your views on these two, you know, points. So I'm going to have a pretty long answer to us. Sure. Because there are two layers to answering that question. Because you really, you know, I think in your question, you touch upon a very difficult challenge for any society, not just Southeast Asia, but in Southeast Asia, it's probably much more significant because of the diversity and the different experiences of Southeast Asian countries.

And that has to do with the relationship between groups of different cultural origin, different ethnic groups, right? So before I get to how I approach this in my books, which is a little bit more specific to a time period, right? I mean, there's parts of understanding the resolution of the conflict in that way that have a lot to do with the sort of immediate policies or negotiations that occurred between 2000 and 2005, right, and to understand the context of Indonesia during that period. But at the same time, I think we can't disregard the importance of the historical formation of Southeast Asian countries and their experiences, basically, they're highly diverse. And what's challenging to understand Southeast Asia, we talk about Southeast Asia. Southeast Asians are proud at many levels of having that community of states. But the diversity of experience is vast. And maybe that's part of the challenge for the rest of the world trying to understand Southeast Asia is that there are many Southeast Asia's.

And they're, you know, okay, it's a region with many countries, but also the depth of difference between Indonesia, Myanmar, Philippines, Vietnam, Cambodia, the histories of colonialism, the histories of drawing boundaries, the histories of state building and nation building. You pick and choose your country in Southeast Asia, it's going to be vastly different, right? Whereas in Latin America or in Africa, some of the narrative is going to be much, much more similar in its process. Indonesia had a revolution. And I think I don't – and if there's something that comes through in the Indonesian educational curriculum, is that history of the revolution is an important – it's an important component to understanding what at some point historically bound Indonesians together. And that is something that in many ways, I mean, many others have written about this. Benedict Anderson wrote, Imagine Communities about basically the experience of Indonesia.

But it matters. It matters because without that moment where a lot of the youth coming from different ethnic origins with this sort of enthusiasm for Bahasa, Indonesia, for, the symbols of nationalism, there would not have been, I think, that longstanding duality of wanting to continue to be one's own cultural ethnic background at the same time as being able to loyally, if you like, or loyal to the state and loyal to this idea of the Indonesian nation. So in some ways Indonesia made its own luck, right, in the history of revolution against the Dutch. But at the same time, it's lucky historically, right, to have been able to develop that positive,

because not all nationalisms are positive, but that positive nationalist movement that had this binding kind of character to it. in a way that the challenges in Myanmar, just to starkly contrast, is a history of the absence of much interaction between the numerous ethnic minority groups that occupy the highlands and the Bama majority that has lived in the valleys. The Bama is what, made up about 60% of the population. They were colonized even, administered differently under British colonial rule. So the history in Myanmar becomes one where the moment of becoming independent, there was no movement to bring them together, which meant that there needed to be a political effort to try to find that, that bind to

rally people together, which is why there was a lot of history of attempt at building these nations when they weren't there, building this kind of national hole. And it's really quite uneven from one location to the other in Southeast Asia.

So when we think about Ache, at one level, a dimension that is important is that the Achenese always had this kind of relationship to the rest of Indonesia. And that, I think, was helpful. Because let's be blunt about it. Agenis were not well treated in their mobilization against the Indonesian state.

And they had a high degree of resentment at the way in which the last 10 years of the Suharto regime, they had been under basically military occupation, huge amounts of repression, lots of human rights. rights abuses, a lot of reasons that fueled the support that the Free Ache movement like Gam had as the Indonesian democracy emerged, which is the moment where you had the most amount of mobilization of Gam was after the democratic opening. And it was fueled by a lot of grievance, a lot of disappointment with the way Achenese felt they had been treated with in the Indonesian state. And it is a bit surprising that they can go from that level of repression, of human rights abuses, and then violence that occurred afterwards to essentially in 2006 or 2005, having a peace agreement,

in 2006 having a law on Aceh that has been in place since then. And that where you see the conflict basically regularized within the democracy, right, in the democratic process. It is pretty amazing. So at some level, I think this is, I told, I warned you there was a long answer. At some level, it has a lot to do with, with that dual nature of having, the Achenese having, being able to see themselves as Indonesian in the first place. They were participants in the revolution.

There was a Natchanese elite that continued to be tied to Jakarta during all the previous decades. So in that way, and that way there was that dimension that could be recovered. Those wounds could be healed because there had been historically this participation in the idea of the revolution, the idea of the Indonesian nation. And that's significant. Now, it took a particularly important set of policies to put into place. I think the negotiations to end the war between the Indonesian military

and the free action movement, obviously at a more narrow level had something to do with the, you know, the quality. of the negotiations and what they produced in terms of the law on Aceh. I mean, in your answer, there was clear institutionalization of decision-making that paved way for a peaceful resolution, right? Do you see hope for something similar to that for the case of Myanmar? Right. So in an event... I mean, I understand the historical differences, right, between Myanmar and Indonesia.

I think Myanmar would have gone through slightly different historical paths. And it made it a bit more difficult for them to unify and unite the different ethnic groups. But from an institutional standpoint, the ability of the institutions to make decisions so that there could be a resolution. Right. Is there hope? Well, before I go to Myanmar, I'm going to, I'm going to, I'm going to, I'm going to go to Papua. Okay.

