The Durian

Colonial and Cold War legacies in Burma's ethnic conflicts

2012-03-08T11:16:00.000-05:00

Burma Rifles

Interesting piece by Stanley Weiss ('They Don't Want Democracy. They Want Freedom')
on the continuing ethnic violence in Burma and the suspicion by many of the ethnic groups towards the reform process began by the regime. While I agree with much of this the piece does leave out some important context. Namely that the British openly practiced a policy of divide and rule during its administration of Burma. For example the British government heavily recruited ethnic Karen into the British Burma Army (the Karen rifles) and used these forces to repress insurrection among the majority Burmese population under colonial rule. During peacetime the colonial rulers recruited very few Burmans. Only during World War I and at the beginning of World War II were the armed forces open to Burman recruits. Thus from the very beginning the prospects for ethnic harmony in Burma were limited.

Khun Sa, heroin warlord

In addition the article fails to mention that during the Cold War Burma itself was a battleground that sucked in wider regional forces. Over 12,000 defeated Chinese Nationalist troops (Kuomintang) and continued launching guerrilla attacks into south China during the 1950s with the support of the United States' Central Intelligence Agency. The KMT extended their control over a number of the country's tribal populations, particularly in Shan State where they cultivated opium production. By the time the KMT were finally driven from Burma in 1961 opium production had risen by over 1000 per cent and the region, dubbed the Golden triangle, became home to over 1/3 of the world's production of opium. The production and trade was then taken over by the infamous warlord Khun Sa who used the resources from the trade in heroin to control a large stretch of Shan state as leader of the Shan United Army and the Mong Tai army.

Equally during the Cold War Beijing provided substantial military and ideological support for the Communist Party of Burma which was open military rebellion against the central government (mostly during the 1970s) while the Thai military supported ethnic anti-Rangoon forces in order to provide frontier buffers to prevent support through Burma for the Communist Party of Thailand.

The net result was that regional rivalries, and geopolitical competition spilled over into Burma ensuring that the country was awash with weapons and resources that would fuel the ethnic violence on all sides. Sadly the history of this an the consequences of this foreign meddling continue to be felt.

China's Muslim Unrest

2012-03-01T12:00:00.001-05:00

Uyghur students protesting

Good piece in today's New York Times on renewed violence in China's westernmost province of Xinjiang. While the trials and tribulations of Tibet are much more well known the plight of China's Muslim Uyghur population has not received as much international attention or coverage. Ethnically Turkic the Uyghur have seen their ethnic and religious diversity undermined by concerted migration of Han Chinese into the province over the past three decades and government repression. While the Communist government allows Uyghurs to practice their faith it strictly controls the curriculum of Islamic colleges, forces Imams to attend political education camps and dictates the version of the Qu'ran that can be used. In addition many mosques are under government surveillance and literature and poetry is screened for political allusions. In the aftermath of the September 11th attacks the Chinese government used the Global War on terrorism to justify the suppression of dissent in Xinjiang alleging that Uyghur separatists were part of an Al-Qaeda inspired insurgency. Ironically following a brutal crackdown on unrest in 2008 and 2009 Al-Qaeda called upon muslims in the province to prepare for a jihad and in 2009 threatened to attack Chinese interests overseas in retaliation.

Burma's Constitution

2012-02-29T14:14:00.001-05:00

Burma's new constitution, adopted in 2008, is widely derided for institutionalizing the dominance of the country's military in power. However as Dom Nardi discusses in this excellent short piece from New Mandala that does not necessarily preclude further political reform and democratization.

2012-02-24T16:29:00.000-05:00

Comedic Trio the Moustache Brothers regularly perform satire against the military regime in Burma

An unusual place for a call for papers but I figured a number of my readers are academics or are colleagues/friends of academics so please share :-) Really hoping to get a diverse group for this from political science, cultural studies, anthropology, sociology, pop-culture etc

Comedy and satire as discourses of protest in East Asia.

Center for AsianDemocracy Annual Workshop

16-18 August 2012

This workshop seeks toexamine the relationship between political protest and comedy in East Asia. Inparticular it is interested in the ways in which comedy has and is being usedto critique and parody authoritarianism, corruption and politicalleadership. Recognizing that inthe West comedy and satire have a long tradition of not just speaking truth topower but also as a powerful tool of public criticism this workshop aims toanalyze the role of comedy in East Asia. Is it analogous to the role it playsin the West? Are there unique forms of comedy and protest? Are there culturalobstacles to parody and satire?

The Center for AsianDemocracy invites and encourages participants from a broad range of disciplinesto the workshop to explore a feature of Asian politics and society thatreceives comparably limited attention. Possible areas of investigation include,but are not restricted to: comedy/satire/farce in music, film and TV; incontemporary literature; in cartoons and comics; online forms of comedicprotest and satire; culture and comedy – specific or transcultural?

Please send abstracts (300 words) and a shortresume to Amanda.leduke@louisville.edu by April 30, 2011.

CAD will provide return air fare andaccommodation to participants selected to take part in the event.

Rewarding Progress: Burma, the United States and the World Bank

2012-02-07T17:31:00.004-05:00

At the inaugural lecture on Asian Democracy at theUniversity of Louisville on January 27^th Ambassador Derek Mitchell,the Special Representative and Policy Coordinator for Burma, announced that theObama administration would seek to reward political reform while maintainingthe current sanctions regime until further notice. Yesterday saw moreindications of the carrots Washington can give the reformers in Burma when USSecretary of State Hillary Clinton signed a partial waiver to lift restrictionson global financial institutions imposed under the Trafficking Victims Act.

This waiver will allow financial experts from the World Bank and InternationalMonetary Fund to assist the government in rebuilding the country’s ramshackleeconomy and develop the capacity the Ambassador himself argued must be built toensure the future prosperity of the country. The decision took place asopposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi embarked on a tour of the Irrawaddy deltaregion for the first time and addressed a crowd of close to 10,000 in afootball stadium in the town of Pathein.

Courtesy of The Irrawaddy

Previous attempts to tour the countryin 2003 led to a violent attack on her entourage by paramilitary thugs and herre-incarceration. Although Suu Kyiis a candidate for by-elections that will occur on April 1^st thecurrent electoral law only allows campaigning a week in advance of theelection. So far the government has not commented on the legality of Suu Kyi’strip though the fact that is taking place at all seems yet further evidencethat the process of political reform in Burma is gathering momentum.

Burma and Democracy

2012-02-02T16:11:00.000-05:00

On January 26th the inaugural annual lecture on Asian Democracy was held at the Pap Johns Football stadium at the University of Louisville. Hosted by the University's Center for Asian Democracy the inaugural address was given by Ambassador Derek Mitchell, the Special Representative and Policy Coordinator to Burma. An audience of over 150 listened to Ambassador Mitchell outline the progress made towards greater democracy in Burma over the past 18 months and how the United States has responded. Mitchell characterized the Obama administration's approach as one that while standing firm in its resolve to maintain sanctions against the Burmese regime would greet real progress towards political reform with rewards that would embolden those supporting liberalization. While welcoming the changes that have been made the Ambassador also stressed that the US had made it clear that it would not remove sanctions until all political prisoners had been released and ceasefires reached in the armed struggles between the military and ethnic minority insurgents. His lively and passionate presentation was followed by a 30 minute Q&A session with members of the audience including representatives of the city's ethnic Karen refugee population who sought assurances that the plight of the Karen in the refugee camps in Thailand would not be forgotten.

An introductory message from Senate Minority leader Mitch McConnell was broadcast prior to the Ambassador's talk and can be viewed here:

Senator Mitch McConnell's introduction

A report on the event by a student reporter for the University newspaper The Cardinal can be accessed here:

Reform in Burma

The Karen in Louisville: Democracy in America

2012-01-23T11:49:00.000-05:00


Photo courtesy of Sam Upshaw Jnr, The Courier-Journal

In a packed Baptist Church in Louisville, Kentucky, over 400people gathered on Saturday to hear Senate Minority leader, and Senior Senatorfor Kentucky, Mitch McConnell, give his assessment on his visit to Burmaearlier that week. When one thinks of Kentucky what doesn’t spring to mind isan audience largely comprised of ethnic Karen and Chin refugees; but for almosta decade now the state and the city of Louisville in particular has resettledover 3000 from the refugee camps on the Burmese Thai borders. IndeedMcConnell’s translator for Saturday’s event had herself spent over a decade inthe Thai camps after fleeing from the Burmese army’s vicious campaign againstthe country’s ethnic minorities.

Comprising a majority of the audience many Karen were colorfulbedecked in their national costumes and when given the chance to question theSenator following his presentation lined up patiently in two lines. Again andagain the recurring theme of their questions was whether the recent politicalreforms enacted by the new government in Burma were genuine and whether theleadership could be trusted. McConnell, one of the staunchest critics of theBurmese junta over the past twenty years, and architect of much of the USsanctions regime in place against them, repeatedly tried to reassure the youngand old alike that not only was he convinced of the sincerity of the reformersbut more importantly that opposition leader and Nobel Laureate Aung San Suu Kyihad told him that she was as well.

The spectacle was a curious one, and arguably uniquely American.As I watched these brave, defiant refugees questioning one of the country’smost powerful political leaders on US foreign policy towards Burma andSoutheast Asia I was reminded of the famous words of Emma Lazarus’s poem etchedinto the pedestal of the Statue of Liberty in 1883:

"Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"

Of course the event was a testimony to the personal interestin the cause of Burmese democracy and human rights by Senator McConnell but itwas also testimony to the very nature of American democracy: the local townhall meeting in which ordinary citizens hold their elected officialsaccountable. This was what the French historian Alexis de Tocqueville hadwitnessed and celebrated in his 1835 publication Democracy in America and here on a cold January morning inLouisville Kentucky 176 years later it was still very much in evidence.

Political Prisoners Freed as Senator McConnell visits Burma

2012-01-13T14:21:00.001-05:00

Ko Ko Gyi 1988 student democracy activist released

In another sign that the new government in Burma iscommitted to political reform, the regime today released 650 political prisoners,including prominent leaders of the 1988 student-led democracy movement, Min KoNaing, Ko Ko Gyi, and Nilar Thein. In addition former Prime Minister Khin Nyuntwas released from the house arrest imposed upon him following a purge in 2004.Although the government had made a number of previous releases the inclusion ofsuch prominent figures was unexpected.

The release comes as Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell (R-Kentucky)embarked on his first ever visit to the country. McConnell has consistentlybeen one of the leading critics of the Burmese Junta over the past twenty yearsas well as a pivotal figure in the imposition of economic and financialsanctions, sponsoring the Burmese Freedom and Democracy Act of 2002 forexample. The Senator’s visit isthe first by a Congressional leader. He is due to meet with opposition leaderand Nobel Peace Laureate Aung San Suu Kyi on Sunday. “The timing of the releaseof the political prisoners is likely to have been orchestrated in order to helpthe new government convince the Senator that its desire for political reform isgenuine. If McConnell returns from Burma convinced of this we are likely to seesanctions removed quite rapidly”.

In a sign that Washington expresses its support for thereforms, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton today announced that the UnitedStates and Burma would return diplomatic relations to full ambassadorialstatus, the first time since 1990.

Burmese government reaches historic ceasefire ending longest-running ethnic insurgencies.

2012-01-12T12:54:00.001-05:00

TheBurmese government signed a historic ceasefire agreement today ending one ofthe longest ethnic insurgencies in the world. The deal with the military wingof the Karen National Union appears to be further evidence of political reformin the country following the election of an ostensibly civilian government inNovember 2010.

Whileethnic Burmese constitute almost 70 per cent of the population over 135 ethnicgroups are officially recognized in the country of which the Karen constituteone of the largest minorities. Located largely in the hills in the east of thecountry the Karen have been engaged in an insurgency against the Burmesemilitary since 1947. Subjected to frequent mortar bombardments and offensivesan estimated quarter of a million Karen were internally displaced within thecountry with many fleeing to neighboring Thailand where they have been settledin refugee camps along the border. It is estimated that today there are some140,000 Karen in these camps. Although the majority of the Karen are Buddhist,approximately 40 per cent of the population are Christians, tracing their faithback to the work of American Baptists missionaries in the 19^th Century.

