Due to the powerful bond between Anwar and Prabowo, Malaysia and Indonesia are actually on course to build one of the strongest building blocks in Southeast Asia.

For Asian leaders, especially those in ASEAN, the last quarter of the year, invariably, October to December, can be excruciatingly busy. This is the period when ASEAN and related Summits are held; of which the latter can mean the East Asian Summit (EAS).

But one must remember that the Chair of ASEAN is also entitled to sit in the G 20 Summit, which in this case, has availed Anwar Ibrahim, the Prime Minister of Malaysia, to be in Rio De Janeiro as the Special Guest of President Lula Da Silvio of Brazil.

While sources in Brazil affirmed that Anwar and Lula have got along famously well, it is worthy of mention that Brazil has long been the Strategic Sectoral Partner of ASEAN. In fact, Lula has agreed to attend the ASEAN Summit in Kuala Lumpur in 2025.

That being said, what is unique about the last quarter of 2024, however, is the unprecedented number of face to face meetings that Anwar would have had with President Prabowo Subianto too; one of the newest yet most seasoned political leaders in Southeast Asia since the 1980s.

Broadly the same period when Anwar Ibrahim first entered the mainstream of Malaysian politics in 1981.

In 2024 alone, Anwar met with Prabowo in April 2024, when the latter returned from a trip to China and Japan.

The pair met yet again in Laos this October 2024 during the ASEAN and Related Summit.

When Prabowo was inaugurated as the President of Indonesia on November 15 2024, Anwar was again in Jakarta.

Invariably, as one of the most esteemed guests of Prabowo among tens of thousands that were invited by the President of Indonesia.

When one includes the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) meeting in Lima, Peru, of which Peru interestingly is the Development Partner of ASEAN—– together with Germany, France, Italy and Denmark—- Anwar would have met Prabowo for the fourth time.

Without a doubt, this is the highest number of visits, including face-to-face meetings, between Anwar and Prabowo.

More than any leaders in ASEAN, including even Singapore. With the latter, Prime Minister Lawrence Wong was not in Brazil since Singapore is not a member of the G20 proper.

Indonesia, however, has been a member of the G20 since its very inception in 2007.

As all may know, the G20 membership is confined to those countries whose GDP is more than USD 1 Trillion. Thus it wasn’t a surprise to see an gathering of leaders from the world’s Top 20 economies in Rio De Janeiro, including President Joe Biden and President Xi Jin Ping of China.

To be sure, Indonesia and Malaysia are two of the earliest pioneers of APEC which began in 1989 in Brisbane Australia.

While it is customarily seen as the brainchild of the then Prime Minister Paul Keating of Australia, a deeper intellectual foray would show that commercial Track 2 Diplomacy of APEC was jointly spawned by the economists of Japan and Australia since 1960. Among the luminaries were Okita Saburo, Yamagawa Ippei and John Crawfurd to name but three. They worked through think tanks such as Pacific Asia Free Trade and Development (PAFTAD), Pacific Economic Cooperation Council (PECC) and Pacific Basin Economic Council (PBEC).

Amidst the chorus of BRICS being an entity that is led by policy sherpas of the top leaders, a process not unlike G7 and G20, Anwar and Prabowo are extremely familiar with these commercial think tanks and the intellectual thought leaders that succeeded one after the other.

At any rate, before the end of 2024, Anwar and Prabowo would have seemed to have met a total of four times ranging from ASEAN to APEC to G 20 and the Presidential Inauguration of Indonesia. This view is incorrect, however.

On November 11 2024, at the capital city of Riyadh, Anwar and Prabowo also met at the Arab and Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) Summit. The former is defined by the membership of the Arab League and Gulf Cooperation Council and Iran, while the latter i.e. OIC has a total of 57 members.

Due to the powerful bond between Anwar and Prabowo, Malaysia and Indonesia are actually on course to build one of the strongest building blocks in Southeast Asia.

Whether this is seen through the optic of Nusantara, the new administrative capital of Indonesia in east Borneo, the second biggest island in the world that includes Brunei, Sabah and Sarawak; of which the last two are part of the Federation of Malaysia, the dizzying number of meetings between the two Southeast Asian stalwarts have slowly but surely gelled into a quasi alliance.

That is beyond their maritime roles as the designated littoral states of the Straits of Malacca, not excluding  Singapore. Granted that Prime Minister Lawrence Wong has met with Prabowo between November 4th and 7th 2024 in Jakarta on a bilateral visit, a time that saw Anwar being with President Xi Jin Ping and other top Chinese leaders in Shanghai and Beijing, which Prabowo just met in the middle of November 2024, it is difficult to deny that Indonesia and Malaysia, indeed, not excluding Singapore, have had a more than perfect reading of the world’s most important bilateral relationship. Therein China and the US.

Indeed, neither Anwar nor Prabowo were completely surprised by the victory of President elect Donald Trump. What got them all fascinated about the movement of Make America Great Again (MAGA), a phrase from erstwhile American president, Ronald Reagan, was the vigor with which MAGA has pulsated the Republican Party to control the White House, the US Senate and the US Lower House of Representatives.

While the dawn of Trump II has had the Asian currencies in Southeast Asia wobbling a bit, so too is the Chinese Ren Min Bi, the  Japanese Yen and the South Korean Won. The fact of the matter is, unlike 1997-1999, the period that marked Anwar and Prabowo losing their reins of power ever so slowly from the likes of Mahathir and Suharto, this time around the two of them have refused to allow Malaysia and Indonesia to be caught napping. Key among others is to improve the intra regional trade of ASEAN that has been hovering at leas than 25 percent since 1970. The time is now ripe for Anwar and Prabowo to lead the charge of the ASEAN brigade, with Singapore close behind. Although Thailand, too, would not be left behind.

This article is contributed by the Centre of Regional Strategic Studies (CROSS) .