Right? Because I think that the real test is, you know, despite this kind of very, you know, this historical ability of Indonesia to be inclusive, it reaches limits in Papua. Yeah. And let's think through the institutions, right? And that's a very interesting point that I, I, I, I, I, raise in my books. And it has to do with the fact that when you look at the law on Ache, that, you know, there is an ability to put into place, a very complex, I don't want to go into

the details, but a very complex set of recognition of autonomy that came with the ability to form a political party that represented GAM in Ache, so that's an example. So that's an exceptionalism to Indonesia. So that showed a flexibility to be, to allow basically Ache to have something different from the rest of Indonesia. Because there was a sense that having a local political party was an important part of bringing gum back into the fold and having Achenese feel more represented if they could have a political party that was local. There was also some institutions that recognized Achenese uniqueness. And then there were a number of government powers, fiscal powers, that gave, that have given the Achenese ability to control more of their natural resource wealth and to basically have more say in their own governance, right? these are all important ways of recognizing a yes

Indonesian regions and provinces are all equal but at the same time a flexibility to provide to Ache some unique status that allowed that compromise to occur so a lot had to do in the quality of the the institution had to do with the negotiated outcome of this and the ability to be flexible and to have some compromise.

In Papua, by contrast, let's look at the process, right? In Papua, we get much more, there is an interest, you know, there's the special autonomy law that has been put into place since 2002. And when you look at the law itself, many aspects of what's in there is very similar. in fact, to the 2006 law on Ache. You have a lot of powers to have an autonomous government. You have some institutions that are to represent the Majilis Raqia Papua N.R. It is for Papuans, Papuan representation, Papuan people.

So there's something different for Papuans rather than anything similar in the rest of Indonesia. There's also a lot of, you know, people will often say, Papuans have received more fiscal outlets from Jakarta than many other provinces because they receive a lot under the special autonomy packages. So in some ways, when you look at this objectively, you think, but what's the problem? Right? I mean, in many ways, institutions are sure, there are structures of governance that are important in themselves.

and what they do to give, you know, the money to govern and the powers to govern. But sometimes they need more than that. And what's lacking in Papua was that it was not negotiated. There was no investment of Papuans in the process. The law, the special autonomy law was designed by a team that originally was a team formed by the Papuan governor, but very much afterwards diluted change transforms when it went to the Indonesian parliament. And it was not a negotiated outcome. So from the outset, it's symbolically represented for Papuans, again, a top-down structure, right? So from there, it's a question of

convincing Papuans to be part of Indonesia when they actually have a historical handicap in their history of inclusion to Indonesia. They did not participate in the revolution. They did not have a youth movement that joined the nationalists. They were late comers and were integrated through a process that has been highly criticized in terms of the Suharto government's approach

to including Papua through or having a process of ratification under the act of free choice that was selecting 100 representatives to basically approve Papua's inclusion within Indonesia. And that remains a deep grievance in Papua among Papuans, that history of inclusion. So it takes much, much more effort to overcome those historical, handicaps in order to be able to, you know, to win the hearts of minds of Panama. So at some level, you know, you look at this and you say, well, they have, they receive a lot of

money from Jakarta. They have some powers that that Parliament has given. Why is this sort of, you know, a constant obstacle, but it is, it is a real one. And it's an obstacle because because there hasn't been a process by which they feel they had a choice in the matter, right? But if you were to ask anybody in the government, be it at the regional or at the central, they would probably argue with you that there would have been a negotiated process, right? But what do you think could actually be done to remedy this so that we see things getting better? Right. For everybody in Indonesia, not just those in Papua.

No, I think, I mean, it is challenging, right? There's no doubt that how you rebuild trust when it hasn't been there is a difficult part. And, you know, I had to reflect carefully about why was it successful in Aceh, right? In some ways, in Aceh, the Indonesian government needed to go a long way to convince Achenese that the human rights abuses would no longer occur, that the, that the, the, you know, that they could redress the grievances that had been there before. But I think that's because the GAM became partners

in their own governance and were convinced that they can do this within Indonesia. Papuan governance is now divided and as being more divided. I mean, the Indonesian state policy now is to try to, they're now more, more provinces that have been created. And there's been a history of resentment

that divide and rule policies in Indonesia among Papuans. Will it succeed? It might because, you know, they're meaning that it might basically paralyze Papuans from me being able to mobilize in the future. Will it make them more happy to participate in Indonesia? I'm not entirely sure. Right? Those who are going to be in control of the five provinces, they will govern, they will have the fiscal allocations.

There's certainly enthusiasm among them because there's also a lot of corruption that occurs in these circumstances. But I'm not sure that that's the best way to include papon. So what could be done, I suppose, at some level would be recognizing the historical grievances and maybe addressing them a little bit more directly. And any true dialogue that opens up, you know, I think a realistic prospect that Papuan have no, I mean, deep down, there's no much interest in a Papuan independent country. It would not succeed very well. It would be a challenge. They're much better off within Indonesia. But they need to be enthusiastically convinced that this is a world of the future.

Inclusion, more dialogue, more recognition of their, of their, their, their, their, their, their, legitimate historical grievances. I'm in a camp that believes that this is a country that's the third largest democracy in the world that seems to be thriving as a democracy, relatively speaking here, compared to some of the other democracies that we're seeing around the world. They're not thriving as well as we might have been. And let's not forget how things would have been perceived on the late 90s or early 2000s. in terms of where Indonesia was going to end up.

I think we've ended up pretty okay as a democracy, right? So the inner DNA of Indonesia is to, I think, be able to look into ourselves and remedy, right? And we've been able to remedy things as a democracy and also as an economy. I think it's an inevitability that our economy is poised to be the fourth or, fifth largest in the world in the next 20 to 30 years, just at this rate because of scale, demographics and whatever, right? So I'm sort of like optimistic about our own DNA to be able to remedy whatever that needs to be remedied anywhere in Indonesia. Well, I do share that optimism. when I, I mean, I, we live in a very challenging time for democracy.