Since2006 the United States has resettled tens of thousands of Karen of whichapproximately 3000 have been resettled in Kentucky. In Louisville, CrescentHill Baptist Church and the Kentucky Refugees Ministry have played a prominentrole in helping the Karen to adjust to their new lives in the UnitedStates. However as Dr. Jason Abbott at the University of Louisville comments, the ceasefire presents the possibility that one day these refugeesmight be able to return home. “If the Karen could return to their homes safelythey could. This agreement should be applauded as the first step towards acomprehensive peace. Nevertheless caution should be exercised since previousceasefires between the military and other ethnic groups have been broken. Mostrecently in June last year the military launched an offensive against Kachinrebels after a 16 year ceasefire.”

The deal is the latest sign that thenew government in Burma remains committed to a reform process that begun inNovember 2010 with the release of Noble Peace Prize Laureate Aung San Suu Kyifrom house arrest. While Washington has welcomed these reforms the USgovernment has indicated that an end to the country’s ethnic conflicts would bea pre-requisite before the removal of economic sanctions on the country couldbe considered.

Acquitted! Malaysia and The End of the Anwar Affair?

2012-01-09T10:27:00.002-05:00

Mahathir greets supporters after acquittal

After a two yeartrial Malaysian opposition leader Anwar Ibrahim was today surprisinglyacquitted of sodomy. (As a predominantly Muslim country homosexual sex isillegal in Malaysia). Most pundits, including myself, had expected the HighCourt to find the former deputy Prime Minister guilty; not because of anysubstance to the allegations made against him by his personal aide Mohd Saiful,but because the trial was largely seen as the latest in a long series ofattempts by the Malaysian government to destroy Anwar’s political career.

Many in Malaysiahad dubbed the latest trial Sodomy 2.0 in reference to the fact that in August2000 he had been sentenced to nine years in prison for an alleged act ofsodomy, although this would be later overturned by the Federal Court on appeal4 years later. Anwar always protested that the accusations against him werepolitical following a spectacular fall from grace during the Asian FinancialCrisis of 1997-98.

Mahathir Mohammad Prime Minister 1981-2003

Anwar’s meteoricrise had always been resented by many within the ruling United Malays NationalOrganization who had joined the party long before Mahathir co-opted Anwar fromthe country’s Islamic youth movement in 1982. For years there had beenwhispering campaigns against him and anonymous poison pen letters. WhenMahathir appointed Anwar Acting Prime Minister in May 1997 (while he took twomonths leave) it was widely seen as the clearest endorsement by Mahathir thathe wished for Anwar to succeed him. In response Anwar’s detractors circulated a signed documentaccusing Anwar of a homosexual relationship with his wife’s former driver amonth later but after an initial police investigation Mahathir publiclyannounced that the allegations were baseless.


Anwar addresses supporters 1998

Within a yeareverything changed. Therepercussions of the financial crisis that began in Thailand with the collapseof the Baht in June 1997 and would topple the thirty-year authoritarian rule of11 months later, led to public disagreement between Mahathir and his deputy onthe most appropriate policy response. The real division however was never simply over policy. Anwar used thecrisis as an opportunity to openly criticize government corruption and thecontroversial mega-projects that had become a defining feature of Mahathir’spremiership denouncing corruption, cronyism and nepotism at the UMNO GeneralAssembly in June 1998. Mahathir regarded this as an attack on his veryleadership and an attempt by Anwar to seize the proverbial crown from him. Asthis public split emerged the homosexual allegations resurfaced in a famouspamphlet entitled “50 Reasons Why Anwar Ibrahim Cannot Become Prime Minister”which was distributed free to UMNO party delegates at the 1998 UMNO GeneralAssembly. If Anwar did attempt touse the crisis to undermine Mahathir and promote his own political ambitions heclearly misjudged the continued hold ‘the old man’ had on the country’s rulingUnited Malays National Organization. Anwar was sacked and charged with corruption and sodomy.


Anwar's wife Wan Azzizah

The firstattempt to destroy Anwar politically failed. His conviction and imprisonment waswidely viewed as a political act and his cause galvanized a fledglingopposition movement for national justice (Keadilan) to form an inter-ethniccoalition to challenge UMNO in the 1999 general election. Led by Anwar’s wifeWan Azzizah, the opposition coalition won 40 per cent of the vote and made anumber of notable gains including seizing control of the states of Kelantan andTerengganu. Without his leadershipthe opposition coalition fractured, particularly over growing animosity andmutual suspicion between the largely Chinese democratic Action Party (DAP) andIslamic Party (PAS). As a result in the March 2004 elections the oppositionwere roundly defeated. Months later Anwar’s sodomy conviction was overturned inwhat most viewed as a gesture of reconciliation by the new premier AbdullahBadawi.

Although Anwarwas banned from resuming political activity for five years after the end of hissentence for corruption, thus barring him until April 2008, he graduallyresumed his role as the de facto leader of the opposition helping to broker arenewed coalition between the opposition parties. Despite not being acandidate, during the March 2008 election campaign Anwar actively campaignedfor the opposition which would go on to record its best ever performance since1969 winning control of five of13 states plus the federal territory of Kuala Lumpur. Within months his wifehad retired from parliament allowing him to successfully contest the resultingby-election and return to parliament whereupon he would become the officialleader of the opposition.

It was at this junction that the secondsodomy allegations emerged, with much of the same highly questionable evidenceas in 1998. If the first time had been a tragedy then this time was clearlyfarcical. The distraction the trial has caused for the last two and half years howeverclearly weakened Anwar’s effectiveness as leader of the opposition. His surprising acquittal will likelyallow him to play a strengthened role.

Prime Minister Najib gambles on Anwar's acquittal

So why was he acquitted? Senior figuresin the government and the ruling party have responded by saying that theverdict shows that Malaysia has an independent judiciary and that due processwas served. Skeptics however have a different take. Malaysia’s judiciary has, particularlyfrom Mahathir onwards, been viewed by most critical commentators nationally andinternationally as subject to political interference from the executive,hobbled by patronage, and changes to the law following a constitutional crisisin 1988. The most likely reality then is that Prime Minister Najib and his supportersdetermined that a guilty verdict would be more detrimental to UMNO than anacquittal. A guilty verdict wouldhave risked turning Anwar into a political martyr, turned his cause into apolitical issue in the next general election and provoked international outcry.The risk of keeping him free, however, is that Anwar could build upon theopposition’s gains in 2008 to make a real challenge for power in the nextelections. Najib thus appears to have gambled that the benefits he might accruefrom the acquittal outweigh those from silencing Anwar through a second guiltyverdict. Following the surprising announcement last September that he wouldoverhaul the repressive Internal Security Act, and the recent reform of theconstitution to liberalize the right to protest (albeit in a highlycontroversial way), Najib seems to be adopting the mantle of reform in order topresent himself in contrast to his predecessors and to detract from corruptionallegations that have bedeviled his premiership to date. His gamble must bethat this will persuade enough voters to stick with the ‘devil they know’rather than opt for the unlikely coalition of the disparate parties thatconstitute the Pakatan Rakyat. We will have to wait to see if this gamble paysoff.

Malaysian Election speculation

2011-12-27T05:42:00.001-05:00

Excuse the lack of posts.On holiday for Christmas and travelling.

Psychic Octopus Paul might have more luck guessing when

Good piece on the on-going speculation on when Najib will call Malaysia's next election.

http://www.freemalaysiatoday.com/2011/12/27/najibs-early-elections-plan-in-disarray/

Royal Disapproval: Thailand's Lesee Majeste Laws

2011-12-09T21:51:00.001-05:00


Joe Gordon sentenced to 2.5 years in jail

There has been a lot of media attention this week on thedecision by Thai courts to jail US citizen Lerpong Wichaicommart (Joe Gordon)for posting passages from Paul Handley’s unauthorized biography of Thailand’sKing Bhumipol on his blog (Handley’s controversial book on the Thai King isbanned in Thailand). Gordon who was born in Thailand lived for thirty years inthe United States before returning to the country last year. What makes thiscase even more controversial is that the posts in question were uploaded before Gordon returned to Thailand.

However Gordon is only the latest in a long line of victimsof Thailand’s lese majeste laws which make it a crime to “expose the King toany sort of accusation or action”. Article 112 of the Thai Criminal Code statesthat “whoever defames, insults or threatens the King, Queen, the Heir-apparentor the Regent, shall be punished with imprisonment of three to fifteenyears." While the lesee majeste laws have been in place in one form orother since 1908, the number of cases where citizens have been charged has significantly increased in recentyears. Between January 2006 andMay 2011 more than 400 people faced such charges, an increase of 1400 percent. Furthermore Thai authoritieshave also increasingly used the 2007 Computer Crimes Act against scholars,students, journalists, authors and politicians. The law makes the publicationof false statements or statements detrimental to national security punishableby a five year prison sentence. While Gordon was sentenced to two and a half years in jail, last month61 year old computer programmerAmphon Tangnoppakul was sentenced to 20 years imprisonment forsending four text messages that were deemed offensive to the Queen.

There is much speculation about the recent crackdown by Thaiauthorities on speech critical of the monarchy but one theory is that the RoyalFamily, the Privy Council and allied elements in the military and courts arekeen to stifle any debate about the succession to the throne, particularlygiven the monarch’s prominent role in the 2006 coup and the animosity between theCrown and former Thai Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra. Such tensions mayagain arise following the recent election of Thaksin’s sister Yingluck as PrimeMinister. Whatever the reasonfreedom of speech is becoming increasingly stifled in Thailand.

Amphon Tangnoppakul jailed in November for 20 years

Clinton’s Visit to Burma: A Historic Occasion?

2011-12-01T22:19:00.001-05:00

Sec of State Clinton meets Aung San Suu Kyi

Whatever you might think, however skeptical you might be,Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s visit to Burma this week is a historicmoment. The last Secretary of State to visit Burma was John Foster Dulles in1955, just seven years before the military coup that would usher in Burma’sdisastrous experiment with socialism under General Ne Win. 56 years later and Burma remains firmlyunder the grip of the country’s military, the Tatmadaw. Nevertheless sinceelections last year there have been discernible signs of politicalliberalization. The country has a civilian government for the first time inover 20 years (albeit headed by a former Lieutenant-General), its most famouspolitical prisoner Nobel Laureate Aung San Suu Kyi was released shortly after,and what many expected to be a largely rubber-stamp legislature has passed anumber of bills (e.g. the Peaceful Gathering and Procession Bill) that on paperappears at least to be enshrining certain civil liberties in the law. MoreoverBurma’s neighbors in ASEAN (Association of Southeast Asian Nations) haverewarded the country’s new leadership by agreeing to grant the once hermit-likecountry the chair of the regional organization for the first time in 2014.

Clinton announced that the US welcomes and supports theliberalization the new government has begun saying “the United States isprepared to walk the path of reform with you if you keep moving in the rightdirection". Furthermore shehinted that the US may upgrade its diplomatic presence to full ambassadoriallevel for the first time since the brutal crackdown by the military after itrefused to accept election results in 1990 that should have given power to AungSan Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy. In addition Clinton suggested thatthe US will support additional aid to a country in which it is estimated that90 per cent of the population live below the poverty line.

Sec of State Clinton meets President of Burma Thein Sein

Of course all this is contingenton further progress by the regime towards greater democratization and manyBurmese exiles and civil rights groups rightly highlight the fact that whileThein Sein has embarked on a charm offensive to end Burma’s economic andpolitical isolation it has stepped up attacks on the country’s ethnicminorities. In June of this yearthe military broke a 17-year old ceasefire agreement with the KachinIndependence Army causing an estimated 50,000 people to flee their homes toescape acts of violence, rape and arson. In addition they point to the factthat while some high profile political prisoners have been freed more than 1000remain behind bars. As Mark Farmaner, director of Burma Campaign UK, put it:"[t]here has been a lot of talk about change but little concretechange." Still advocates of engagement believed that such ahigh-profile visit will be seen by Burma’s leadership as a reward for thelimited progress it has made and in turn may prompt further concessions as bothsides become more confident and optimistic about their relationship. Despite myskepticism and cynicism the sight of Clinton and Aung San Suu Kyi meeting face-to-facein Burma is certainly something that would have been unimaginable as little assix months ago let alone when she was appointed to her post in 2009.

