It’s only the second time the political heavyweights have ever met, but analysts predict this meeting has more significance than last year’s summit in Singapore.

“I think we can expect some good outcomes from this summit,” Le Hong Hiep, a Vietnamese International Relations expert based in Singapore, told Viet Nam News.

“In the first summit, parties only committed to some vaguely worded commitments.

“I think President Trump would expect to have some significant outcomes from the summit to contribute to his foreign policy legacy and also to improve his standing inside the US ahead of the next Presidential election in 2020.”

For South Koreans living in Vietnam, many believe next week could not only define the future of their two countries, but could help humankind.

Yoon Sang Ho, Chairman of the Korean Business Association in Hanoi told Viet Nam News: “To be frank, I believe before this, no South Korean could have imagined that a day like today would come, especially the fact that it is being held in Hanoi.

“This is something beyond our expectations and imagination. We hold very high expectations on the results of the summit.

“If there would be any statement on the denuclearisation of the Korea Peninsula and an official end of the Korean War at the summit, it would bring about peace for the Peninsula and contribute to world peace and the development of humankind.”

Yoon said he hoped the day would come when there were no longer two Korean countries, but instead just one nation.

“I strongly believe there will come a day when there is no longer a South Korea and North Korea, but just the single name, Korea,” he said.

“However there are still many obstacles to overcome to reach that day. With the upcoming summit, however, I believe it will come sooner.”

One thing that is guaranteed from this month’s meeting is the positive impact hosting the event will have for Hanoi and Vietnam.

Le Hong Hiep believes the capital city is the perfect choice.

“Hanoi is where North Korea has the embassy,” he said. “And it’s a very important condition for North Korea to have the embassy where the summit takes place because they need to communicate back to Pyongyang.

“Hanoi is also famous for its ability to host major international events without incidents in the past. It is also within the range of North Korea’s aircrafts. So it’s quite convenient for North Korea to hold the meeting in Hanoi.

“The US side indicated that the summit should be held in Da Nang. And now they have agreed to hold the summit in Hanoi, meaning they have made a concession to North Korea. But it’s not a bad idea for the US, either, because Hanoi can meet the demands of security, logistics and media for the summit from a US perspective.”

Hiep, who is a fellow with the Singapore-based ISEAS – Yusof Ishak Institute, thinks the summit is a great opportunity to showcase Hanoi to the world.

He added: “This event will be a good chance for Vietnam to promote its international standing. It can be a very good opportunity for Hanoi and Vietnam to sell its success story to the world and thereby attract more tourists and investors to the country.”

Sung-Yoon Loon, an expert on North Korea at Tufts University in Massachusetts, America, told Tuoi Tre (Youth) newspaper: “Vietnam, as Singapore did, will gain much in publicity, image, tourism.

“Vietnam will come across as a cosmopolitan, peace-seeking state that is a legitimate neutral ground for this historic moment.

“The summit pageantry will cast Vietnam in a very positive light around the world. The summit will not only enhance Vietnam’s international stature but also its leverage vis-a-vis China and the US in the short-term.”

The exact location of the venue for the summit is yet to be announced.

On February 3, Airports of Thailand removed all smoking rooms inside the airports of Suvarnabhumi, Don Mueang, Phuket, Chiang Mai, Hat Yai and Mae Fah Luang.

This was in line with the Tobacco Products Control Act of 2017 and the Public Health Ministry announcement last year that required offices of government agencies and state enterprises, including airports, to declare no-smoking areas to protect non-smokers.

Those caught violating the new laws will be fined up to Bt5,000.

“We are very pleased with this news and we urge the government to monitor compliance and strictly impose the penalty,” said Dr Domilyn Villarreiz, manager of SEATCA’s Smoke-free Programme.

“Studies have shown that second-hand smoke can transfer from designated smoking areas into non-smoking areas in airports, where non-smoking travellers and employees can be exposed.

“In addition to subjecting non-smoking travellers who pass through these areas to involuntary second-hand smoke exposure, designated or ventilated smoking areas can also result in involuntary exposure of airport employees who are required to enter these areas or work near them,” she said.

“Tourism is an important driver for the Thai economy. Successful tourism relies not only on available and efficient tourism infrastructure such as airports and other transportation facilities, but also on a healthy and welcoming environment.

“This is a big move for Thailand, considering it is frequented by 39 million international tourists annually. This is not only good for the environment, but ultimately good for people’s health and the economy,” Villarreiz added.