Yeah. I want to leave that for the last topic. Maybe, yes, I really don't want to go too far in that direction. But, I mean, if we go back to 1998 and early 2000s, and you had asked a lot of probably external observers more than Indonesians who were, you know, wanting to be many, much more optimistic, I think, about their own country. But there was a lot of skepticism. Absolutely.

Was there any reason to believe that the military would withdraw as quickly from power as it did? I mean, in many ways, that didn't happen in Thailand. It's certainly not happening in Myanmar. I mean, and yet in Indonesia, despite the history of, of a very strong role in politics of the military, there was a relatively rapid acceptance on the part of the armed forces of taking a step back.

That's positive. I think the real game. And then the second is that there was a lot of, as I said, a lot of conflicts that emerge in 2000, which is what I wrote about then. And those, most of them, sort of were able to dissipate after a while because there was something positive happening

in terms of the Indonesian democratic environment, right? And that's what democracy is supposed to be about. It's about discussion and dialogue, addressing problems and trying to resolve them through the institutional process. Now, that being said, we know there are a lot of challenges in Indonesia. it's far from a perfect democracy. But in the scheme of what's happening in the rest of Southeast Asia, I think, you know, there's a lot of optimism there.

There's still freedom of the press. There's still freedom of discussion. There's still an ability to, to, there's some fluidity, at least in the political system, right? I mean, we can argue that it's hard for some new parties to emerge, but. Nobody's perfect. But I think people tend to take it for granted, or we get underestimated, for having been able to undertake as a prerequisite, the necessary or the absolutely necessary political, military reform,

before we undertook the political reform. That, I think, gets lost in the air in conversations or discussions or even discourses. imagine how difficult it was. And imagine, or take into account, the sheer ability of Indonesia to actually be able to do that successfully. It's not easily replicated. It's not easily replicated in this now. Because it is systemically very difficult.

And the fact that we were able to overcome that, go through the episode of doing the necessary military reform before we did the necessary political reform, I think it's reflective of our own DNA that we have the ability to recognize problems. We'll fix it. I think solutions or resolutions are a matter of time frame, right? A lot of people expect things to get done in six months. Sometimes they just may need 10 years to get fixed for a country the size of 200.

80 million. I don't know. That'll be my biased Indonesian view. No, but I mean, you want to be an optimist, right? If you don't believe, if you don't believe in the positive outcomes that will, you know, that time will, will deliver, then, you know, well are the chances that's going to succeed, right? I mean, people have to be invested in the values of democracy. I mean, I've been actually having, you know, when I started going to Indonesia, it was under the New Order regime. And I've been repeatedly enthusiastic and surprised the extent to which Indonesians just completely absorbed the values of openness and democratic discourse, right? When you see the, well, yeah, the liberal part of it, meaning, meaning, you know, enthusiastically wanting.

debate in society, wanting openness of debate. And despite the challenges, right? I mean, there's a lot of challenges in Indonesia, but they're being addressed and they're being discussed. And that's what democracy is supposed to be about. And so far, it's not, you know, the institutions are holding and they're evolving, right? So that, that to me, you know, when I look at Thailand and everybody who looks at Thailand will ask themselves, how could a country where in the 1990s, there was a sense that this country was probably the beacon of democracy in Southeast Asia ended up being in such deep division and deep crisis now, right? And that deep division is not about to go away. It's very, very challenging. And if we were

talking about military reform in Indonesia, well, it certainly did not happen in Thailand. And yet they share similar kinds of historical relationship to the nation and the state, right? Both the Indonesian military and the Thai military have always seen themselves as being the ultimate guardians of the state and the nation. And even more so in the case of Indonesia because it was its role in the revolution, whereas the Thai military is more the preservation of the monarchy. But there's a sense in Thailand that the military has put itself in a bind now. by refusing to repeatedly refusing to listen to the voice of the majority through the political process, right? And so now what is it going to do? It's trying to manipulate democratic outcome to prevent the vast support in Thailand of people who suffered from inequality

and who were supporting the taxin and then the parties that basically succeeded Tairacti, different iterations of it, in part because they are critical. They are hoping that alternative political party as Tirecti promises that may or may not have delivered over time, but there was a sense that there could be a different set of economic policies that would be, that would redistribute income a little more for ties. And in regions that were particularly poor, where most of those regions were supportive of, of Thai and successor parties. So in some sense, you know, what you see in Thailand, that deep division is a socioeconomic one and one that, you know, when you open up the democratic process. That's not unique, though.

No, no, it's not unique, but it has made Thailand really a little bit more of now a deep crisis and deep divide where the military is, it doesn't really have a good pathway out of basically reopening fully to democratic process because you might yet get another election that elects a party that is the next iteration of the of Thai right. And Myanmar is in an even worse situation. Right? And again, speaking of a history of, of course, a role of the military in Myanmar, it's impossible to move away from... What could be done with Myanmar? Myanmar, it's... As a concerned member of Southeast Asia. I mean, there are two, there are really two dimensions to the crisis in Myanmar.

One is the one that's been most in the media. right since the coup of last year, and which was a driver of the years that Aung San Suu Kyi and the National League for Democracy were in power. And that's, of course, how do you move away from this dominance of the military? The military has been not only in power, but it's been the main source of power in Myanmar

for a long time. And that's a deep, deeply challenging situation because they have a military by comparison to Indonesia or Thailand that is, first of all, larger, much more, has been closed much more than you cannot really understand the Myanmar military because very, very, very, very closed on itself. and you cannot quite see if there are factions or divisions within the military. They're not as transparent as they were in Indonesia or in Thailand. You can trace the different generations of military officers, for instance, in their interests within the military.