Civil liberties and authoritarian impulses: Does Malaysia’s new Bill on Peaceful Assembly reveals UMNO’s true colors or is it a step forward?

2011-11-28T15:26:00.001-05:00

Malaysia's new Bill on Peaceful Assembly
as seen by satirical cartoonist Zunar

It was supposed to be a step forward in civil liberties, a lawthat would give Malaysians the right to peaceful assembly. But the devil it seems is in thedetail. On November 29^th it is expected that the Malaysianparliament will pass The Peaceful Assembly Bill and herald it as a new era incivil liberties and political freedom in Malaysia. However while the bill before parliament will enshrinecertain new freedoms in Malaysian law it does so in a regulatory framework thatclearly defines the strictures within which those freedoms can be enjoyed.

Currently Malaysia’s strict security laws require a police permitfor a protest of more than five people. The new law by abolishing thatrequirement is clearly a welcome change. Replacing it initially was arequirement that police be given 30 days notice by organizers of a publicassembly. However, in the face of cries of protest from civil society groupsand the opposition Pakatan Rakyat,this has now been shortened to 10 days. Similarly the police will be required to inform organizers within 24hours of their decision rather than 48 as had been originally stipulated. The rightto appeal this decision however has been reduced from its current five days to48 hours.

Prime Minister Najib addressing UMNO General Assembly

The UMNO-led Barisan Nasional government allegedly studied laws onpeaceful protest in a number of countries, including Finland and Britain,before largely modeling their Bill on the Australian state of Queensland’sPeaceful Assembly Act of 1992. Where the two differ however is in the slew ofrestrictions the Malaysian version imposes. Besides the notice period theMalaysian Bill forbids protests within a 50 metre zone of “prohibited areas” (whichinclude bridges, gas stations, hospitals, railways, schools and places ofworship); restricts anyone under the age of 15 from participation in anyprotests; gives police the right to impose conditions on the holding ofassemblies and gives the Home Minister the right to decide on appeal. Furthermoreillegal assemblies will be fined $3000 (RM10,000), while anyone arrested bypolice can be fined up to $6000.

However the most restrictive clausein the Bill is the prohibition on the right to march. The Bill explicitlyprohibits street protests defined as “ “open airassembly which begins with a meeting at a specified place and consists ofwalking in a mass march or rally for the purpose of objecting to or advancing aparticular cause or causes”. Such a restriction on peaceful protest is bothlargely contrary to international norms on freedom of assembly and wouldlargely restrict protests to stadia or public halls. Hailed as‘revolutionary’ by Prime Minister Najib when he tabled the bill in parliamenton November 22^nd it has been dismissed by the Malaysian Bar Councilpresident Lim Chee Wee as more restrictive that the present law.

Bersih 2.0 rally July 2011

The Bill representsthe latest attempt by Prime Minister Najib to reposition the ruling UnitedMalays National Organization before elections widely anticipated within thenext 6-12 months. Thrown off-guardby the 50,000 strong Bersih 2.0 (‘Clean’ )demonstration in July this year, andplagued by continuing corruption allegations, Najib has tried to seize controlof the political agenda by making a series of public pronouncements in which heappeared to champion the political liberalization. Critics were not won over. The latest Bill seems to suggest that their skepticism waswell-founded. For the government the management of the issue has been somethingof a public relations disaster, not least because just two days after the Billwas tabled, the Burmese government passed its own law on public protestpermitting the very marches the Malaysian Bill will outlaw. Now who wants tolook more repressive than Burma?

Manny Pacquiao for President in 2022. Personality and politics in the Philippines.

2011-11-14T16:26:00.001-05:00

Manny Pacquiao retained his WBO Welterweight title
November 13 in Las Vegas

While the boxing world is a buzz over the controversialsplit-decision victory awarded the Philippine WBO Welterweight champion MannyPacquiao on Sunday November 13^th few take the boxer’s other career seriously; and yet sinceMay 2010 Emmanuel Dapidran Pacquiao has been Congressman for the province ofSarangani in The Philippines.

This is not the first of Pacquiao’s ‘other’ careers. Since 2005 theboxer has starred in a number of Philippine movies and TV shows and is rumoredto be set to make his Hollywood debut in a Sylvester Stallone production.However while his political career might not be taken seriously in the boxingworld, it is nevertheless indicative of several seemingly enduring features ofpolitics in the Philippines. And it is not inconceivable that one day thePacMan might add the title of President to his collection. Why?

Politics ispersonal.

Corazon Aquino, President of the
Philippines 1986-1992

In the Philippines personalities matter not political parties. Although in its initialpost-independence years (1945-) two political parties dominated Philippinepolitics, in reality power was largely held by a small number of elite familieswhose fortunes and patronage were crucial. The Nacionalistaand Liberal parties despite theirnames were essentially non-ideological, and thus prone to factionalism andpersonal political ambition. As a result political figures frequently switchedparty in order to further their own careers. Under the two decade long rule by Marcos political partieswere further weakened following the banning of all political activity in 1972and the creation of the Marcos government’s own vehicle the New Society (KilusangBagong Lipunan) movement. Theresumption of democratic elections to The Philippines in 1986 has seen both thefurther proliferation of political parties and the increasing importance ofpersonality, charisma and political connections. Indeed the prominent historianand political scientist Benedict Anderson dubbed this characteristic ‘Cacique democracy’ in 1988, depictingthe country as an elite-led, elite-privileged patrimonial state. The piecefamously begun by deconstructing the figure of the widow who had led theopposition to victory in the 1986 Corazon Aquino. Far from the mourninghousewife she was depicted as, Anderson detailed her membership of the Cojuangco family, ‘one of the wealthiest and most powerful dynasties inFilipino oligarchy’. Her Unclebecame governor of Tarlac in 1941, her cousin in 1967, her younger brother oneof the state’s congressmen, while she served for 13 years as treasurer of thefamily holding company, a vast conglomerate with interests in finance,agriculture and real estate. Moreover her marriageto Benigno Aquino, Jr., ‘linked her to another key dynasty ofCentral Luzon’ .

While the role and influence of the oligarchs anddynasties today is hotly contested among academics, since Aquino politics inThe Philippines has become increasingly ‘personality’-based. The first majorchallenge to the post-Marcos era dominance by the ‘old’ elites came from actorturned politician Joseph Estrada. Estrada, the star of over 100 movies, usedhis frequent cinematic portrayal as the champion of the poor to catapulthimself to the Presidency in 1998 as leader of a newly formed political party, Partido ngMasang Pilipino (Party of the Filipino Masses). Nevertheless, for the elections tothe House of Representatives that were held simultaneously, Estrada’s partyironically formed an electoral coalition with Nacionalista offshoot, the NationalistPeople's Coalition, run by Eduardo Cojuangco, Corazon’scousin.

Emmanual 'Manny' Pacquiao elected
Congressman for Sarangani
in May 2010 with 2/3 of the vote

Similarly the leading political force in The Philippines since the1990, LAKAS-KAMPI-CMD was initially created as a vehicle for the Presidentialambitions of Estrada’s predecessor Fidel Ramos (1992-1998), before becomingclosely associated with his successor Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo (2001-10).Although LAKAS routinely wins around a 1/3 of the seats in the House ofRepresentatives it has largely emerged as the leading political force in thecountry by merging with smaller parties and has been beset by factionalism,including between Ramos and Arroyo. Meanwhile the 2010 Presidential elections were won by the son of CorazonAquino, Benigno Cojuangco Aquino III (Noynoy), while the wife and children of the formerdictator Ferdinand Marcos all won political office in 2010.

How does all this link to Manny Pacquiao? Elected in May2010 to House of Representatives, PacMan (as he is known to his fans) hasalready shown himself to have political instincts. Initially elected as amember for the Nacionalista party he quickly transferred his loyalty to theLiberal Party of the new President Nonoy Aquino. While Pacquaio has stated hisdesire to be an agent for change, the switch was also designed to ensure thathis district receives more government funds. In the meantime Paquiao’s sights will most likely continueto be set on a WBO-WBC fight against the undefeated Floyd Mayweather sometimein 2012. However, with his earnings from his extraordinarily successful boxingcareer, his national and global name recognition, and his expressed concern forthe poor, PacMan could be a serious contender for the Presidency of thePhilippines in 2022 (in 2016 he will be 37, three years below the minimumage requirement).

Iron Fist in a Velvet Glove: Burma’s ethnic cleansing continues

2011-11-03T16:41:00.002-04:00

Much has been made of lateof the ‘concessions’ by the Burmese regime to dialogue and possible politicalliberalization that began with the release from house arrest of oppositionfigure, and Nobel Peace Prize winner, Aung San Suu Kyi. Indeed while such movesshould be applauded and welcomed one cannot help but wonder if they are littlemore than a cynical public relations exercise by the country’s militaryleadership to curry international support for an easing of sanctions againstthe regime.

KIA fighters in Burma

The strongest evidence thatthe new ‘civilian’ (sic) government of President Thein Sein is little more thanan iron fist in a velvet glove comes from the continuing offensives by theBurmese military against ethnic minorities such as the Kachin and Karen. IndeedDerek Mitchell the new US special envoy for Burma confirmed on October 17^ththat there were credible reports of human rights abuses by the military againstwomen and children including murder and rape. More recently allegations havebeen made that the Burmese Army, the Tatmadaw, has used mortar rounds that havecontained poisonous gas in attacks on fighters of the Kachin Independence Armyin three war zones: Ga Ra Yang village, Shwe Nyaung Pyin village and WaingmawTownship. On October 30^th the Kachin News Group stated that soldiersfrom the KIA reported that black smoke billowing from areas where the mortarshells landed had left victims dizzy, struggling to breathe and vomiting forseveral hours. While there is noindependent verification of the alleged use of chemical weapons if true suchattacks would be in violation of the 1925 Geneva Protocol that prohibited theuse of chemical and biological weapons.

Karen refugees

Theseattacks are only the latest in an intensification of hostilities against ethnicgroups that have occurred in recent months despite calls by President TheinSein for national reconciliation. Criticism has also come from Burma’sneighbors. On October 29^th Indonesia’s foreign Minister Marty Natalegawaurged Burma’s leaders to make concrete steps towards reconciliation while earlierthis year in July Aung San Suu Kyi issued an open letter to the President inwhich she called for an urgent ceasefire and offered to act as a mediator.Besides the KIA the Burmese Army continues to be engaged in offensives againstother armed ethnic groups including the Karen National Union and the Shan StateArmy.

While theBurman (Bamar) constitute about two-thirds of the country’s population Burmanevertheless is one of the most ethnically diverse countries in the world with135 distinct official ethnic groups recognized by the government itself. Manyof the country’s most important ethnic minorities (the Kachin, Karen, Shan etc)are located on the country’s mountainous borders and have been in conflict withthe central authorities for over four decades. While full autonomy for theFrontier Areas, including a Kachin State, was agreed in the historic PanglongAgreement signed in February 1947 by Aung San Suu Kyi’s father, Aung San, theagreement was effectively scuttled following his assassination and the creationof irregular militia under the command of Ne Win who would later overthrow thedemocratic government of Burma in 1962. Following the establishment of his ownpersonalized Burmese Road to Socialism Ne Win launched a brutal policy againstethnic and political rebels known as the ‘Four Cuts’. The policy was designedto cut the four main links of food, funds, intelligence, and recruits betweeninsurgents, their families and local villagers and largely consisted of apolicy of forced relocation and ethnic cleansing. Opponents of the regimeinternally and externally fear that the military is using the latest concessionsto political opponents to deflect attention from the renewed offensives. Whetherthis is the case or not, what the incidents reveal is that gross abuses ofhuman rights continue in Burma on an almost daily basis and that an investigationof the latest claims of the use of chemical weapons is urgently needed.

