Partnered Content

Assalamu’alaikum and greetings!

CCIGE is pleased to invite you to our upcoming Webinar Session via Zoom. Come and join us for an engaging and insightful discussion with Dr. Zouhir Gabsi. The session will be opened and moderated by Assoc. Prof. Dr. Danial Yusof (Director, CCIGE).

 Date: Thursday, April 10, 2025

 Time: 11:30 AM (Kuala Lumpur Time)

 Platform: Zoom

 Join Zoom Meeting:
https://iium.zoom.us/j/99543389366?pwd=mrJI2z6pSqXk3G5I3HAYLprjbkmM6b.1

 Meeting ID: 995 4338 9366

 Passcode: 613359

Looking forward to your participation! 

Please feel free to share this invitation. 

Agriculture has long been the backbone of Southeast Asia, contributing significantly to food security, economic stability, and rural livelihoods. The ASEAN region, rich with diverse agricultural practices and resources, faces common challenges such as climate change, urbanization, market volatility, and policy discrepancies. As countries navigate these complexities, understanding the socio-economic dimensions of agriculture within the ASEAN context becomes crucial for fostering resilience, sustainability, and collective growth.

In light of these challenges, Yayasan Strategik Lestari (YSL) and stratsea are honored to create a platform for dialogue and knowledge exchange to achieve three primary aspirations: to cultivate a society that understands international relations, to identify Malaysia’s role in addressing agricultural socio-economic issues through expert perspectives, and to gather recommendations for further research and policy benchmarking.

The webinar will delve into critical questions such as:

• What are the socio-economic dynamics shaping ASEAN’s agricultural sector?

• How can collaboration among ASEAN countries enhance agricultural productivity and resilience?

• What policy interventions are necessary to address the impacts of climate change and market volatility on the region’s food security?

• How can Southeast Asia harness its agricultural diversity for mutual benefit and sustainable development?

Webinar Details

Date: Friday, 11 April 2025

Time: 09:30 AM (Indonesia/Thailand) / 10:30 AM (Malaysia/Philippines/Singapore)

Speaker Details

Dr. Dona Laily Wahyuning is a prominent scholar in agribusiness management, specializing in agricultural competitiveness, trade dynamics, and rural socioeconomics. As Head of the Agribusiness Management Laboratory at Universitas Pembangunan Nasional Veteran Jawa Timur, her research offers valuable insights into Indonesia’s agricultural landscape and its regional implications.

Among her notable works is the analysis of rice farming competitiveness in Bojonegoro Regency, which explores strategies to enhance productivity and resilience in one of Indonesia’s key rice-producing areas. She has also examined factors influencing rice imports in Indonesia, shedding light on trade policies and food security challenges. Additionally, her study on the competitiveness of Indonesian cloves compared to Tanzania and Madagascar provides critical perspectives on global spice markets and Indonesia’s position within them.

Dr. Dona’s research reflects a deep commitment to strengthening agricultural resilience and market performance, making her a valuable voice in advancing sustainable agricultural development across ASEAN.

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Introduction

In collaboration with Taras Institute, stratsea is kickstarting 2025 with a webinar series on Energy. This second of three webinars, entitled “Electric Vehicle (EV) Adoption in Southeast Asia: Bridging Consumer Concerns and Industry Solutions”, is aimed at providing insights on regulations and consumer sentiments on EV in Southeast Asia.

Notably, this webinar is also part of stratsea’s launching of its first report based on its recent article series entitled “Renewable Energy & the Climate Crisis in Southeast Asia.” This report is available for access and download here. Additionally, keep a look out for our upcoming online business reports for sale in early-April 2025.

Webinar Details

Date: Thursday, 28 January 2025

Time: 09:00hrs – 10:30hrs (WIB)/ 10:00hrs – 11:30hrs (MY / SG)

Link: https://us06web.zoom.us/j/85303411263?pwd=eQK5HnPC02NDbbU7aGEci6WyWd029t.1

Zoom Meeting ID: 853 0341 1263

Passcode: CCS2025

Speaker’s Profile

Fitra Eri

Fitra Eri Fitra Eri is a race car driver , journalist , and internet celebrity . He is also the Editor-in-Chief of Otodriver , an online media specializing in automotive.

Reza Edriawan

Reza Edriawan is APAEC Officer at the ASEAN Centre for Energy. He is a sustainable and renewable energy enthusiast with multiple experiences in renewable energy development, adoption, and project management in Indonesia.

Moderator’s Profile

Dr. Juita Mohamad is an economist and Editor at TIA Editors.