You could never do that in Myanmar. That's how tight an institution closed on itself and very streamlined, and disciplined internally, they essentially have put themselves into a bind right now. They opened up for a reason in the early 2011. They opened up because that pathway of military dominance at that extreme simply led Myanmar to perpetual poverty to perpetual

poor relations with the rest of Southeast Asia and Asia. They were conscious of an increasing dependence on China at some level or that role of China in Myanmar. So they were stuck in a certain logic that they've returned to in many ways. I don't think they thought that they would. they would know that this would be the outcome

that this kind of out, you know, lots of opposition to continued military dominance would emerge. I think they were hoping to probably organize an election and control the outcome

and the way that the Thai military has been trying to do in Thailand. I think that's been the pathway. But now there's a deep crisis and there's no way I mean, can something to be done, you were talking about time, it's impossible to resolve that level of conflict in Myanmar without having, you know, it'd be naive to think you can't have a resolution by asking the military to withdraw. But there has to be a pathway for the military

to basically open up to opposition forces and allow a re-inclusion. Otherwise, are going to be stuck there. There are different views, right, about whether or not the military ought to be involved in a negotiation. There's also different views about whether or not it's better for the region or the world if Myanmar were to be more isolated. But that's just counter to the DNA and spirit of Southeast Asia, right? Because we're just a region of inclusiveness.

We want to include as many people as much as possible in the conversation. So with the majority of Southeast Asia wanting to see resolution on this, I just kind of feel optimistic that there will be a path on which whoever is going to show up from Myanmar will be able to have some sort of a discussion that will lead up to something good. Well, external pressure is important. An external pressure, external engagement. Other Southeast Asian countries, and this has been the ASEAN way, it's approaching the Myanmar military. In Asia's a statement. Right. Last year.

Yes. That continued engagement is important. I thought that was good, you know, for as an example to the other larger countries in Southeast Asia. I think I'm just curious as to whether or not. this should be treated more exclusively as a Southeast Asia matter for Southeast Asian countries as opposed to Southeast Asia and the rest of the world because the rest of the world has gotten so much more multipolarized

and it just seems intuitively more complicated if too many big forces. Well, that's true. And I also, you know, there's a question of effectiveness as well. The Indonesian, the Myanmar military, has been one of the most resilient regimes in the world, right? Has been able to overcome huge amounts of sanctions and external pressure. It's not clear to me that more big power sanctions and cutting off Myanmar from the rest of the world

is going to be the best way to move them forward. I have the feeling that in that sense, the Southeast Asian way of dealing with problems might actually be more productive. If there was a, there has to be a bit of penalizing the bad citizen here. I mean, coming from other Southeast Asian countries, you can't ignore. You can't ignore that the path that the Myanmar military has chosen

is not something you want. want a reward, right? Certainly in many ways. But the way out of it, in some ways, has to be that they see a pathway for themselves, right? They didn't want to remain closed in 2011. So that kind of supportive process of convincing them to withdraw in a way that's credible to the opposition. Now, right now, the problems, the opposition doesn't want to negotiate with the military. So the military has to do something unilaterally to withdraw and to leave more space to the opposition. This certainly stop repressing its population. But the second challenge that we haven't been come to, right, is the 60 years of civil war with ethnic armed groups.

And that is just equally, if not more of a challenge. and that's what I've been writing about for the last decade. And when I say winning by process in my book, what I mean there is that, ironically, 60 years of war didn't produce any victor. The ethnic armed groups were tired of fighting. The Myanmar military, the Tatmada was tired of fighting. And so neither won by war.

They opened up negotiations during those 10 years to, in a credible, I think these were credible negotiations between the Tatmadat, the Tinseng government first, and the NLD. There was a context, the democratic context allowed negotiations to be more credible, right? But they didn't lead to anything. And they didn't lead to anything in an interesting kind of way. When I say winning by process, when we say this in our book, is that the state, and when I say the state,

I meant both the military and the civilian government were more interested in trying to implement more and more the vision that they had of a post-centralized Myanmar, So decentralizing, but not on the terms of the ethnic minority groups. And so the negotiation process, the implementation of the Constitution of 2008, which they were doing during that decade, were all designed in a way that we're neutralizing over time the ethnic armed groups. So ironically, what's interesting is that the coup of 2021 had nothing to do with that. In fact, we argue that the military and both branches of the state, the military and the civilian government,

were actually reaching their objectives through basically making the negotiations not really go anywhere, implementing the Constitution in a way that was profitable to them. And so certainly the coup had nothing to do with that the conflict with ethnic, armed groups. But now, and I'll come to the historical moment, we have an exceptional commonality of purpose between the ethnic armed groups and the ethnic minority groups more broadly and the national unity government and the Bama opposition to the military. there's a lot of division, a lot of mistrust. But there's a common purpose of wanting to remove the military from power at the moment

and their promises, right, of rebuilding Myanmar on a new federal principle, a lot of enthusiasm for federal democracy. And yet the depth of historical mistrust is it needs to be overcome, right? I mean, and that mistrust goes deep. It's in that history of formation of Myanmar, which never really did recognize and include ethnic minorities in a way that they participated fully enthusiastically in crafting the Myanmar state. So, ironically, even though Myanmar, that's different from Indonesia, Myanmar, you recognize ethnicity, you know, the Kachin state. and the current state, it has the provinces or the states have the names of those groups.

And yet they actually are not as inclusive as in Indonesia. You know, the fact that we chose Bahasa Indonesia, as opposed to Bahasa Jawa, or the Javanese, was a master's stroke, right, as to be able to unify and unite. It was lucky. And that didn't happen in Myanmar. Right.