The ‘Other’ China: Taiwan, Democracy and China’s future.

2011-10-24T15:24:00.000-04:00

The island of Taiwan
from Space

Picture a China that is not ruled by theCommunist Party, where freedom of speech is guaranteed, where a vibrant mediaaggressively pursue anti-corruption allegations, where people of all faiths canworship freely, where freedom of assembly is respected and where people arefree to join non-governmental organizations and independent trade unions.Picture a China where free and fair elections are routinely held, oppositionparties contest, and occasionally win office, and a former President wasindicted and imprisoned for corruption. Wishful thinking? Little more than a pipe dream? The above depiction isactually of China, not the Peoples Republic of China but instead of the other China, namely the island of Taiwan.

For all those who argue that democracy inChina is impossible and that there are unique cultural attributes withinChinese society that run counter to democratic norms and practices, Taiwanpresents itself as the conflicting contrast. Moreover Taiwan’s recent politicalhistory is one that has seen a peaceful and gradual transition from a one-partyauthoritarian state to arguably one of the most democratic countries in EastAsia as a whole. Potentially offering a model for a similar transition todemocracy for China as a whole.

Nationalist leader Chiang Kai Shek

For those of you who are not familiarwith the China/Taiwan story here is a quick overview. Taiwan, an islandapproximately 100 miles off the Southeast coast of China, became separatedpolitically from the mainland at the close of China’s civil war between theCommunist and Nationalist parties in 1949. The defeated Nationalists, the Kuomintang, retreated across the TaiwanStraits where, with US protection (via the U.S. 7^th Fleet), theyestablished a rival government to the newly proclaimed Communist-led PeoplesRepublic of China under Chairman Mao. For the next 26 years the defeatedKuomintang warlord Chiang Kai Shek ruled Taiwan with an iron grip, curtailingcivil and political freedoms while continuing to maintain the fiction that hewas the legitimate ruler of all China.Beginning under his son Chiang Ching-kuo (President from 1978-88) Taiwan begana gradual transition to democracy. The first meaningful opposition party theDemocratic Progressive Party was established in 1986 and a year later martiallaw was finally lifted. Eventually in 1992 the island held its first democraticelections to the legislature and four years later for President. Whileinitially the Kuomintang remained in control of the legislature and executive,in 2000 the opposition won the Presidency and the following year the Kuomintangfinally lost their legislative majority.

So could Taiwan offer a model oftransition? Clearly administering an island of 14,000 square miles with apopulation of 24 million is a very different task from running a country ofalmost 4 million square miles and 1.4 billion people. However what the Taiwan case does demonstrate is that it isperfectly possible for a ruling party to preside over a transition fromauthoritarianism while remaining the most prominent political force in acountry. Despite the setbacks the Kuomintang faced in 2000 and 2001, they wonback the Presidency in 2008 and in the 2008 legislative elections returned topower with a landslide. Studies ofpolitical transition also largely demonstrate that processes of democratizationare less violent and more enduring when they are elite-led and gradual ratherthan revolutionary and transformative.

Skeptics essentially argue that China isjust too big. That as a consequence of this size there are too many divergencesbetween provinces in economic development. In addition, the Communist Party,some argue, has never been as monolithic and pervasive as the Kuomintang, whichwhen combined with the economic differences between provinces could result inthe large more developed provinces wrestling more and more autonomy from thecenter. Moreover at this stage in its economic development Taiwan had alreadybegun its democratic experiment, particularly at the local level, whereas inChina there is neither meaningful political contestation nor independent oppositionparties. Thus any loosening of control could instead result in an unraveling ofCommunist Party control rather than a ‘soft landing’.

Village election in China

Crystal-ball gazing is a fraughtenterprise so I am not going to predict what kind of political system Chinawill have 20 years from now. I do however remain unconvinced by the structuralobstacles and sequencing arguments. For the former India has managed to retain democratic institutions andelections despite similar structural and logistically problems of size,distance, reach and ethnic/regional diversity. Of greater significance howeveris that for almost twenty years now China’s communist leaders have beenexperimenting with democratic elections to village committees. Villageelections have now been held in all31 provinces across China with 19 provinces having held between four and sixconsecutive elections. The election law mandates that village elections mustcomply with basic democratic norms, namely -- secret ballot, direct electionsand multiple candidates. In the Village Committee elections a list ofregistered voters is displayed publicly 20 days prior to the election,candidates are nominated directly by villagers, and for an election to be validan absolute majority of eligible voters must cast their ballots with winningcandidates required to get 50 per cent of the vote plus one. When no candidatereceives a majority, a run-off election is held within three days.

Critics argue thatafter twenty years of village elections the experiment has still not permeatedbeyond this most limited of levels. However as the Carter Center reports “aftertwo decades of continuously improved direct elections at the village level,elections at higher levels of government appear technically feasible”. Morepowerfully some 600 million Chinese have now experienced democratic electionsof some form with the long-term consequences of this far from certain. Clearlythe next step forward will have to come from the leadership in Beijing but itis this author’s opinion that Taiwan does provide a feasible model of change,and that the other China does providea blueprint for future reformers within the Communist Party. Finally as evermore mainlanders are permitted to travel to Taiwan the appeal of this blueprintmay also grow among China’s middle classes. Whatever the case, China’s futureis more likely to be Made in Taiwan than Made in the West.

Hit and run tragedy sparks national outcry on Chinese microblogging site.

2011-10-18T13:19:00.000-04:00

Photo courtesy of TVS

What should we make of the video of a 2 year old Chinese girl being hitand run over by two van drivers and then repeatedly ignored by pedestrians andcyclists passing by? Does it speak to a growing sense of social decay andincreasing self-centered individualism that seems to have accompanied thecountry’s embrace of capitalism? Commentator Li Hongbing writing in the PeoplesDaily, the flagship newspaper of the Chinese Communist Party, certainly seemedto think so, remarking that “ignoring the dyingor even helping with evil acts by negligence is ripping apart society's ethicalbaseline and dissolving any sense of conscience deep in the souls of thepublic”.

Certainlythe images and plight of the 2 year old is harrowing. In total 18 peopleignored the girl lying in a pool of her own blood until a 58 year old womanscavenging in rubbish tips came to her aid. However there is nothing about thisstory that makes it a Chinese phenomenon. There are countless incidentsworldwide of people choosing to ignore the plight of others injured or wounded,or beset upon by thugs. Just google ‘bystanders ignore’ and you get separateincidents of Canadians ignoring a homeless man who was on fire; New Yorkersignoring a man bleeding to death or Londoners ignoring a 12 year old Jewishgirl beaten unconscious. All of these cases are as horrific and amoral.

So what isthe point of this week’s blog post?

Logo of microblogging site Sina Weibo

The point isthat the story also reveals how increasingly mobilized Chinese society isbecoming online and how social media in China is as lively and active as in theWest despite restrictions and censorship. Following the incident 4.4 millionpeople posted comments on China’s own version of Twitter, Sina Weibo, under thehash-tag "Please end the cold-heartedness," while another 2 millionwatched the video on the Internet television site Yoku.com. Sina Weibo waslaunched by Charles Chao after the Chinese government blocked Twitter in June2009. A former journalist and accountant Chao took the gamble that despitegovernment restrictions and self-censorship ordinary Chinese would flock to micro-blogging.His move paid off. By the end of the first quarter this year there were 140million users of Sina Wibo compared to an estimated 100 million Twitter users.

Charles Chao, founder of Sina Weibo

Since itslaunch while the top-trends have often been about celebrities and other suchtrivial concerns Sina Weibo has becomean outlet for controversial topics avoided by state-controlled media. Accordingto Google’s former China head Lee Kai-fu, Sina Weibo has become, “by far thebest platform for free speech in China”. Examples of this include widespreadposts to links showing video footage of riots by migrant workers in Guagnzhouin June, to outrage at another hit and run, this time by Li Qiming, the son of the deputy director of the Baoding Public SecurityBureau. Li, who was sentenced to six years in jail for killing Chen Xiaofeng ina hit and run, shouted Sue me if you dare! My father is Li Gang!" whenauthorities arrested him. Thephrase "My father is Li Gang" subsequently went viral and top-trendedcreating a firestorm of protest over corruption and the preferential treatmentmeted out to the children of the party elite. As one ‘tweet’ on Sina Weibo fromVincent88 echoed, “The son of Li Gang being sentenced to only six years becausehis father compensated the family shows that all you need to do is pay up first.I despise the ruling party,” said user Vincent-88.

So while weshould be shocked and disheartened by the 18 people who tragically andheartlessly ignored the victim of this hit and run we should also take heart atthe national outcry that the incident provoked and the role of social media inenabling this.

The beginnings of political transition in Burma?

2011-10-07T14:01:00.001-04:00

When Burma’s mostprominent dissident and de facto opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi wasreleased last November expectations of wider political reform were few and farbetween. Most viewed her release from house arrest as little more than a tokengesture by the Burmese Junta to deflect criticism of the deeply flawedelections that had taken place just six days earlier. And yet something doesseem to be happening in Burma, albeit slowly.

Suu Kyi on her trip to Bagan (courtesy of AP)

Although Suu Kyi has kepta lower public profile since her release she has nevertheless been permitted tospeak openly to western media organizations and in July she made her first tripoutside Rangoon since her release. She was joined on the trip by her son KimAris, a British citizen, who had only been allowed to visit his mother for thefirst time in 10 years shortly after her release. The last time Suu Kyitraveled outside of the former capital in 2003 her party was brutally attackedby thugs from the Union Solidarity and DevelopmentAssociation and the Swan Ah Ashin militia killing 70 people. This time her trippassed without incident despite the fact that crowds of supporters flocked tosee her when she made what was ostensibly a private trip to the temples inBagan.

Suu Kyi meets Burmese President Thein Sein
(courtesy of Reuters)

The most significant event however came on August19^th when Suu Kyi met with Burma’s new ‘civilian’ President TheinSein, following two earlier meeting with the Labor Minister Aung Ki. Themeeting, was broadcast on national television and culminated in a VIP dinnerhosted by Thein Sein’s wife. Such a meeting would have been unthinkable barelya year ago when the Junta had been at great pains to marginalize the oppositionleader. While such a meeting may not have resulted in any landmarks agreementsthe symbolic sugnificance of this should not be understated. Suu Kyi herselfhas said that she believes Thein Sein is committed to reform stating in aninterview to a reporter from BBC World’s Burmese service, “I believe that the president wants to institute reforms, but howfar these reforms will be able to go and how effective these will be, thatstill waits, still needs to be seen."

In addition to the above ‘thaw’in relations between the government and the opposition there have beenadditional signs of change. Some previously blocked websites have been madeavailable, some foreign journalists allowed into the country on official visas(rather than surreptiously on tourist visas) and the UN special rapporteur onhuman rights, Tomas Quintana, was permitted to enter the country and meet withSuu Kyi for the first time since February 2010. There have alos been visits byseveral senior delegations of foreign politicians and diplomats including JohnMcCain, US Deputy Assistant Secretary of State JosephYun; a high-ranking EU delegation; acting UN Special Envoy Vijay Nambiar; andRussian Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs Alexey Borodavkin. Meanwhile parliamentary committees have been reviewing hundredsof pieces of legislation and taking advice from international organizationssuch as the International Labor Organization (ILO) and the UN Office for theCo-ordination of Humanitarian Affairs (Unocha), as well as consulting withlocal NGOs.

Critics maintain that none of this has resultedin any actual political reform and that while the opening is welcome, over 2000activists and pro-democracy supporters remain imprisoned in the country and themilitary continues attacks against the country’s ethnic minorities. Even here however there has beenevidence of some shift in policy. Reports claim that Suu Kyi, the governmentand US officials have been discussing the possibility of releasing some 600 ofthese prisoners who the government has acknowledged for the first time as political prisoners.

