One cannot but be impressed by how south-east Asian countries are coping with coronavirus.
While we should be cautious about the data, which can be unreliable, the number of infections in Asean — the 10-member Association of Southeast Asian Nations — accounts for just 1.3 per cent of the global total, and the number of deaths for just 0.7 per cent. That’s for a population of 661m, or 8.7 per cent of the world total.
Much less impressive is Asean’s record dealing with corruption, that other “invisible enemy”. With the exception of Singapore, Brunei and Malaysia — whose 1MDB scandal has still cast a cloud — member countries languish around the middle (Indonesia, Vietnam, Thailand) or in the bottom half (the Philippines, Laos, Myanmar, Cambodia) of Transparency International’s Corruption Perception Index.