Right. The Bama, which comprises 60 to 65%, you know, unfortunately or fortunately, whichever way you look at it, didn't have the kind of perspective that the Indonesians did, you know, early part of 2000, the 20th century. and that I think is is less of historical luck as you alluded to well I mean there are a couple of things one is that they did not have this any kind of moment where they

fought together against colonial power right and so and there was a and so there's been this kind of on the part of the majority that infuses both the military and the state whether it was NLD or even the

Tainzian government, I'd say even in many ways the NLD is equally at stake here. There's this sense that the Bama majority rules and that ethnic

minorities are not partners. They're a problem to solve, but there's no sort of willingness to really concede a lot or to negotiate really fully about what it would mean to create a federal state in Myanmar in real terms.

And that's a challenge that's very difficult because that history of viewing ethnic minorities not as equal partners is decades old, right, in a way that you don't have that. The language issue is a tough one because, you know, you... It does help, though. It helps, but it, you know, it was a... master stroke on the part of the nationalist leaders early on, however, they were lucky because Malay was already a language that was being lingua franca of the region, right? So in a way that there was no equivalent.

No, but it would have been very tempting to use Javanese as a national language. It was a fact that we chose not to use that. It would have been a huge mistake, of course. Yeah. Yeah. And I think it's sort of like correlates with Indonesia's early decision in ASEAN to be more quiet than vocal. And it allowed for everybody to actually be able to work together. If we had been, I think, more dominant, more vocal from the get-go, I'm pretty sure things would have been very different in ASEAN.

Southeast Asia. That's my view. We got a lot of territory to cover. We've talked about Indonesia, two parts of Indonesia and Myanmar. Tell us a little bit about the Philippines before I ask you questions on democracy. Okay. So if we think about the Philippines, and again, this is the, is it the, call it the beauty or the challenge of understanding Southeast Asia, in many ways, I always chuckle when I think about, you know, ASEAN. I mean, I'm not a, I mean, I have admiration for Southeast Asians wanting to build a community of like-minded peoples and states and ASEAN in many ways is, you know, aspires to being that, right?

And yet, as I said, you know, you go. from one country to the next, and the differences are so stark that it's amazing that one can have that dialogue in that sense of community. But there is something true about it. I mean, it is something true. Anyway, it's in the side. It's an aside. The water

must have something to do with it. But, you know, the Philippines is interestingly different because you know, there you have the one country that was colonized, by the Spanish, that from the get-go has two things that are startly different from the rest

of Southeast Asia. One is a structure of the elite and land-owning elite and the political-economic structure that really resembled much more countries of Latin America, where early on you get a – land and then the agro business sector and then the industrial sectors reproduce over time the wealth and transmission of wealth and control by a small set of families that are dominant across the Philippines. You don't have that in the rest of Southeast Asia. So that structure has been the real challenge for the Philippines

for the longest time. which is the reason why its democracy has been seen as flawed in many ways, because it perpetuates the power of these very, the small elite, and they've become political clans in all parts of the country, including Mindanao, that have been basically dominating local politics, have been dominating positions in Congress, Senate and in many ways, even though the Philippines has been the longest lasting democracy in Southeast Asia, that structure of political and economic inequality that occupies that

democratic space has made it a weak democracy in many ways. Now, what does that mean when we think about Mindanao and the Sulu archipelago? is that what I write about there is that here there is there is a parallel structure and that there's a minority group that has felt not included in the Philippines and the Philippines had a failed revolution, interesting enough, right?

There is a nationalist moment in an attempt at a nationalist revolution very early on, the first one in the region. and it was crushed by the United States when the United States, well, the Spanish person and the United States when they came.

And so this idea of being Filipino, which has evolved over time. And in that sense, is interestingly a parallel to Indonesia, right? And this idea of overcoming certain kinds of ethnic differences in the Philippines

and this notion of being Filipino was in many ways that idea continued to make its way through the polity over time, but it became highly associated with the second part that differentiates Philippines from the rest of Southeast Asia, the only country that has this vast majority of Christian, Catholic particularly, right, in the Philippines, which that notion, of being Filipino and yet a government that was basically infused, I wouldn't say dominated, infused with an association with one particular religion, made moros in the south of the Philippines feel less included. So there's that dimension. But that dimension needs to really be understood

against what I was saying before that structural inequality, right? the stranglehold of the large landowners and elites and industrial agro business that had made the moros particularly victimized in that process. All poor Filipinos share that. But in Mindana, there was never an opportunity, basically, to really break through that inequality. So there's a socioeconomic. base to the grievance that's there, as well as this kind of religious difference that made

this particularly problematic, particularly at a time, you know, it goes back to the 1930s when the government policy, this is a clear relationship to policy, right, government policy of sending large numbers of migrants from the north of the Philippines to the south, occupying the land, not recognizing any of the local landowning structures that the morrows had, and therefore displaced them over time, meant that the grievances were very, very deep, right? And underlies the mobilization that the Moro National Liberation Front first had in 1970s, and then followed by the Moro Islamic Liberation Front. But if there's an optimism here, because it was really, really,

really difficult. There were decades of negotiation. And they were credible in many ways, right? As I was saying before, the negotiations in Aceh were, and elsewhere, under democratic frameworks are credible. But in the Philippines, they kept failing, one negotiation after another, because you'd have changes in president, you'd have a majority parliament that would be allergic to giving autonomy to the morose. So every time an autonomy, bill went to the parliament, it got diluted, changed, or it would fail before the end of the term of, some of these terms finished, and then it would start all over again the wheel, right? So in many ways, it's interesting that you suddenly get out of what was one of the least

Democratic presidents, Duterte, right, with a lot of problems. Kind of paradoxical. Paradoxical being able in 2018 to get finally the parliament to ratify the Bangsamoro basic law, which is the best deal yet for the Bangsamoro, recognition as a nation within the Philippines, the Moro nation. And giving them a reflection more of his leadership or his ability to connect with the legislature or just a reflection of much more of the accumulation of work that has taken place before him?