Suu Kyi meets US Special Representative
for Burma, Derek Mitchell

It is too early to say why this thaw is takingplace or where it might lead. Early suggestions argue that there are signs ofdivisions within the country’s political and military elite with Thein Seinallegedly siding with younger officers against Senior General Than Shwe andother hardliners. The motives of course seem clear, to end the economic andfinancial sanctions the EU and the US have imposed on Burma. So far Washingtonhas cautiously welcomed the above developments and indicated that it may bewilling to waive some prohibitions on assistance from financial institutionssuch as the World Bank and IMF. Asthe newly appointed Special Representative to Burma, Derek Mitchell said, “We’regoing to meet their action with action… If they take steps, we will take stepsto demonstrate that we are supportive of the path to reform.”

With so many false dawns in the past many remaindeeply skeptical however events in recent months have taken most commentatorsby surprise and should nonetheless be welcomed. In the words of Chinese philosopherLaozi, “a journey of a thousand miles begins with one step”

Winds of Change or Gambit by Embattled Prime Minister? Malaysia, reform of the Internal Security Act and Political Scandal.

2011-09-22T17:26:00.000-04:00

Personally I am notconvinced that Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Tun Razak has had a Damasceneconversion that has led him to embrace political reform. While I welcome theannouncement on September 15^th that the Internal Security Act, thePrinting Presses and Publications Act, and other laws will be abolished oramended, the announcement suggests that the ruling Barisan Nasional (NationalFront) may be gearing up for the country’s 12^th General Electionwith speculation already rife that the election may be as early as Novemberthis year. (In Malaysia elections have to be held at least once every fiveyears, though there is no minimum time that must elapse). Nevertheless byembracing political reform Najib appears to have appropriated one of the coreissues that has united the three constituent parties that form the oppositionPakatan Rakyat (Peoples Pact) and potentially turned it into a Barisaninitiative. It also suggests, or at least portrays, a return to the center byUMNO, the senior constituent party of the Barisan.

However, embracingpolitical reform at this point also conveniently deflects attention from thecorruption scandals that have bedeviled Najib’s premiership. Since he took overas PM in 2008 Najib has faced continued allegations and rumors concerning themurder of Mongolian businesswoman Altantuya Shaariibuu in 2006. Altantuya wasmurdered in Shah Alam in October 2006 and her remains exploded using C4 inorder to try to destroy any evidence. Altantuya, variously described as a translator, student, model andparamour of one of Najib’s associates, was allegedly murdered because she haddiscovered that commissions had been paid by the Franco-Spanish company Aramisto the Malaysian company Perimekar for “support and coordinationservices,” in the sale of two FrenchScorpene submarines to the Malaysian government for $1 billion. The defenseminister at the time was current Prime Minister Najib, Atlantuya was having anaffair with his close associate Abdul Razak Baginda; and Razak Baginda’s wifewas the principal shareholder of the company that wholly owned Perimekar. Altantuya is alleged to have attemptedto blackmail Razak Baginda for a share of the fee prior to her murder.

Altantuya Shaariibuu

During the trial Razak Baginda's privateinvestigator P. Balasubramaniam, made a statutory declaration that Najib himselfhad had a relationship with Atlantuya but had ‘passed her on’ to Razak Bagindabecause it would have been unseemly to have a mistress in the event of becomingPrime Minister. The following day Balasubramaniam retracted his statementbefore latter leaving Malaysia for India where he has since claimed that he wasforced to make the retraction and allegedly offered RM5million (US$1.48 million) to forget his statement connecting Najib to Altantuyaby Najib’s brother, Nizam, and wife, Rosmah Mansor.

French human rights lawyer William Bourdon

While the trial was concluded in April 2009,and two police officers were executed for their role in the murder, the casehas stubbornly refused to go away. Eight months after the verdict the Malaysian human rights NGO Suaramlodged a complaint with the French government over the payment of thecommission by Aramis (which is a subsidiary of French arms companies Thales andDCNS) leading to a full-scale investigation of the case by French lawyersincluding the prominent specialist on human rights William Bourdon. The storyhit the news again in July this year when Bourdon was detained by immigrationofficers at Kuala Lumpur airport and then deported, ostensibly for violatingthe terms of his tourist visa because he had given a talk on the island ofPenang the previous evening. Throwinto the maelstrom that the case has caused the mass demonstration forelectoral reform on July 9^th, the ongoing (second) trial of formerdeputy Prime Minister and opposition leader Anwar Ibrahim for sodomy, scandalsover kickbacks in the purchase of 18 Sukhoi fighter jets, and increasinglyferocious attacks by former Prime Minister Mahathir on the government’s economicpolicies, and one gets a sense of an increasingly embattled Najib.

So the announcement that there will be a majoroverhaul of some of the country’s most restrictive laws on civil rights has certainlycast the Prime Minister in a much more positive light, diverted attention from allof the above travails, and has the potential to steal one of the opposition’smost visible campaign platforms. The test however will be whether theannouncement is actually implemented in a major overhaul or not. While it doesrepresent a bold move, already there are calls from conservative critics tomaintain the “preventive spirit of the ISA” in the two new anti-terrorism lawsthat are mooted to replace the Act. If Najib fails to deliver the repeal of theISA, or if he merely rebrands it, then the effect is likely to both underminehis credibility further and galvanize the country’s opposition.What happens next is anyone’s guessbut if Najib does press ahead with these reforms I would expect a snap generalelection to capitalize on the political dividend it could deliver.

Winds of Change? Malaysia to Repeal ISA

2011-09-15T18:21:00.000-04:00

I'll follow up on this in more detail in my next post but I was frankly stunned today when I heard that Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Tun Razak had announced his intention to repeal the country's much hated Internal Security Act. A relic of British rule, the Act was introduced during the armed struggle against the Malayan Communist Party known as The Emergency (1948-60). The Act essentially is a preventative detention law that has been used by the Malaysian government repeatedly since independence to arrest and silence critics and dissidents. The Act allows anyone "acting in any manner prejudicial to the security of Malaysia or any part thereof or to the maintenance of essential services therein or the economic life thereof" to be detained for 60 days without trial and thereafter for a period of up to two years with the approval of the Home Minister. The latter provision effectively meant that the Act could be used indefinitely.

Since August 1960 over 10,000 people have been arrested under the ISA of whom perhaps the most famous was former deputy Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim. Now leader of the opposition Parti Keadilan Rakyat (PKR), Anwar was arrested in September 1998 only months after he had been sacked as Deputy Prime Minister. Other notable ISA detainees include Lim Kit Siang, the long-time leader of the largely Chinese opposition party the Democratic Action Party, leaders of the 2007 Hindu Rights Action Force, and the prominent blogger Raja Petra Kamaruddin.

So why has Prime Minister Najib decided to announce the repeal of this repressive law? Well I'll discuss this more in my next post, but few people would be convinced that it represented a Damascene conversion to the cause of democratic reform. Instead it is more likely to be a cynical ploy to deflect growing criticism of his performance as Prime Minister both in the country at large, and more crucially within his own United Malays National Organization (UMNO). It may also represent a final realization by UMNO, and the multi-party coalition that it leads (and has run Malaysia since independence), that given the party's resources and other incumbent advantages there is no reason why the party would be guaranteed to lose any genuinely free and fair general election. Indeed conversely, embracing electoral reform and leading the country to a more democratic future may even be a viable electoral strategy in the face of a more concerted opposition.

Whatever the reasons, if this announcement really does lead to the Act's repeal then today will have marked a historic moment in Malaysia's history.

Dancing in Detention: Crime and Punishment in the Philippines.

2011-09-03T19:36:00.000-04:00

Inmates at Cebu prison performing Thriller

One of the biggest viral hits on the Internet to date stars1500 inmates of Cebu Provincial Detention and Rehabilitation Center in thePhilippines, dancing to Michael Jackson’s 1983 hit Thriller. Clad intheir identical orange prison uniforms the inmates of this maximum securityprison have become unlikely stars of Youtube with their version of Thrillergenerating almost 50 million views on the video-sharing website. Since theoriginal 2007 viral hit, videos of the inmates performing ‘Bebot’ (by the BlackEyed Peas), ‘I Will Follow Him’ (from the film Sister Act), Jump (The Pointer Sisters), YMCA (The Village People),a medley of Queen songs and many many others have all become viral sensations.

The striking finale of the troupe's performance of This is It

As their fame grew the prisoners gave special performancesfor the governor’s birthday party, for the Cardinal Archbishop of Cebu and inlate 2007 contestants in The Philippine version of Celebrity big Brother weregiven the challenge of dancing with the inmates as one of their weekly tasks. The public and media attentionculminated in January 2010 when Sony Pictures took the decision to fly two ofthe top dancers from Michael Jackson’s “This Is It” show to Cebu to choreographa performance of the song which was filmed for the global launch of Jackson’s This is It DVD. What is all the more startling is that whilemost of the stars of these performances are serving sentences of less thanthree years there are over 300 who are awaiting trial for murder, rape or drugstrafficking.

Byron Garcia

The man credited with being behind this unlikely dancingtroupe was Byron Garcia, who was originally hired as a security consultant tothe prison in 2004, before being appointed as head of the prison by his sisterGwendolyn Garcia, the governor of Cebu province. Having suffered prison riots,and beset by gang violence, widespread drug use and corruption Garcia carriedout a string of reforms at the prison that culminated in the introduction of anhourly exercise program from which the dance classes evolved. Garcia claims that he turned to danceas a form of rehabilitation that would heal the emotional and psychologicaltrauma of incarceration, restore the self-esteem of inmates and serve as atransition to reintegration in society. In his own words Garcia remarks,“penology practices make living hell in jails, the tendency is we breed thenext generation of demons when they are discharged. If prisoners are healedwhile in prison, then we make them better persons when they are released andthey stay away from crime.”

The inmates performing I Will Follow You from Sister Act

However the program has not been without controversy.Testimony from former prisoners claims that violence was threatened againstthose whose refused to take part, while Amnsety International has criticizedthe spectacle for diverting attention away from concerns about poor conditionsand overcrowding in the Filipino prison system. In February 2010 publicperformances were temporarily suspended to allow an investigation into the useof funds from donations by fans which eventually led Byron Garcia to loosen histies with the prison. Additionally to meet concerns that the dance routineswere undermining rehabilitation programs as a whole the Governor instigated aseries of changes that now mean participation in the routines is no longermandatory and emphasis is also placed on other programs such as farming.However following the ‘success’ of Cebu’s dancing inmates other Filipinoprovinces are now looking at replicating the program including Ilocos Norte,where the governor Imme is the daughter of former dictator, Ferdinand Marcos. Whateverits merits or flaws there is something distinctly Filipino about thisphenomenon and somehow I can’t see it taking on in America. Can you imagine 1,500burly tattooed Americans line-dancing to “Folsom Prison Blues”? Me neither.

Workshop Report on the Internet and Democracy in East Asia

2011-09-03T17:14:00.001-04:00

This year has seen dramatic political change take placeacross North Africa. From Tunisia to Egypt, Libya and beyond the ‘old guard’ inthe Arab world has been rocked by popular uprisings in which social mediawebsites such as Facebook and Twitter have played a visible role in thecoordination and organization of demonstrations as well as in the disseminationof information worldwide. Suchevents have thrust questions about the potential impact of the Internet andsocial media platforms to the fore in political science, from questions aboutcensorship and privacy concerns to their impact on authoritarian regimes.

In light of these events last week (August 24-25) theUniversity of Louisville’s Center for Asian Democracy hosted a workshopentitled “The Jasmine Revolution and the Bamboo Firewall: The impact of theInternet and new social media on political change in East Asia”. 10 scholarsdrawn from Arizona State, Cornell, Marquette, Northern Illinois, The Universityof Hawaii, SUNY, Wesleyan, The University of Washington and UoL were joined byLouisa Chiang (Program Officer for China at the NationalEndowment for Democracy), Shanthi Kalathi (Consultant to the Communication forGovernance & Accountability Program of The World Bank) and JillianYork (Director for International Freedom of Expression at the ElectronicFrontier Foundation).