Sponsored Content

stratsea was honoured to be invited to review Dr. Murni Wan Mohd Nor’s latest publication entitled, “From Hate to Hope – A Holistic Approach to Address Hate Speech” and to attend her book launch on 17 January 2025.

Below is a short review provided by stratsea’s Chief Editor:

“We currently live in a time when internet shutdowns, blocking of websites, and taking down of online contents are possible. Unfortunately, this is only sufficient at attempting to treat the symptoms of hate speech. Confounding this is the possibility of governments being complicit in these heinous actions. Aptly named From Hate to Hope – A Holistic Approach to Address Hate Speech, Dr. Murni provides readers a contemporary understanding of the issue with a focus on Malaysia and tools to go beyond simply tolerance but also acceptance of each other.

Sham Ismail

Chief Editor, stratsea

Co-Author, Digital Authoritarianism and its Religious Legitimization – The Cases of Turkey, Indonesia, Malaysia, Pakistan, and India (palgrave macmillan)”

Click here for more information on IDFR Malaysia’s programmes and publications.

Introduction

In collaboration with the Indonesia CCS Center (ICCSC), stratsea is kickstarting 2025 with a webinar series on Energy. This first of three webinars, entitled “CCS Progressive Alignment in Asia Pacific”, is aimed at advancing Carbon, Capture and Storage (CCS) initiatives in Asia Pacific through strategic dialogue and capacity building.  Being graced by Dr. Belladonna Maulianda (Executive Director, ICCSC), this webinar would present relevant insights from three industry experts from three countries: Indonesia, Malaysia and Japan.

Notably, this webinar coincides with the launching of stratsea’s first report based on its recent article series entitled “Renewable Energy & the Climate Crisis in Southeast Asia.” This report is available for access and download here. Additionally, keep a look out for our upcoming online business reports for sale in early-April 2025.

Webinar Details

Date: Thursday, 16 January 2025

Time: 09:00hrs – 10:30hrs (WIB)/ 10:00hrs – 11:30hrs (MY / SG)

Link: https://us06web.zoom.us/j/83953833866?pwd=qaba87akdtEuH2jyWsbT2ONfxF0ThU.1

Zoom Meeting ID: 839 5383 3866

Passcode: CCS2025

Speaker’s Profile

Indonesia

Ms. Diofanny Putri is one of Indonesia’s Regional CCS Hub pioneers and focal points. She currently focuses on the energy transition and CCS framework by pushing the strategic initiative and advanced communication to develop the optimum CCS business model for Indonesia. She has more than 10 years of experience in the upstream Oil & Gas Industry, energy transition, and CCS/CCUS with exposure to Malaysia, Algeria, PNG, UAE, Senegal, and any other countries. Her dedication in the professional world has gained her invaluable experience across Asia Pacific and the Region while staying at the forefront of the industry trends, policy development, and bilateral negotiations

Malaysia

Mdm. Faizah Ramlee presently serves as the General Manager of Carbon Management Strategy, Planning & Commercial in Upstream Business, at Petroliam Nasional Berhad (PETRONAS). She is responsible for driving the formulation and alignment of pathways to decarbonize Upstream Business in achieving Net Zero Carbon Emission (NZCE) target by 2050, including shaping the CCS business trajectory. Her responsibilities encompass strategic planning, commercial and business development, marketing, stakeholder management and advocacy.

Japan

Mr. Yoshitake Kato is the Deputy Representative of Jakarta office of JOGMEC (Japan Organization for Metals and Energy Security) since 2023. He is in charge of the projects in ASEAN countries, which are related with energy development and clean technologies including CCS/CCUS, Oil and Gas exploration/ development, Methane emission reduction etc. His background is oil reservoir/production engineering., and since he joined JOGMEC in 2011, he has worked on businesses including R&D projects. From 2015, He joined Qatar Petroleum Development Co Ltd (Japan) to be engaged in oil development projects in offshore Qatar for three years.

Moderator’s Profile

Dr. Juita Mohamad is an economist and Editor at TIA Editors.

stratsea is proud to promote the upcoming SEAN-CSO webinar entitled, “Global Responses to 2025 Trends and Threats.”

This webinar will deep dive into how current global affairs influenced decision-making and responses of governments and civil society organizations working on peace and conflict studies, particularly in Southeast Asia.

In this webinar, we will:

1) Analyze key global trends: Examine the most pressing issues facing Southeast Asia and the global international setting, including geopolitical shifts, technological advancements, and social and economic inequalities.

2) Discuss emerging threats: Explore the potential risks and challenges that could disrupt global stability, such as pandemics, cyberattacks, and conflicts.

3) Explore global responses: Analyze how governments, international organizations, and civil society address these challenges and develop innovative solutions.