Probably those three, right? I mean, I think there was the accumulation of work. I mean, in some ways, there was a, the negotiation teams had constantly improved on the, on the deals that, and the MILF in particular, was trying to negotiate. And they'd gone too far at some point where they had recognized a juridical entity that was supposed to give a kind of very, very special status to the morrow that was quasi a state within a state, and that got shot down by the Supreme Court in the Philippines. So that, so between the, you know, the work that was done, because a lot of the deal was reached

in 2012. well before Duterte. So some of these compromises were important. And they were successful because, again, the government was willing to invest a lot of negotiations with the MIF, the different negotiation teams from one administration to the next. And so they were invested in it. And they were willing to compromise in the end as well,

the MIA left to recognize they couldn't make the claims to territory they wanted to make. They couldn't quite get the powers they wanted to. but they were getting a lot, right? So over time, that was certainly successful. But why they did not die with the end of a presidential mandate or a bill in parliament that fails as it had happened with the agreements with the MNLF, which is what was really the big problem, is that Duterte was from Indanao.

And Duterte understood that there was a very, small time limit to get things through. And he had more support in Congress than previous presidents. So he had allies in Congress. He had the political will from, as somebody who's from Mindanao want to solve the crisis. Obviously, the very significant violence and weeks of particularly heightened crisis in Marawi City certainly traumatized Filipinos. who basically previously thought this a problem happening in the South, but this was on a scale that was much, much different, that certainly gave Duterte the ability to politically leverage his control of,

or his allies in Congress in that tight timeline to get it passed. It's the best hope right now for the Philippines. It's a bright light. It's a bright light. And, you know, now it has to be put into place. And that's a very important part of the process, that in Ache was difficult at the beginning, but it has worked, right? You have to see. And that sort of like takes me back or us back to the point that I raised earlier about Southeast Asia in general.

We've got a pretty strong DNA to be peaceful and stable. And I, you know, if we were to go by public records, Till maybe a thousand years ago or 1,100 years ago, that's as far back as we could, you know, get in terms of public records of casualties in Southeast Asia. No more than 9 million people have died because of hostilities or rivalries. Compare that what we might have seen in Europe over the first two-volt wars. in a period of 30 to 40 years. Very different figure. Much bigger, right?

So I'm not suggesting that we're perfect. Yes, we are going through, and yes, we have gone through quite a number of episodic stresses. But for some reason, Southeast Asia has just been able to show its own DNA to try to get its act together,

to be peaceful and stable. and and you know put this in the context of how you have gone through in the last 2,000 years, right? We've been graced by Buddhism for 400 years, Hinduism for 600 years, Islam, colonization, Christianity, independence, democratization, what have you. Very small number of casualties. So I don't know. That gives me optimism for the future of Southeast Asia. We're not perfect, but I think directionally we can manage things or episodic stresses we've shown historically. Well, there's certainly, you know, as I said before, as a region, the diversity is hard to derival, right?

I mean, as you said, all the major world religions are there. Not because. And there are, and so the richness of diversity is incredible in, in, in, um, in Southeast Asia and at a time when at least in in Europe, North America, diversity is a big question right now. How do you deal with diversity? How do you have more inclusiveness? There's a lot of reexamination in Canada and the US about, you know, our past and what we've, how we've mistreated our indigenous peoples and and how do we cope with multiculturalism, with immigration, with, with diversity. In many ways, I would agree with you that there's a lot of positive examples in Southeast Asia about how to deal with diversity, right?

There is this both at the within state and within it as a region where there is this notion that you can't avoid diversity in Southeast Asia, so you have to accommodate it in the best of ways, right? And there's the good and the bad. There are a lot of examples of course. course, intolerance in Southeast Asia has occurred, of course, and there's been a lot of history of violence, and there are a lot of casualties that have to do with intolerance of minorities. And like I said, you know, Myanmar is at the moment at a crucial point. It is going through an episodic experience.

And we've seen some similar historically and similar trends, whether it was in or moments in the Philippines or Indonesia. But you're right, I think that generally speaking, there's just as much or more, a lot more reason to be optimistic. You know, during the same period of 100 years, there would have been about 200 million people that would have been killed in Europe because of differences of views, opinions, or whatever. in Southeast Asia, less than 9 million people. We're not as economically advanced as Europe is. I think that speaks of the culture of pragmatism of Southeast Asia. Lack of culture of principles. But culture of pragmatism, I think dofftales into concession making, compromise making.

And that, I think, leads out. up to some degree, if not a great degree of peace and stability. Well, certainly in terms of the community of Southeast Asians, ASEAN or whatever you want to call it, whether I think there is a common understanding of less confrontation, which is, you know, the rest of the world is particularly puzzled sometimes by the ASEAN way. But there's something to be said for that, right? I mean, there's a lot to be said for... There's a lot of Japanese philosophy.