Meanwhile, cigarettes and other tobacco products are still being sold in the same terminals in the duty-free areas.

Source: Thethaiger.com

“We observed that many Buddhists celebrate this holiday everywhere in Phnom Penh and in the provinces throughout Cambodia.”

“They will celebrate Meak Bochea Day according to the traditions of their own provinces, while in Phnom Penh, there will be a major celebration at Phnom Preah Reach Trop, also known as Oudong Mountain.”

“Cambodian Buddhists strictly follow the teachings of the Buddha, so there will be many youths and Buddhists celebrating this holiday,” he said.

Somony said that every year the National Committee for Organising National and International Festivals instructed provincial authorities and the country’s over 3,000 pagodas to celebrate Meak Bochea Day.

It is celebrated during the full moon based on the traditional Cambodian calendar. It is a public holiday in the Kingdom.

Kou Sopheap, a professor at Pannasastra University of Cambodia, said the holiday marked the day Buddha announced the teaching of dharma and the day that he predicted his own death.

“Meak Bochea Day is the day that Buddhists first learnt and started to practice Buddhist teachings,” he said, adding that during Meak Bochea Day, Buddhists spend time cleaning their houses, cooking food for their parents or old people and delivering food to monks at pagodas.

“Now it is better because young people have started to celebrate Meak Bochea and Vesak Bochea Day, while many people come to the pagoda,” he said.

Cambodians celebrate Meak Bochea in Phnom Penh last year.//Heng Chivoan

Sopheap also called for young people to celebrate Cambodian national religious festivals and pay less attention to international holidays.

Pannasastra University student association president Yann Aoudourm told The Post that Cambodian youth were paying less attention to the Kingdom’s major religious holidays, and also urged young people to fully participate in this year’s events.

“People who are 25 or younger are studying at high school or university, so they have the day off during this holiday [to celebrate],” he said.

Aoudourm added that he and 30 of his friends would be celebrating at Puth Mondol Pagoda, located in Kandal province.

But the debates miserably failed to generate a battle for great ideas because of the inadequate time allotted for discussing five important topics and the poorly designed structure of the debates.

Yet more unfortunate, many of the questions prepared by the eight panelists, especially on energy and food, were not relevant to Indonesia’s most pressing problems within the next five to 10 years.

The panelists miserably failed to force the candidates to state their visions and missions, views, stances and commitments in regard to the five topics of discussion: food, energy, natural resources, the environment and infrastructure.

But then again, given that the candidates were each only given a three-minute introduction, how could they adequately explain their visions and missions in such important sectors?

Certainly, Joko “Jokowi” Widodo, who has the benefits of incumbency, immediately moved to show off his achievements over the past four years. As the challenger, Prabowo Subianto could only state his dream: to achieve self-sufficiency in energy and food and lower their prices and improve the terms of trade for farmers.

So important are energy and food to a nation that they could make or break the political and economic stability of a country like Indonesia, which has a population of 270 million spread out in the world’s largest archipelago.

Yet the first question raised by the panelists on these two issues was: “How can the fourth industrial revolution [Industry 4.0] impact energy and food development?”

Even though Industry 4.0 has reached Indonesia, the issue is not the most urgent problem for the country’s energy policy now and for the next 10 years.

They should have asked the candidates about their commitment to cutting the huge amount of wasteful spending on fuel subsidies and developing renewable energy: geothermal, solar, wind, biomass, biofuel and hydropower.

Citing only the increased use of palm oil-based biodiesel as an example of successful renewable development is simplifying the whole spectrum of renewable energy development.

The general public eagerly wanted to know the stance of each candidate on the fuel subsidy, which had held hostage all previous presidents as they had always been torn between their wish to embrace market pricing for fuels and their desire to remain in power.

Jokowi made a nationally and internationally commended bold move to slash fuel subsidies at the outset of his administration in late 2014, only because international prices had collapsed to below US$40 per barrel.

He pledged to float domestic fuel prices on international oil prices as Indonesia is already dependent on imports for almost 60 percent of its needs. The managed fuel price-floating system Jokowi introduced in 2015 was still tied to fixed price floors and ceilings, whereby the government could still intervene in retail fuel prices if fuels overshot the price ceiling.

As the range of the price floors and ceilings set for the managed floating was designed to be close to the fuel economic costs, the policy also was effective at least to prevent subsidies from ballooning out of control.

