APAC: Leader Approval & Country Trajectory Outlook, April 2024

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Malaysia

As we addressed briefly in our Counter/Consensus note from April 18, our data affirms the prevailing narrative that popular support for incumbent Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim is indeed on shaky ground: His net approval rating has fallen approximately 60 points from peak to trough since his inauguration in November 2022.

Much of the decline has been driven by a sharp reduction in the share of Malaysians who “strongly approve” of his performance in office, suggesting that the most ardent supporters of Anwar’s long journey to the prime ministership are now more disenchanted with him than the rest.

What’s striking relative to prevailing media commentary — which has cited a variety of missteps to explain Anwar’s reversal of fortunes — is that no particular incident appears to have set off the decline. As we noted in that same Counter/Consensus briefing, three of the more commonly cited incidents — the withdrawal of graft charges against Deputy Prime Minister Ahmad Zahid Hamidi on September 4, the halving of jail time for former Prime Minister Najib Razak on February 2, and the advancement of proposed constitutional amendments on citizenship for foundlings in March (since abandoned) — have caused little deviation from a largely secular downtrend in Anwar’s approval rating pre-dating these events, with unclear knock-on effects for each. These trends suggest a broader array of ills driving popular discontent that will make it hard for Anwar to course-correct.

Posing added challenges for Anwar, our data suggests the drivers of these ills are both economic and political. At present, Anwar’s net approval rating is positively correlated with Malaysians’ views of the economy on a 90-day rolling basis, hovering near roughly +.60 and trending downwards over the past several weeks. But the correlation between Anwar’s approval rating and our net right direction metric — which prices in a broader range of issues — is somewhat more strongly correlated (and consistently so), at roughly +.80, affirming that the drivers of Anwar’s declining support do not necessarily lie firmly in either court but are unlikely to be purely economic.

With Malaysia’s new king speaking out forcefully against political instability after years of short-lived prime ministerships, we expect the country’s political mavericks to limit their near-term politicking, and we see Anwar muddling through for the foreseeable future. We expect the relative stability we observe at present in the share of Malaysians who “somewhat approve” of Anwar will similarly bolster his administration: While Anwar’s most ardent supporters — those who “strongly” approved of him at the start of his tenure — may be the most vocal about his administration’s perceived shortcomings relative to their campaign expectations, the broad-based (if fractious) nature of his coalition suggests it will be insufficient by itself to tip the needle into more unstable territory.

What’s nevertheless striking is the degree to which disapproval shares have risen inversely in relation to our “strongly approve” metric while our “somewhat approve” metric has held steady. These inverse trends suggest that a fair share of Anwar’s most fervent supporters have now become his biggest detractors.  In our view, further deterioration on this front, along with a concomitant decline in the share of Malaysians who “somewhat approve” of Anwar, is the main signal worth watching as an early warning sign of rising risk in the months ahead.

Philippines

President Ferdinand Marcos Jr.’s approval rating is hovering near tracking lows following rebounding inflation heading into Q4/2023 and ongoing sparring with former President Rodrigo Duterte over constitutional reforms — so-called charter change, or “Cha-Cha” — which he has alleged could see Marcos push for amendments to extend his time in office. Our net right direction metric (second chart below) shows a similar trend.

Should the reforms proceed, the main economic benefits would entail liberalization of the country’s foreign investment regime. Foreign corporates doing business in the country should keep an eye on the process for that reason.

At this point in time, our view is that the reforms remain a long shot for two main reasons. First, former president Duterte himself tried — and failed — to reform the constitution along similar lines despite Duterte himself seeing a consistently favorable approval rating well exceeding that of Marcos at present. The fact that complicated constitutional reform processes mandate public approval of any reforms is the key thing to recall on this front: If Duterte was forced to abandon ship amid sky-high approval ratings, Marcos is unlikely to succeed amid far worse approval.