There's Javanese philosophy, yes. But Javanese philosophy works many times, right? There's this sense of... Luckily, it's only one toe. It's not five toes. Luckily, it's only one leg, not two legs. But, I mean, you know, you think about, you know, we were talking earlier about whether you do regionally

with a case like Myanmar, which has always been a problem. With confrontation work, if Indonesia was using its weight, right, as the largest country and was really strongly comfort. Historically, Indonesia does not want to be perceived as a dominant force and that's positive. That's more positive than negative. It has brought about more stability to the discussion. It has probably more influence by being more open and understanding of values of equality, of slow process, right?

slow process a little bit more. Look, I think it's important to underline the point that Indonesia chose not to play in a dominant manner with respect to Southeast Asia. And that actually paved way for everybody else to felt equal, everybody else to felt included. And that's, I think, the spirit of inclusion that's been manifested many times. And I try to put this in the context of, you know, many of the discussions I went through when I was in my previous profession. When a guy that comes from a country with a GDP per capita of $72,000, sits in a room long enough in one session and many sessions in one year with another guy that comes to the table with a GDP per capita of only $1,000, they tend to understand each other better. I mean, you know, you meet a different guy enough times.

You get to understand each other a little bit better. And that, I think, is what's happening in Southeast Asia. And that, I think, is both a weakness and a strength, a strength in the sense that, you know, this culture of pragmatism translates to our peace instability. but the weakness in that we don't put weight on certain things that are absolutely essential for us to be able to kick ass. Well, I mean, in certain ways, you know, we would have said for when looking at this, the way in which countries relate to each other in Southeast Asia, we could long, from an outsider perspective, could long have said, you know,

what does it lead to? It's a talk shop, people exchange, but what actually happens? There's no actual building of, say, an economic space. There's no building of a political community. It's not like the European Union. It's not like any of these other communities of states you see elsewhere. It seemed to be more of an often accused as a talk shop. But there's something to be said for that in this context, right?

I mean, now I would say we might see the stabilizing. even more of the stabilizing function of that kind of community building that is a little more pragmatic, as you say, a little more attentive to the sensitivities of partners in that community, which is conducive to less conflict between states, right? In a time when we're seeing heightened polarization, heightened conflict. elsewhere and where confrontational politics may be necessary at some level, but at the same time, there's always a danger of escalation, right? I mean, maybe perhaps because of its historical paths

and the stark differences amongst these Asian countries that choosing those, the confrontational approach, you know, one recognized it might have led to more, conflict and war within the region, right, in a way that it had enough trauma with the Vietnam War, right? And it had enough, and there was a lot of potential for enormous conflict during the left-right communist, non-communist divide in South East Asia. It was the front of that conflict. So it's quite, I mean, to its credit, certainly to have avoided perpetuating that division after the Vietnam War.

Your main thesis is that democracy reduces tendencies of violence, right? But something is happening with democracy around the world. What's your view on this? I mean, if you're a believer, and I'm a believer, that democratic processes have this positive effect on anybody's ability to reduce tendencies of violence, right? But if a democracy or democracies around world don't seem to be getting their act together, what needs to be done? What's your view on this?

You're asking the million-dollar question, a billion dollar question these days. Yeah. I mean, if anybody... I mean, we don't need to mention countries, right? No, I don't know. And they come from both developed and developing and underdeveloped. Yeah, like, we did say earlier that, and I did say that, you know, we live at a time when

when democracy is under challenge. We're seeing it. We're sitting in the United States. There's a big challenge to democracy here, although I'm, I'm an optimist when it comes to stable democracies being able to absorb heightened conflict. And that's important part. Democracy is a non-system in a way. It's a system that is meant to be there to resolve,

not resolve conflict, to manage it. And that's the most important part is conflict. We have to live with conflict. We have to live with disagreement in society. We have to live with differences of points of view, and we're confronted with particularly important challenges now, whether it has to do with climate change, which it has to do with rapidly changing populations,

whether it has to do with a crisis of the economic model we've been following since the Second World War, that has reached its limits, and we need to reinvent the economic models out there. these are all strains on all societies, democratic and authoritarian at the moment, that are making it a particular challenge because we're now seeing constituencies

that are feeling threatened and unstable in ways they weren't because there was some sort of security in the way in which the world was evolving in the last few decades. Now everything's up for questions. re-questioning and there are some serious changes that need to occur. But I don't think authoritarian approaches work in the end. I mean, they can work temporarily.

There can be a false sense that, you know, there was a long debate at some point that authoritarian regimes in South Korea or in Taiwan or the China model to some extent we're producing wealth and we're producing, you know, we're taking people out of poverty. But that's some great cost oftentimes. And I'm not entirely sure that, you know, that, well, I'm not entirely, I'm sure that, you know, that, you know, the degree of authoritarianism that we see in China today is not a, is, it's not sustainable, right? At some level, people don't want to live in a society that's that controlled. So what do we do, I mean, when we come to the crisis of democratic politics, I think part of the, there are so many layers to this. But one of my big issues is that is information and education.

I think one of the challenges we really do need to overcome soon, I think, in democracies. is, and that has something to do with basically probably being a professor and being sitting in a university, is disinformation as too easily, easy to propagate these days. We do need a much more collective effort to give more credibility to how to analyze information out there. that the ideas that are circulating, some of them are positive, some many are negative, but what's most important is that there be more critical understanding

of what underlies the ideas that are circulating. The polarization that we're seeing oftentimes is that people are reading different material and they're being fed ideas without having the kind of critical perspective to be able to discern what is just rumor from what is based on evidence? What is scientifically grounded? And now they even questioning what is science?

And so people are disbelieving the effectiveness of science to resolve certain kinds of problems. But what are they basing that kind of judgment on? They're basing it on information they read and receive that is not well, that is not well vetted, that is not well assessed. And that to me is one of the biggest, most important issues that we're confronting. The media is... These are all self-inflicted within many thriving democracies, right? The wounds that you've described, they're self-inflicted.