Participants gave presentations on a range of themes fromthe impact of new technologies on civil society to issues of censorship andcircumvention as well as case studies including China, Indonesia andMalaysia. Debate and discussionwas constructive informed, lively especially during the afternoon roundtable onthe Wednesday afternoon. Summaries of the papers will shortly be published bythe Center for Asian Democracy, University of Louisville, while the fullversions will be submitted for publication as a special issue of a leadingjournal on Asian political science later in the Fall. For further informationon the workshop or future CAD events please like us on Facebook : https://www.facebook.com/CenterforAsianDemocracy

The Jasmine Revolution in SE Asia: Facebooked, Twittered and Recapped

2011-08-23T10:20:00.000-04:00

With the war in Libya reaching its conclusion, it now looks as if Colonel Gaddafi will be the next authoritarian leader in North Africa to fall as a result the remarkable events dubbed the Arab Spring or Jasmine Revolutions. As I noted back in March many both within Asia and beyond have asked whether such 'blossoming' of dissent and revolt could occur in the authoritarian and semi-authoritarian regimes of Northeast, Southeast and Central Asia. This week the Center for Asian Democracy at the University of Louisville will host a workshop that will explore precisely that question. Entitled "The Jasmine Revolution and the 'Bamboo' Firewall: The impact of the Internet and new social media on political change in East Asia.", the workshop will host 13 scholars from prestigious academic institutions and non-profit organizations around the country to participate and explore the potential impact of technology on democracy in Asia. Next week I hope to share some of the workshop's findings with you, but for this week I am reposting the original blog entry from March... (with a few very minor amendments.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Tunisian Protestors

Over the past few months the international community has witnessed unprecedented political opposition and revolutions in the Middle East. Already this so called ‘Jasmine Revolution’ or ‘Arab Spring’ has overturned two of the countries long-standing political regimes, the Ben-Ali regime in Tunisia and more surprisingly the 30 year rule of strongman Hosni Mubarak in Egypt. In Libya it resulted in the descent to near Civil War between Muammar Qaddafi and pro-democracy rebels while its demonstration effects have incited and continue to incite protest in countries from Bahrain to Oman, and from Jordan to Morocco and Syria. Much of this caught everyone by surprise, be they academics, diplomats, journalists or policy advisors. Nevertheless this outburst of popular discontent reflects a number of long-term trends, most specifically a demographic explosion in the 1970s and 1980s means that an estimated 65 per cent of the region’s population is under 30. While significant sums of money have been poured into education, both secondary and tertiary, youth unemployment is a major socio-economic problem with an estimated one in four unemployed. Such high levels of unemployment combined with pervasive levels of corruption, authoritarian political systems with extensive security surveillance and harassment, and the huge growth in the number of users of social network sites (Egypt has for example over 5 millon Facebook users of whom 58% are under 25) provided a potent combination the repercussions of which are still playing out as we speak.

Malaysian Prime Minister
Najib Tun Razak

This begs the question as to whether such a popular uprising could happen in that other bastion of authoritarian and quasi-democratic regimes, Southeast Asia. Could the demonstration effects spread to countries as diverse as Cambodia, Malaysia, and Vietnam, among others? Leaders in these countries are clearly worried. Inn February the Malaysian Prime Minister Najib issued a stark warning saying “Don’t think what is happening in Tunisia and Egypt will also happen in Malaysia.. We will not allow it to happen here”. Former deputy Prime Minister and opposition leader Anwar Ibrahim however had a different take remarking that the revolutions in Tunisia and Egypt should be a warning signal to other autocracies “whether in the Middle East, Pakistan or Southeast Asia”. Anwar continued noting that the demise of regimes where corruption and nepotism flourished, should remind Malaysians that governments built on the suppression of citizens are always temporary.

Cambodian Prime Minister
Hun Sen

In Cambodia, strongman Hun Sen, who has dominated national politics since 1989 and been Prime Minister since 1998, was even starker in his warnings stating on January 20^th, in response to comments on a Radio Free Asia report that a Tunisian-like protest could occur in Cambodia. Hun Sen lashed out stating “I have to send a message to people who want to inspire a riot (like) in Tunisia … I will close the door and beat the dog," Again in contrast the embattled long-standing anti-corruption opposition figure Sam Rainsy echoed Anwar’s views stated on February 2^nd, the day pro-Mubarak forces attacked anti-Mubarak supporters in Tahir square, that "I see that it is not long … that there would be such a situation in Cambodia that is the same as Egypt and Tunisia, where people have ousted leaders from power."  

In Vietnam the government have already ratcheted up a crackdown on dissidents but this has not stopped growing online calls for pro-democracy protests in the country. On February 21^st one of Vietnam’s leading dissidents Dr Nguyen Dan Que, 69, launched an appeal in Ho Chi Minh City asking people to take to the streets to save the country. His appeal was taken up by a Vietnamese website urging supporters of political change to meet each Sunday in Hanoi and HCMC. Another dissident group, Bloc 8406, which issued a manifesto on democratization on April 8^th 2006, issued an online statement in which it urged Vietnamese to follow the example of North Africa and demand greater democracy and human rights.

Thich Quang Duc's
self-immolation 1963

Of greater concern for the Vietnamese are reports (picked up and broadcast online on CNN) that on February 17^th an engineer called Pham Thanh Son set himself on fire to protest at the confiscation of his family's property by local authorities. Although the authorities claim his death was accidental, caused by the gas tank of his motorcycle exploding, such an incident echoes the self-immolation of Mohamed Buoazizi in Tunisia, whose protest and death sparked the beginning of the unrest in Tunisia. More symbolically both acts echo the infamous self-immolation of the Buddhist monk Thich Quang Duc in Saigon in 1963 whose sacrifice led to the downfall of President Ngo Dinh Diem in South Vietnam.

Poster from Burmese
Facebook group

Even in the region’s most brutal and repressive regime, Burma, where a military Junta has presided over the country since 1988, a Facebook group entitled ‘Just Do It Against Military Dictatorship’ was set up at the end of February denouncing Burmese military chief Senior-General Than Shwe, and as in Egypt urging the army to join with the people. The group has prompted the distribution of anti-government materials in a number of cities across the country and while it only had 1,374 ‘friends’ when this piece was written, Facebook has become the second most popular website in Burma with over 400,000 members.

Obviously there are clear differences between these regimes and their counterparts in North Africa. In the case of Vietnam political power no longer resides in the figure of a single authoritarian leader but instead the succession problem has largely been resolved, as in China, by the retirement and promotion of successive generations of party apparatchiks. In addition in Cambodia and Vietnam government censorship and the security and intelligence forces are both more pervasive, heavy-handed and to date proven more pro-active in anticipating political unrest and acting quickly and decisively to ‘nip-it-in –the-bud’ before such unrest can appeal to wider constituencies.

High youth unemployment
in Southeast Asia

Nevertheless the median age in Cambodia, Malaysia and Vietnam is like Tunisia and Egypt under 30 years old. In Malaysia unemployment levels are very low in comparison to international averages, less than 4 per cent of the total work force were unemployed as of 2008. However youth unemployment was almost three times this figure at 10.7 per cent. Similar disparities exist in Cambodia where according to International Labor Organization figures for youth unemployment are expected to rise to 14.8 per cent against a total unemployment figure of 3.5 per cent.

Likewise allegations of corruption and cronyism are widespread across the region with Transparency International rating Burma, Cambodia, Malaysia and Vietnam respectively as 176^th, 154^th, 56^th and 116^th in their 2010 Corruption Perceptions ranking (out of 178 countries). While Malaysia’s figure does not appear bad in comparison it should be noted that over the past decade Malaysia has steadily fallen down T.I.’s ranking from a high of 33 in 2002. Indeed the spread of corruption and the retrenchment in civil liberties since 2008 led the Wall Street Journal to remark, in an article today (March 4^th), that Malaysia, “once regarded as one of Asia’s most promising emerging economies.. has soured”.

One of the most talked about features of the recent wave of pro-democracy demonstrations and uprisings occurring across the Arab world, has been the role played by information communication technology and social networking software. Of the latter much has been made of the fact that protests were ‘advertised’ as forthcoming events on Facebook while Twitter has become an instant source of information as it happens on the ground. Indeed in response to an anonymous posting on Twitter calling for protests in Chinese towns and cities on February 20^th authorities swiftly arrested a number of online activists, deployed a heavy security presence on the date in question and began a crackdown on foreign journalists. While few anticipated or expected the demonstration effects from North Africa to have any significant effect in China clearly the events dubbed the ‘Jasmine Revolution’ reveal the deep insecurity of the regime despite its booming economic growth. And yet all this begs the question how important social networking really is as a tool for social organization and political protest. Will the revolution really be ‘tweeted’ or is the impact of ICTs greatly exaggerated?

Use of cellphones was ubiquitous in
the recent Egyptian revolution

The impact of new information communication technologies on political mobilization is not new. The use of cellphone text messaging by demonstrators to coordinate protests was first witnessed during the revolution that brought down General Suharto in Indonesia in 1999, during the ESDA II protests in The Philippines in 2001 that led to the resignation of Joseph Estrada in The Philippines and during the Tulip Revolution in Kyrgyzstan in March 2005. Similarly Facebook was used prominently during the uprising by Buddhist monks in Burma in 2007, while Twitter, a microblogging tool that limits users to 140 characters, gained prominence during the failed Green Revolution in Iran in 2009. Likewise conventional blogging has become a common feature of politics in Southeast Asia particularly in Malaysia where prominent anti-government bloggers have risen to prominence and notoriety.

Nevertheless what is new is the integration of these disparate technologies into the latest generation of cellphones (dubbed smart phones) that allow the user to take photographs, record video, access the Internet and communicate instantly via text messaging and social networking. The result is according to Philip Howard, professor of communication at the University of Washington, that “savvy opposition campaigners [have] turned social media applications like Facebook from minor pop culture fads into a major tool of political communication” (2011, p.4).

In many countries worldwide, including Southeast Asia, governments have traditionally relied on their control of the mainstream media to silence or limit opposition voices while restricting access to alternative media sources, including foreign media. Traditional media was a unidirectional structure in which the state could monopolize the production of content. The new media by contrast is fundamentally challenging this. On the one hand the nature of the new media is such that users are both consumers and producers of content. Individual users can post their own stories and become citizen journalists which in turn can be shared and evade even the harshest censorship controls and repressive regimes. In Burma in 2007 citizen journalists equipped with handheld camcorders, provided by the Norwegian based Democratic Voice of Burma, were able to record and broadcast footage of the Buddhist monk uprising and its repression (as documented in the award-winning documentary Burma VJ). Similarly during the Green revolution in Iran hundreds of videos were uploaded daily on YouTube. On the other hand these technologies now allows ordinary citizen to effectively conduct surveillance and monitor the state, documenting human rights abuses and improving the capacity of civil society.

Critics of the ‘leveling and enabling thesis’ advance a number of arguments of which the most often heard are firstly that all technology is neutral -- even the new information communication technologies can be manipulated to expand the reach of the state rather than to minimize it, and that secondly the impact of the new media is exaggerated because significant digital divides continue to exist. Thus the spread and penetration of Internet access remains limited to a small largely urban middle class elite and is not a widespread social phenomenon.

Courtesy of Slate magazine
http://tinyurl.com/63ttddf

While it is certainly true that some regimes have proven to be incredibly sophisticated in controlling the Internet there remains sufficient cause to be optimistic that the decentralized, diffused and non-hierarchical character of the Internet mitigates even the strictest controls. Much is made for example of ‘The Great Firewall of China’ that enables Beijing to deny access to certain Internet IP addresses (thereby blocking access to certain websites, e.g Voice of American and BBC News) as well as the ability to scan the URL and packet transmissions for certain censored keywords (such as Tiananmen or more recently even the word Jasmine). Nevertheless for all its sophistication Beijing’s surveillance system largely relies on self-censorship, in other words the fear that a user will be caught and punished severely for accessing banned websites. Internet users and content providers have become ever more sophisticated at circumventing such controls. The use of proxy servers outside China, virtual private networks, mirror sites, and onion routing (the development of software to allow anonymous encrypted communication) means that there is constant competition between regulators and has become an ongoing cyber war. In addition countries like China limit the number of nodes that connect the ‘national’ information infrastructure to the ‘global’ worldwide web in order to enable them to operate their firewalls effectively. Ironically this can make such regimes information infrastructure vulnerable to Denial of Service attacks against the limited number of servers and ISPs that are required to operate strong filtering technologies effectively.