Second, as Duterte’s ongoing immersion in the country’s political processes since leaving office has shown — both via his own public sparring with Marcos and through his daughter Sara Duterte, who as Marcos’ vice president remains a top choice for the country’s 2028 presidential elections — Cha-Cha is not the only path to building a political dynasty in the Philippines. The Marcos family is similarly well positioned compared with the Duterte family, if not more so, to maintain a grip on power even in the absence of reforms. Should a more aggressive push for charter change pose risks to that grip, or facilitate Sara Duterte’s rise to the presidency in 2028, the safest option would be to simply to set it aside, particularly when Marcos has levers to partially liberalize the foreign investment regime independent of the constitution. We view that as the most likely near-term outcome.

South Korea

Our data affirms that South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol is indeed in dire straits following the April 2024 legislative elections that saw the opposition secure a majority of seats in the legislature.

In the run-up to the elections, Yoon’s approval rating and South Koreans’ views of their country’s trajectory were both markedly underwater but stable. Each metric has since plummeted further, suggesting the elections’ outcome — which saw Yoon’s party lose seats in the legislature, but nevertheless saw the opposition fail to attain its goal of a super-majority — is unlikely to please virtually anyone.

We think little is likely to change on the policy front amid these dynamics, though witch hunts targeting Yoon are now more likely. On that front, we note that the opposition may nevertheless see limited success in leveraging some of Yoon’s personal foibles and those of his family to further rally public support to its side. Case in point: Yoon’s approval rating barely registered a blip surrounding one of the more noteworthy developments in the run-up to the elections — the Dior bag scandal involving Yoon’s wife — suggesting it was not ultimately the political bombshell some analysts had predicted. Barring new developments that are exceptionally inflammatory, a muddling-through legislative scenario remains the most likely near-term trajectory.

Thailand

Thai Prime Minister Srettha Thavisin’s approval rating is showing early signs of a rebound following a persistent downtrend that has dogged his administration since late 2023. We attribute Srettha’s mixed fortunes at present to two developments — one economic, the other political — that have seen substantial air-time during Srettha’s tenure to date: a push for more expansionary fiscal policy via the so-called “digital wallet” scheme, which would see 14bn baht handed out in 2024 to help offset the country’s flagging economy, and the potential disbanding of the Move Forward party, which was initially set to form the current government.

From our perspective, the trajectory of these developments are moving at cross-purposes for Srettha. As of early April, the incumbent government has finally arranged funding for the digital wallet so that it can proceed with handouts in Q4 2024; we expect doing so will paper over public concerns about the economy — at least on a near-term basis — and provide a small boost to Srettha’s approval rating, signs of which we are already seeing in our data. But we expect Move Forward’s likely disbanding in the coming months — assuming a similar and successful 2020 maneuver targeting its predecessor, Future Forward, is any guide — to more than offset the boost: The magnitude of the decline in Srettha’s approval rating in early February, just after the constitutional court forced Move Forward to abandon its attempts to reform Thailand’s lese-majesty law, exceeds the recent boost Srettha received from the digital wallet scheme. A formal move to disband Move Forward would rankle even further. Our country trajectory data (see second chart below) tells the same story.

Upcoming Senate reforms — which may overlap with a subsequent court ruling disbanding Move Forward — could nevertheless give Srettha enough of a boost to stabilize his approval rating near or in positive territory. While Thailand’s senators will still not be popularly elected, their chamber will no longer have a say in selecting the country’s prime minister, a perennial sticking point that has dogged both Prayut Chan-o-cha’s and Srettha’s time in office, and has also been blamed for some of Move Forward’s political and legal misfortunes.

Given these dynamics, we hold a mildly bullish outlook for Srettha, assuming the Senate reforms proceed apace. We caution that a formal move to disband Move Forward would be poised to drive near-term protests, as we saw surrounding the dissolution of Future Forward previously, but the Senate reforms would likely reduce their scope and duration relative to those observed in 2020.

Methodology

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