4) Engage in a lively discussion: Participate in a Q&A session with leading experts and engage in a dynamic conversation with other attendees.

Webinar Details:

Date: Friday, 17 January 2025

Time: 03:00PM (WIB) / 04:00PM (MY/PH) / 07:00PM (AUS)

Registration Link: bit.ly/globalresponses2025 / https://us06web.zoom.us/meeting/register/QRWzeeYnRPmB6pmHBWgLBw

Speakers:

Dr. Greg Barton; Founder of the SEAN-CSO Network, Australia

Wahid A. Abdulla; Executive Director, Gagandilan Mindanao Women Inc., the Philippines

Dr. Haezreena Begum; University Malaya; Malaysia

Moderator

Aziff Azuddin; Research Director of IMAN Research, Malaysia

The first article under “Policies” written by Novia Xu covers the difficulties Indonesia faces in mitigating climate change. Subsequently, Calvin Khoe provides insights on the potential direction President Prabowo could take on renewable energy exports. In a co-authored article by Jitsai Santaputra and Muhammad Vito Hamzah, they iterate the importance of youth involvement in accelerating energy transition across Southeast Asia.

Under “Technologies”, Diofanny Swandrina Putri and Taqi Hammam Ariza outline how Indonesia has taken great strides in developing its Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) capability. Dr. Juita Mohamad next argues how implementing carbon pricing measures now may disrupt the competitiveness of local MSMEs in Malaysia. This compilation of curated articles ends with two articles written Assoc. Prof. Zul Ilham Bin Zulkiflee Lubes and Rif’at Abdillah highlighting electric vehicle regulations in their respective countries: Malaysia and Indonesia.

Via this and subsequent compilations of our article series, stratsea strives to heighten focus and facilitate constructive discussions within and outside Southeast Asia. Keep a look out for our next compilation on the impact of the Middle East conflict on Southeast Asia.

Promoted Content in Support of Yayasan Strategik Lestari, Malaysia

stratsea is pleased to share the recently published second edition of NEXUS+ by Yayasan Strategik Lestari. In this edition of the bilingual (Bahasa Melayu and English) e-magazine, 15 articles are categorized into five related themes, namely: Climate Change, STEM Education, Food Security, Agricultural Technology, and Renewable Energy. Notably, this edition features two of stratsea’s articles.

This second edition is aptly published after the conduct of the inaugural Southeast Asia Conference on Food Security and Sustainability (SEACOFSS) 2024 held on 17 November 2024.

The previous edition of NEXUS+ can be found here.

Sponsored Article

Dina Zaman’s new book, Malayland, will be released by co-publishers Faction Press and Ethos Books of Singapore in November 2024. Dina, one of the founders of IMAN Research, is represented by the Sivagurunathan and Chua Literary Agency.

In the second of two excerpts, the writer meets her friends who are purveyors of Malay culture and traditions. Ku Din and Pak Din are two separate individuals.

Excerpt from “Chapter Three: The Ethnocentrists”

My friend Ku Din deserves a chapter, or even a monograph, of his own. He is a collector of books and keris. His background was very much like that of many other Malay professionals in their forties: a spell at Victoria Institution, a post-university slog up through the corporate world, wasted youthful nights dancing away at Base, Phase II and Faces (and so did I…). But when he bought his first keris, his life changed. Now, he is pursuing his postgraduate studies, specialising in Malay manuscripts, while writing about the keris. Ku Din’s definition of Malayness was very different from the legal version. To him, the Malays must hold to five syarat, or principles, a key aspect of the monarch.50 “The king will make use of land for everyone to live peacefully, in harmony, and in adherence to the adat and ultimately to God,” he summarised. And the rest were tools to attain the goals of the syarat to please Allah.

I spent an afternoon at Ku Din’s home, decorated with keris and other Malay paraphernalia. A koi pond was being built. His quiet, middle-class neighbourhood was home to young couples and their growing families. He assimilated well with his neighbours, keris and all, and was active in the community. “We just uphold Malay culture and heritage,” he stated boldly, speaking about the circle of friends around him. And so here is the riddle, the enigma at the heart of this chapter. What is someone who is proud of their culture, “race” and language: 1) a supremacist, or 2) simply a passionate student and advocate? And, to stretch the question further, what did that make me? Being Malay and proud of it did not mean hating non-Malays, he insisted. When his friends wondered why he was pushing the “Malay Agenda”, he denied that this was the case. The main problem was that the Malays themselves didn’t know who they were. “The Malays prepare their children not to be workers, but to be leaders and survivors. They have to adapt to life, but it does not mean losing their identity. The Malays enter any society, adapting to its norms but do not forget who they are. When a Malay knows his identity, his roots, he won’t turn to extremism,” he insisted.

