"The Future of Southeast Asia" Event Reflection

I arrived in Garland Lobby at around 5:50 on March 19th in need of something to get my mind off of a Francis Wass Day spent fine-tuning the technical aspects of my Junior Speech. I wasn't sure what to expect from the event, as "the future of Southeast Asia" seemed like a pretty broad topic, but I was anticipating some discussion of recent conflicts in the South China Sea and the Rohingya Genocide in Myanmar. The massive spread of Vietnamese banh mi and spring rolls was a welcome surprise when I arrived, and my friends and I stuffed ourselves as we eagerly waited for the event to begin.

At around 6:30, we all filed into the Garland auditorium and took our seats, as an impressive panel composed of the Consuls General of Thailand and Indonesia and an accomplished Indonesian-American businessman took their places on the stage. Although all three panelists were knowledgable and articulate, I began to get the sense, as the event went on, that two out of three of them worked for some pretty exacting employers (the nations of Indonesia and Thailand) who required them to toe a narrow party line when discussing such issues as the state of democracy in their respective countries and commercial relationships with China and the United States. Although the businessman, Thomas Malayil, initially came off as a bit of an arrogant, corporate type, it became clear that he was the only real straight shooter of the group. In one particularly memorable instance, after Malaysian Consul General Endang Wirawan touted the fairness and security of Indonesian elections and said she couldn't call who would win be elected in 2019, Mr. Malayil said with a chuckle that because he didn't have a government to represent, he could say with certainty that the incumbent would win. The atmosphere on the stage became inexplicably tense as the event progressed, with the two consuls sort of digging in their heels and Mr. Malayil always trying to get a word in edgewise, but the strangest moment of the night definitely came when Thai Consul Tanee Sangrat decided to would turn the panel into an impromptu game show, awarding goodie bags from the Thai consulate to those who could correctly answer multiple-choice trivia questions . After guessing that the King of Thailand had ruled for 70 years before his death in 2016, I became the proud owner of a Thai Town t-shirt and decided the brief diversion was forgivable.

After an intermission, we re-entered the auditorium for the second panel on religion in Southeast Asia, which featured bestselling author and public personality Reza Azlan and UCLA professor George Dutton speaking mainly about the Rohingya Crisis in Myanmar and the changing face of Islam in Indonesia. Both speakers were extremely knowledgable on both topics and complemented each other well in a sort of tag-team give and take. Mr. Dutton would usually begin by answering the question with some well-explained historical background, and then Mr. Azlan would jump in with a more topical perspective and a bit of humor. I came into the talk knowing almost nothing about the Rohingya Genocide and nothing at all about the nature of Islam in Indonesia, but found that by the end of the panel I had a pretty good understanding of both.

Overall, I really enjoyed the "Future of Southeast Asia" event, even the unexpected idiosyncrasies of the first panel, but I do wish there had been  more discussion of the South China Sea conflict from representatives of countries like the Philippines that were directly involved. I thought the second panel was extremely informative and well-run, and I look forward to more GIP events like it in the future!