In terms of the diffusion of ICTs and the question of digital divides, the diffusion of mobile phones has far-outstripped the penetration of personal computers and fixed landlines in the developing world. Cambodia became the first country in the world where cellphone ownership surpassed landlines and that was as early as 1993. Consequently, it is estimated that within 5 years mobile Internet access will exceed PC Internet usage. Already 20 per cent of cellphones worldwide are 3G with sales of the iPhone and Android driving this figure ever higher. In addition as Howard notes it is largely irrelevant whether cellphone and social networking users are largely urban and middle class since these groups invariably form the social elites upon which regime legitimacy effectively rests in authoritarian countries. In addition internet penetration rates are often an inaccurate measure of the number of people who have access to the internet since it is difficult to measure the number of people who access the Net via cybercafés. In addition computers and cellphones are often shared among families.

While social networking and the diffusion of ICTs does not substitute for traditional political activism “in times of crisis banal tools for wasting time.. become the supporting infrastructure of social movements” (Howard, 2001, p. 12). While it may be true, as the detractors argue, that cellphones, Facebook and Twitter of themselves are not a substitute for traditional forms of social organization, protest and collective action; it is safe to say that it is now inconceivable that such technologies will not be a critical feature of all future collective action. As Howard concludes, “it is clear that increasingly the route to democratization is a digital one” (p. 201). The revolution in other words will be tweeted.

Reference: Howard, N. (2011) The Digital Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy, New York: Oxford University Press.

China, the United States and the battle for brains.

2011-08-16T17:14:00.000-04:00

Professor Susan Strange

The former British political economist and Economist journalist Susan Strange is famous for arguing that the concept of power in international politics is so much more than simply brute military force. Instead the security structure she argued is but one aspect of a multifaceted structure of power that also includes production, finance and knowledge. Over twenty years ago Professor Strange tackled the great question of American decline and concluded that the “decline school has grossly overdone its Cassandra act”. Instead she argued that the US still possessed great structural power, not just its military muscle but more importantly in “information-rich occupations”. For Strange it was not important that blue-collar jobs were being lost overseas but instead that Americans “should wear white collars and design, direct and finance the whole operation”. At the time the great ‘threat’ to US power came from Japan’s seemingly inexorable rise, the US was faced with budget and trade deficits and there were increasing calls for protectionism against foreign competitors. Strange’s conclusions however were highly prescient. The 1990s saw the dot.com boom and the emergence of an ever-growing number of information-rich companies that would eventually become household names globally. Microsoft first launched its Office suite in 1990, Amazon was founded in 1994, Google was founded in 1996, and the iPod hot the high streets for the first time in 2001. In addition the US balanced its budget, actually running surpluses for four years between 1998-2001.

While I have discussed the question of US decline before the point of the above is to suggest that despite the current financial crises in the United States the country continues to enjoy significant structural advantages that at least should caution against Cassandra-like assessments of the country’s future. America’s problem is more a political one, as indicated by Standard and Poor’s in its decision to downgrade the country’s sovereign debt, than an economic one. In order to make this case I want to turn to Strange’s knowledge structure and in particular to the United States’ higher education system. Although politicians frequently bemoan the decline of American education by pointing to its ranking in international tables for English and math performance they rarely focus on the one area of outstanding success: its higher education system. Six of the top ten universities in the world are American, thirteen of the top 20, and 41 of the top 100. By contrast only five Chinese universities make the top 100. America’s Universities are world leaders in technology production, with 13 of them among the top 300 organizations to receive patents from the US Patent and Trademark Office in 2010. As Arundeep S. Pradhan of Oregon Health and Science University testified to Congress in 2007, “Since 1980, American universities have spun off more than 5,000 companies, which have been responsible for the introduction of 1.25 products per day into the marketplace and have contributed to the creation of over 260,000 jobs. The result has been a contribution of over $40 billion dollars annually to the American economy.” Consequently it is no surprise that US universities are an enormous magnet for foreign students.

In 2010, for example, almost 700,000 foreign students were registered at colleges across the United States of which approximately 18 per cent (128,000) were from China. As a result the United States is now the preferred destination for Chinese students going abroad attracting 23 per cent of the total. Furthermore over the past decade the number of Chinese students going to study in the United States has increased by 80 per cent from 54,466 to 128,000. In other words record numbers of middle class Chinese are choosing to send their children to study in the United States and other Western countries rather than have them educated domestically. Of these the International Institute for Education estimates that about two-thirds pay for themselves translating into approximately $20 billion of foreign earnings for the United States and supporting over 100,000 jobs. Unsurprisingly business and management or engineering are the most popular degree programs attracting 44 per cent of all foreign students, but also of particular note is that of the 128,000 Chinese students almost 70 per cent are graduate students.


Prof. T.D Lee, won Nobel Prize for Physics in 1957 at Colombia University. He became a US citizen in 1964

Naturally the Chinese government is anxious that it’s best and brightest return home to contribute to the country’s economic development. The problem however is that sizeable numbers do not! Since 1978 over 1.6 million Chinese students and scholars have gone overseas but of these only 30 per cent have returned. Indeed the return rate for US-educated Chinese PhD graduates in science and engineering is only 8 per cent compared to 19 per cent for India, 57 per cent for Taiwan and 59 per cent for South Korea. Last year alone, for example, 70,000 Chinese applicants obtained permanent residency, second only to Mexican applicants. The scale of this brain drain from China, and its benefit to the United States should not be dismissed. A 2009 MIT report for example showed that in 2003 9.2 per cent of all students obtaining PhDs in science and engineering in the United States were born in China and that close to 9 per cent of all holders of doctorates in science and engineering in the US were also born in China. So what you might say? Well while nine ethnic Chinese have won Nobel Prizes, none of them are Chinese nationals, and, with one exception, the work that earned them their prizes was done outside China. Such work eventually turns into patents, licenses, and other outputs that drive a new generation of start-ups and the next wave of technological and economic development. In addition such figures also show that in the battle for brains, in the battle for the knowledge entrepreneurs of the next two decades the United States is continuing to best its competitors. Much as this produced dividends in the dot.com era it is likely that there will be a surge in new technologies in a host of industries from IT to health, from nanotechnology to engineering.

Prof. Charles Kao won the 2009 Nobel Prize
for physics. Born in Shanghai he received
his PhD from UCL (Britain) in 1965 and
is now a US citizen

To counter this the Chinese government has launched a drive to bring its talent back home. The Talent Development Policy (2010-20) will provide fiscal and other incentives for high-caliber students who return home. These will include generous resettlement packages, as well incentives for the children and spouses of those willing to work in China. However while the Chinese may be willing to throw money around to lure talent to its shores the biggest hurdle China faces in its science and technological development is that its science and academic structure is hampered by plagiarism, bureaucracy, deference to authority and corruption. Cao Cong, a fellow at The State University of New York argues that “while science Nobels often are awarded for work done in a laureate's 30s or 40s, China's seniority-based hierarchy requires scientists to wait until late in their career to direct major research” In addition he argues promising scientists are often plucked from their posts to serve in government rather than to continue to produce research. Finally as the tragic high-speed rail crash recently demonstrated, corruption bedevils the Chinese economy from top to bottom.

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg as a child

None of this means that the United States does not face enormous pressures and challenges to retain its position as the world’s pre-eminent power, nor does it mitigate for the economic and financial damage done by the partisan warfare in Washington. What it does demonstrate is that the United States retains enormous structural resources and advantages, particularly in the area of knowledge production, resources and advantages that arguably none of its competitors and potential rivals possesses to the same degree. Before you dismiss this just remember that in 1988 when Susan Strange challenged the prevailing orthodoxy of American economic decline Mark Zuckerberg, the founder of Facebook with an estimated personal wealth of $13.5 billion, had not even started kindergarten.

“He Who Digs a Hole for Another, May Fall in Himself": China's Hidden Economic Problems.

2011-08-09T12:35:00.000-04:00

Following the downgrade by Standard and Poors of US sovereign debt from the gold standard AAA to AA+ the Chinese government lambasted the United States for its ‘addiction to debt’ and called on the United States to implement more responsible policies to bring its deficit problems under control. At the same the governor of China’s Central Bank restated that the Chinese government would continue to look to diversify its investments out of US treasuries. China’s words are of little surprise, as the single largest foreign holder of US treasury bills and securities, estimated at in excess of $1.2 trillion worth, the Chinese are clearly anxious about the value of their investments. Yet again such statements coupled with the psychological blow to the US of losing its top-rated debt rating prompted renewed soul-searching about American decline and the seemingly inexorable rise of China. And yet such talk misses a number of important considerations.

1) The Undervaluation of the Chinese Remimbi (Yuan)

How and why has China accumulated such enormous stocks of US securities? It is widely accepted among economists worldwide that China’s currency has been deliberately kept undervalued by the Chinese government for years. The rationale behind this decision is multi-faceted but put simply goes something like this. Keeping its currency low boosts the export sector of the Chinese economy and it is this sector that has been largely responsible for the dynamic growth of the Chinese economy over the past three decades. Basically, if 1 Dollar buys 7 Yuan, and a exporter sells a Chinese Shirt for 10 dollars – he pockets 70 yuan. But if one Dollar was worth only 5 Yuans, the exporter would only be able to pocket 50 yuans. Conversely by keeping its currency undervalued imports from other countries (i.e. US exports) are kept more expensive. This has naturally resulted in a massive trade surplus.

In a free currency market China’s surplus would indicate an excess demand for Yuan by foreign buyers of Chinese goods which would lead the Chinese currency to appreciate in value against for example the US $ until the surplus was eliminated. However because China manipulates its currency the government itself prints billions of Yuan in order to buy US dollars to boost international demand for the dollar and keep it artificially high. One way of doing this is to buy US treasuries since the products a) are considered safe investments and b) deliver a fixed rate of return (interest) to the Chinese government. In practice what this means is that for years the recycling of trillions of dollars by the Chinese government has effectively meant that poor Chinese peasants have been subsidizing overconsumption by the US government and US consumers!

Ordos, China. Homes for 5 million but only
150,000 residents. Nearly all properties sold!

It has also had inflationary consequences for the Chinese government contributing to a dangerous property bubble that potentially could be as catastrophic for the Chinese economy as the collapse of the US housing market in 2007-08. In 2010 construction accounted for 13 per cent of the Chinese economy, twice the level of the 1990s. Beijing is one of the most expensive real estate markets in the world relative to the average income of its population. Between 2006-2011 the price for an average apartment in Beijing in rose from $100,000 to $250,000, or put another way from the equivalent of 32 years disposable income for the average resident to 57 years. During this property boom China’s middle classes have bought record numbers of second homes, simply as speculative investments, and are reluctant to sell, or indeed rent. The opacity of the banking system means economists have no idea how much of the borrowing extended was easy credit, but already prices in Beijing and Shanghai have begun to fall.

2) China’s own debt mountain

The other great quandary is just how big is China’s own national debt. Again the problem is simply that economists cannot trust the official government figures because of the lack of transparency in national statistics in China and indeed the deliberate manipulation of those figures by the Communist government. Officially China’s budget deficit is a little over 3 per cent of GDP compared to the US figure of 12.3 per cent. Its official national debt is 10.3 trillion yuan which equals $1.5 trillion or 17-20% of its GDP (depending on estimates). America’s current $14 trillion national debt is equivalent to about 72 per cent of the national income. So no problem then?

“A paper tiger cannot bear close scrutiny”

Well not quite… following a report from China’s state auditor that local governments had run up 10.7 trillion yuan of debt Moody’s has calculated that the local government debt burden in China could be 3.5 trillion yuan ($500 bn) higher than previously estimated. Furthermore Beijing based research firm Dragonomics argues that because of local government debts and the lack of separation of the country’s Central Bank from the government the figure could be much higher. How much higher? Another 23 trillion higher! At this level China’s national debt would be equivalent to 89 per cent of GDP or in other words worse than the United States.