Going on, from there, in his view, the problem was that our idea of Malayness was coloured by Eurocentric views of our history, and strange ideologies entrenched within society. The Malays could not run away from God, but because their knowledge was limited, Ku Din argued that this lacuna was seen as an opportunity by Orientalists to redefine Malayness. “The reason why Malays are now rising back is because Allah has called them to investigate their histories,” he surmised.

He disagreed with how some Malay writers wrote about our paranormal myths, insisting that these all came about because of Orientalist perspectives. The problem was that the Malays themselves didn’t read Malay manuscripts written in Jawi, the Arabic-derived script around which there is rife confusion today. Who said Malays didn’t write? Who said they didn’t have the documentation? Thousands of such manuscripts do exist, with many still housed away with records of transmitted oral histories in European museums and libraries. Some of these documents had even been reduced to ash in the burning of Stamford Raffles’s ship, Fame, packed aboard in the nineteenth century before it burned and sank.

“And then writing in Jawi stopped,” said Ku Din matter-a-factly.

–

Pak Din is an old friend, and we have flitted in and out of each other’s lives since we participated in a tariqa, or Sufi religious group together. His gifts as a healer began when he was young, back when he and his family attended classes held by a tariqa (Sufi missionary) that they followed. As far as he was concerned, the tariqa was synonymous with Islam, and it was only when he reached adulthood that he found out that other interpretations excluded such circles, most notably those of the Salafis and Wahabbis. “You cannot have religion without Sufism, without the soul of [Islam],” he insisted — this was despite how its practice was ostensibly illegal.

What I was more interested in, however, was his very visible turn to ethnocentrism. It was only recently that his Facebook postings piqued my interest. No longer just about archery and horse-riding, he has lately been voicing out his admittedly conservative thoughts on non-Malays living in Malaysia, and how Tanah Melayu — as it was historically known — had been desecrated by the Malays themselves in the name of business and multiculturalism.

He lives in a cute white house decorated with flowers, right smack in the middle of an upper-income neighbourhood. The light smell of incense was already salient when I reached the garden, and his big smile greeted us. A former colleague, Nazir Sufari, had tagged along for the interview. He was researching Malay medicine and keen to know more information. Come in, Pak Din motioned, before offering plates of roti canai. His house was peppered with Naqshbandi paraphernalia, such as books, paintings and even a sword. It was oddly zen despite being filled up with objects.

Over lunch, Pak Din expounded on his vision of Malayness — grand, romantic, exclusionary, but also one of worry. To be Malay is to realise that it is a cause to die for. Where the modern, educated Malay would laugh at the perkampungan, the rurality of it all, a true Muslim would see that this world was slowly being dominated by Dajjal and its people through modernity. The conspiracies that many laughed at run as follows: Efforts to weaken or totally eradicate the influence of Malay-Muslims started in the fourteenth century. These have since been reconstituted by the Orientalists and colonial powers. At this juncture, he gives a list of claims, some wilder than others: the destruction of the Malay kingdoms, of Cham’s end, physically waged by “Chinese-based” and new “races” — a striking echo of the Comte de Gobineau. He spoke of Ibn Battuta’s fabled Princess Adruja Wijayamala Singa, who supposedly lived in the northern parts of the Malay States, perhaps up to Pattani, who stopped the advance of Raja Rama Khamhaeng the Third. I felt that I was being pulled into a storytelling session, led by a powerful tok dalang. Pak Din was engaging all right, and his gift of the gab was undeniable.

Then, there was a sudden silence. (We Malays believe that when such a thing happens, it means that a malaikat [an angel created from Light] has just passed us.) Pak Din was once labelled as a supremacist. In 2009, he took part in a horseback archery competition wearing full Malay regalia. Remarking on criticisms of his dress, he sniggered. He wasn’t trying to promote Malay culture in the United States or Taiwan, but just in Malaysia itself. “And they say it’s racist. ‘Oh, you don’t respect other people?’ We have given enough respect to other races, this is our place. What’s Malaysia? Malaysia is the short name of Persekutuan Tanah Melayu, Sabah dan Sarawak.To promote my culture here in this country is racism, oppressing others? No. It’s our character, the warmth, embracing others, allowing other races to come here. Not only that, they got even richer than us!”

Launch & Meet-the-Author

Dina Zaman’s Malayland will be launched on 15 November 2024 (6pm) at National Library Singapore. She will also make an appearance at Book Bar (57 Duxton Road, Singapore 089521) for a meet-the-author on 16 Nov (2pm).