Such a system would also allow a gradual incremental rise in fuel prices and would free the government from being held hostage by a wildly volatile international oil market.

But Jokowi is no different from his predecessors. Last year, he reneged on this commitment when oil prices rose to between $70 and $80, a policy he defended as most imperative to prevent inflationary pressures and to protect the purchasing power of the people.

But the blunt fact is that the drawbacks of fuel subsidies and government-regulated fuel prices have been well-documented: They are known to benefit the rich disproportionately, as they consume much more energy and they lead to wasteful consumption and environmental degradation by disincentivizing energy efficiency, conservation and the development of renewable energy.

Subsidies also distort the price signals that normally balance the supply and demand in a market, foster smuggling of cheaper fuel to higher-paying markets and tie up government funds that could be better used in areas such as infrastructure, education and health care.

Energy subsidies increased from Rp 93 trillion ($6.8 billion) in 2016 to Rp 98 trillion in 2017 and totaled Rp 165 trillion in 2018 as the oil price rose to as high as $70 from $48 as set in the budget. For this year, they are targeted at Rp 158 trillion with an average oil price of $70.

Likewise, one of the basic questions that should have been raised on the food issue is: How do the candidates define the meaning of food security or food self-sufficiency, set against the gradual shifts in the patterns of food consumption? And what is their strategy for increasing the production of such staple food as rice, corn, potato, soybean and horticulture, whose imports tend to increase annually during the Ramadan fasting month and Idul Fitri festivities?

Past experiences have shown that food self-sufficiency does not fully address the core elements of food security because of the vulnerability of crops to weather anomalies and pest attacks.

Moreover, income growth, demographic and other lifestyle changes have been causing structural shifts in the patterns of domestic food consumption and expenditure, especially in urban areas that now account for around 50 percent of the population.

Trump announced the emergency Friday in order to bypass Congress, which approved only a quarter of the $5.6 billion he wanted for the wall in a spending bill.

But the lawsuit, filed in a federal court in California, said the president’s order was contrary to the constitution’s presentment and appropriations clauses, which outline legislative procedures and define Congress as the final arbiter of public funds, respectively.

The move had already been announced by Xavier Becerra, the attorney general of California, who said Sunday his state and others had legal standing because they risked losing moneys intended for military projects, disaster assistance and other purposes.

Critics, including several senators from Trump’s Republican party, have warned that he has opened the door for future presidents to call on the act whenever they fail to get their way with Congress.

Should the states prevail, the case could work its way up to the Supreme Court, setting up a precedent-setting showdown on the separation of powers.

– ‘Constitutional crisis’ –

California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Illinois, Maine, Maryland, Michigan, Minnesota, Nevada, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Oregon and Virginia are party to the complaint seeking an injunction.

The states “bring this action to protect their residents, natural resources, and economic interests from President Donald J. Trump’s flagrant disregard of fundamental separation of powers principles engrained in the United States Constitution,” the complaint said.

It added that Trump had veered the country toward a “constitutional crisis of his own making.”

“Congress has repeatedly rebuffed the president’s insistence to fund a border wall, recently resulting in a record 35-day partial government shutdown over the border wall dispute,” it said.

“After the government reopened, Congress approved, and the president signed into law, a $1.375 billion appropriation for fencing along the southern border, but Congress made clear that funding could not be used to build President Trump’s proposed border wall.”

– Endangered species –

The complaint also questioned Trump’s categorization of illegal border crossings as a national emergency, saying data issued by his own administration refuted the notion.

“Customs and Border Protection (“CBP”) data show that unlawful entries are near 45-year lows,” it said.

“The State Department recognizes there is a lack of credible evidence that terrorists are using the southern border to enter the United States. Federal data confirm that immigrants are less likely to commit crimes than are native-born Americans.”

The White House says the emergency order empowers it to pull around $6.6 billion from other sources, mostly already-allocated funds in the Defense Department budget.

But the lawsuit countered that tapping military funds would result in huge losses for the states’ national guard units which would otherwise use the money for domestic drug interdiction and counter-drug activities as well as for law enforcement programs.

The complaint added that the Department of Homeland Security had violated the National Environmental Policy Act by failing to evaluate the environmental impact of the wall in California and New Mexico, saying species such as the endangered Mexican gray wolf, and the jaguar would be at risk.