They're self-inflicted because the beauty of democracy, but it's risks too, is that you let all flowers bloom. right? We've gone through a technological revolution in the last couple of decades that is now catching up to us, right? Who would have predicted the power of social media? 20 years ago, we didn't have social media. Now it's driving a lot of trends. It's driving a lot of what people want to be reading and seeing. We need to address this. But these movements occur very, very quickly, and it takes time for policymakers, for state builders, for believers in democracy, to see how do we approach us, for traditional media, for instance, to be able to re-convince

a broader population that, wait a minute, there's value in good journalism, right? Because good journalism makes the effort to find out what is based on fact and what is based on rumor and you know it's important to know what's you know when one sees something on the web or that circulates through Twitter where does it come from right what's it based on and I think that's that's something we didn't anticipate 20 years ago and you know I've been I've been quite vocal about I think there's so many variables that are weakening democracies around the world but one obvious one is their inability to democratize ideas. And it's just amazing.

You talk a lot about information or how information has gotten so democratized to the point we don't even know which one is true or which one is not true or which one is less true. But that hasn't really translated to a proper democratization of ideas. I think there's a lack of democratization of ideas. If any ideas have gotten too polarized, you're either on the far left or on a far right in the absence of what's in the middle. We call that the center or centrality.

The second problem is that you lose sight of the process. Your mantra has been about the process. process, right? And if the process has been tweaked and is going to be tweaked even more by way of who gets to be more popular, as opposed to who gets to be smarter. Right. So I think we can easily extrapolate, right, to a future where future leaderships in any dimension. be it academia, politics, policymaking, entertainment, or whatever, it's all going to be about who gets to be more popular, as opposed to be who gets to be more intelligent. Sure. I think that, but at some degree that has oftentimes been the case, but as long as popularity goes... I think it's more amplified now, a lot more amplified.

You're right. And I think there's a sense of that now there seems to be a loss, of values among those who are popular, right? I mean, there's, there's, it used to be that there was more, um, commitment to the, to the, the, the basic principles of, of democratic participation, of, um, the norms of respecting others, uh, position, respecting electoral victories, uh, and, and, and, uh, in trying to, and understanding that democracy is a set of rules. It is a set of process. There needs to be a structure.

It's not anything goes. Yes, you want the flourishing of ideas, but there needs to be a kind of regulated sense of believing in the certain fundamentals of the institutions that go with, say, strong journalism, strong responsibility to the public. rule of law and respecting decisions are made. But there's less of those now.

There's less of those now. Because the guys at the top in many democracies have gone there more because of TikTok. Yeah. Not because of how they performed at a debate. And if you take a look at it empirically, the weight that's put on debates in the process of attaining leadership is declining. It's a lot more about who dances on TikTok. And it's about who puts more mud on himself or herself, you know, on TikTok or Instagram. That worries me.

I think that's going to attenuate the kinds of processes that you've been alluding to for purposes of managing the tendencies of violence or the tendencies of anything that's not good for the world. No, I think you're right. I mean, you know, and that's the worry that I have that why I pinpoint. of disinformation as being the main, you know, to me, the ways in which we are learning, right, on these platforms or where we think we're learning, where ideas are circulating or where information is circulating that doesn't get the kind of critical understanding of, you know, where it comes from and what it's based on, right?

That, call it that based on education, perhaps, but it's not just education. It's also that we have to trust the medium that is communicating to us. And now people are trusting sources of information on the basis of how popular they are, but not on the basis of how solid they are, right, in terms of established institutions of, you know, a journalist, journalism or of an educational institution that has, you know, that teaches on the basis of research and evidence and science, right? So universities, we need to do more work in universities and getting out there and being able to, well, we do. We try to be.

That's what we do, right? We try to be more to inform students in the broader public about what is critical about. We're doing it now. Yes, about some of the why we need certain ideas to be, to be confronted. right? When they can't, we can't just accept what a popular politician will tell us. We have to be able to show, is there evidence in backing what, you know, what you are saying as a politician, right? Do we need, or as, as anybody else who's in the public forum that is, you know, has followers, right? So, so that's why I think information is really, really critical. Now, I, you know,

I am a little worried about the deterioration of institutions because without those institutions being stable, then this all-flowers bloom is just leading to more division. And that, I think what's going to happen, unfortunately, is that when people start realizing how it hurts them is when they're going to learn. It might be too late at that point. You know, you think about the polarization happening now

in Europe and North America. It's from a vantage point of having had the love, luxury of enjoying the fruits of a strong democracy and strong economies and not realizing the extent to which people are threatening the base upon which this is why they have the life they have right now, right? And I think that message has to come out. I'm hoping it's not going to be through a tough experience. Unfortunately. Unfortunately. And I think new democracies face it a little differently because I think, you know, whether it's Indonesia or anywhere else in Southeast Asia that has democratic moments, there is that kind of

realization that's, it's fragile, right? And that might be actually, at least in Indonesia, what gives me optimism, I think there is that realization for certainly looking around the region, right, that wait a minute, reach something in Indonesia here, not a perfect democracy, but I think there's a sense of wanting to preserve that framework, right? And if that's that's key, right? You need to keep the framework. Good. Wow.

We've gone from Canada to Southeast Asia and to democracy. Shagat's been fascinating. Well, it's been a pleasure. Thank you so much for your time. Thank you. Great. That was Jean Bertrand, a visiting scholar at Stanford University, also professor of political science at the University of Toronto. Thank you.

I've been drinking my coffee, man. How long did we go? An hour and a half? Yeah, an hour and a half. Okay. I had more questions, but the camera ran out of battery. I had the five-minute sign. Oh, did you?

Okay. I don't know. We didn't go where we thought we were going to go. I was going to punch on what I'm going to be working on. The weakening of the institutions has a lot to do with who gets to be at the institution.