The problem is we simply don’t know how big China’s debt is, but increasingly analysts are starting to examine Chinese economic figures and statistics ever more closely. From ghost cities such as Ordos and Manzhouli, with the capacity for 5 million inhabitants but populations of just 150,000, to prices in some Shanghai and Beijing bars in excess of London or Paris the Chinese economy just doesn’t seem to make sense. As a result the bears are starting to gather and fund managers are getting more and more concerned that the Chinese economy might be built on a house of cards.

China’s ethnic problem: Pandora’s Box or Powder Keg?

2011-08-01T14:33:00.000-04:00

In recent days there has been renewed violence in the troubled northwestern Chinese province of Xinjiang only two weeks after Chinese security forces killed 18 people following a riot in which hostages were taken. The riot in the town of Hotan on July 18^th took place almost two years after the region was engulfed in widespread unrest known as the Urümqi riots. Approximately the size of Alaska or Western Europe, the Autonomous Region of Xinjiang is both the largest region of China and comparatively sparsely populated. It is also home to China’s largest Muslim population, the ethnic Uyghur who while a plurality only constitute a majority of the population in the western and southwestern areas of the region. Like the much more famous case of Tibet, Xinjiang has been on the outer fringes of Chinese control for centuries, its fortunes waxing and waning in an inverse relationship with the strength or weakness of successive Chinese regimes. This briefly culminated in the short-lived, and ill-fated ‘independence’ of three northern districts of modern Xinjiang under a Soviet-backed Chinese warlord in November 1944 that came to an end with the creation of the Peoples Republic of China.

Former Chinese Premier Zhu Rhongji

Like Tibet much of the ethnic violence in recent years has been a result both of Beijing’s continuing hard-line approach towards ‘splitist’ tendencies and Uyghur opposition to the officially sanctioned, and indeed supported, migration of Han Chinese into the region. The latter is the result of the ‘Go West’, or ‘Chinese Western Development’ program that was launched by then-Premier Zhu Rhongji in 2000 in order to alleviate the growing economic division between the eastern maritime board and the rest of the country. While the Western provinces of China constitute over 70 per cent of the area of Mainland China they contain less than a third of the country’s population of 1.3 billion. Massive infrastructure projects including highways and rail lines were largely designed according to Nicholas Bequelin of Human Rights to "bind Xinjiang more closely to the rest of the PRC." While the Chinese government denies that its policies are designed to promote demographic change the proportion of Xinjiang’s population that is Han Chinese has risen from approximately 5 per cent in the 1940s to around 40 per cent today.

Beijing’s policy toward ‘restive’ regions like Xinjiang has been one utterly and completely dedicated to an iron-like grip by central government. Religious expression is fiercely repressed and in the aftermath of September 11^th the Chinese government has frequently exaggerated the threat of Islamic violence, linking for example the East Turkestan Independence Movement with Al-Qaeda, to justify their repression of social and political unrest. In 2008 for example Amnesty International accused the Chinese government of using the War on Terror “to justify harsh repression of ethnic Uyghurs”. For the Uyghurs the continued inflow of ethnic Han Chinese threatens their distinct ethnic, linguistic and cultural identity and threatens to make them eventually a minority in the region as a whole.

Beijing’s overall approach is utterly dominated by a fierce determination to avoid what it frequently refers to ‘Splitist’ tendencies. This attitude is informed by a reading of history that views accommodation with ethnic and religious minorities as undermining China from within, alongside an international system dominated by powers that seek to weaken China by providing external support to such movements. The weakness of China, according to this historical world-view, resulted in the loss of Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan during the ‘century of shame’, and thus the strength and unity of modern China is paramount to the country’s national security and continued economic and political rise. Nowhere is this attitude more absurdly visible than in the regime’s refusal to countenance separate time zones despite the fact that the country crosses five of these.

The danger of Beijing’s approach to Xinjiang is that in its refusal to tolerate real autonomy for the ethnic Uyghurs it risks fanning Islamic radicalization. Ironically as the Chinese government has covertly pursued a monolingual and monocultural policy to counter the growing restiveness of the local population, and in pursuit of national security, Islam and Uyghur identity are becoming ever more synonymous. As in so many areas of policy the impulse to control, censor, and repress only fans the flames of protest, dissent and dissatisfaction. Sometimes what is thought to be a Pandora’s box can instead be a powder keg waiting to explode.

Muzzling the Media in Malaysia: Libel and Censorship

2011-07-25T12:02:00.000-04:00

It was abundantly clear from the reaction to the Bersih 2.0 rally on July 9^th that the Malaysian government has become ever more insecure about its hold on power. And yet as the government becomes ever more insecure the measures it resort to in order to shore up its hold on power become ever more disproportionate and some might say desperate. Last week provided two examples of this.

Blogger Amizufin Ahmat 'Din Binja'
(Sharpshooterblogger.blogspot.com)

The first was the ruling on July 19^th in a defamation case brought by Interior Minister Rais Yatim against blogger Amizudin Ahmat. Amizudin Ahmat, better known as ‘Din Binjai’, had posted a blog entry that alleged a Cabinet Minister had raped his Indonesian housemaid besides a picture of Rais. The judge rule in favor of the minister and ordered that Amizudin pay RM400,000 (approx. $120,000). While the Malaysian government remains officially committed to its policy of not censoring the Internet in the last few years it has opted to pursue individual bloggers in the courts confident that a largely compliant judiciary will pass judgments whose cumulative effect will be self-censorship to avoid similar damages. This decision comes on the back of a ruling in February when Malaysia’s most famous blogger, Raja Petra Kamaruddin was found guilty of defaming senior lawyer Seri Muhamma Shafee Adbullah over three articles posted on his website Malaysia Today. To date damages have yet to be decided but Raja Petra has been in exile since 2008 when the charges were first brought against him.

The censored version of The Economist

The second example was the bizarre decision to censor specific words in an article that appeared in July 16^th issue of The Economist. The article “Taken to the Cleaners”, which was broadly critical of the government’s response to the July 9^th Bersih rally, had parts of the story blacked out by the publisher on the instruction of the Home Ministry purportedly because it contained “incorrect information” and could “mislead readers”. Regardless of whether the government’s complaint was valid or not the decision nevertheless reveals a government that is extraordinarily insecure about internal or external criticism. It also revealed remarkable naivety. The Economist may be the most prestigious weekly news magazine in the world but in Malaysia it has a circulation of barely 10,000, of which a sizeable proportion are foreign businessmen. In other words few if any Malaysians would have read the article in question. However by reacting the way it did the government turned the decision into a major international news story making the major new wires and newspapers from Australia to the United Kingdom. In so doing millions of Malaysians will have gone online in order to find out what all the fuss was about. Besides foreign coverage the story was also widely reported on Malaysian blogs and ‘independent’ Malaysian new sites. Furthermore there was nothing to stop anyone interested from visiting The Economist’s website itself where the story could be enjoyed minus the blacked out sections. In other words the decision will have simply confirmed to ordinary Malaysians that their government continues to run shy of freedom of expression and freedom of the press further fanning support for groups such as Bersih and The Center for Independent Journalism.

Trying to smash a walnut with a sledgehammer? Malaysia, Najib and the Bersih movement.

2011-07-13T12:47:00.000-04:00

On Saturday July 9^th the Malaysian government deployed thousands of police and ordered a lock-down of the capital Kuala Lumpur in n attempt to try to prevent a coalition of NGOs from holding a demonstration calling for free and fair elections. Initially the leaders of the Bersih movement had accepted an earlier offer by Prime Minister Najib Tun Razak to hold the rally at Merdeka stadium. However with the issuing of the orders to lock-down Kuala Lumpur the coalition were effectively denied that choice. In protest some 20,000 Malaysians defied the order and went ahead with their protest against the electoral system in Malaysia.

Bersih (which means Clean) in Malay was formed in 2007 a few months prior to the 2008 elections. The movement, which comprises a broad umbrella of civil society groups and opposition political parties, has repeatedly called for major reforms to the electoral system in order to make it free and fair. Among their demands Bersih calls for a truly independent Electoral Commission, the reform of the electoral roll and postal voting, the use of indelible ink, equal access to the media for all political parties, and a minimum campaign period of three weeks (Malaysian election campaigns are notoriously short and determined by the government. The 2004 campaign was the shortest to date lasting just 7 and 1/2 days).

The Malaysian government’s response to Saturday’s protest drew widespread international criticism. Police baton charges and tear gas were used to disperse the crowd leading to scores injured, the death of one activist and nearly 1,700 arrests. Even voices within the Prime Minister’s own party UMNO (the United Malays National Organization) have criticized Prime Minister Najib’s handling of the affair. Of these the highest ranking is outspoken Deputy Prime Minister Datuk Saifuddin Abdullah, who has argued that the Prime Minister is likely to suffer a political backlash from the rally. Indeed most commentators now think that an early election is less likely. While another election does not have to take place until 2013 many suspected that Prime Minister Najib (who was deputy Prime Minister at the last elections in 2008) might seek to capitalize on the success of the ruling Barisan Nasional in elections earlier this year in the state of Sarawak.

Given the range of legislative mechanisms at the UMNO’s disposal, its huge coffers and patronage network, and its essential control of the mainstream media it always seems incredulous that UMNO leaders are so fearful of an opposition that lacks institutional capacity and financial strength. UMNO after all has over 3 million members across the country, a figure that easily dwarfs the membership of any other political or civil society organization. Historically UMNO was able to craft a 14 party coalition largely by co-opting opposition parties. After all Gerakan was once an important ‘foe’ on the island of Penang and even the Islamic part PAS was briefly part of the coalition in the 1970s. And yet increasingly the government’s response to any opposition has been marked by overkill.

Besides the Bersih rally, another vivid example of this has been in the reaction to the satirical cartoonist Zulkiflee Anwar Haque (better known as Zunar). Zunar has long parodied the government, and more recently the Prime Minister and his wife, in his cartoons which have appeared in newspapers, magazines, books, and more recently on the website of the independent news service Malaysiakini. Last year in June a book of his cartoons was banned and in September he was arrested for sedition accused with producing material that was both “detrimental to public order” and which could “influence people to revolt against government policies”. While Prime Minister Najib clearly is ‘not amused’ his increasing use of repression and overt and heavy-handed manipulation of the mechanisms of electoral authoritarianism risks stripping away the veneer of democracy that Malaysia has maintained successfully since the 1980s. In so doing he risks undermining the legitimacy that this has accorded among Malaysia’s ‘silent majority’ and making the regime more fragile than it was. By trying to crack a proverbial walnut with a sledgehammer Najib may actually create an even greater challenge both to his rule, and to the Barisan Nasional coalition that has ruled Malaysia for over 50 years. A pressure cooker that doesn’t let off steam will inevitably explode.

On a separate, but related note, Zunar was in the United States this week to collect an award from The Cartoonists Rights Network for Courage in Editorial Cartooning.

Back in business? The return of the Shinawatras (Thailand's election part 3)

2011-07-05T14:33:00.000-04:00

Prime Minister elect Yingluck Shinawatra

Much as anticipated, the Thai general election on July 3 was won by the latest regeneration of the Thai Rak Thai party that was founded by controversial billionaire Thakin Shinawatra in 1998 and banned in 2007. What was more surprising was that with 265 of the 500 seats in the legislative assembly Pheu Thai (For Thais) led by Thaksin’s sister Yingluck Shinawatra won a clear majority. Furthermore Yingluck was quick to announce she would form a coalition with a number of the smaller parties that will ensure that a Pheu Thai government will have 299 votes it can count on. As I noted in my previous blog entry the irony of this victory is that despite all their constitutional and extra-constitutional means Thailand’s traditional elite backed by the military have singularly failed to destroy the political legacy of Thaksin Shinawatra. There have now been two elections since the 2006 coup that ousted Thaksin and both of these have been won by successor parties to Thai Rak Thai. Already Yingluck has announced that she intends to review the case against her brother as part of a wider policy of national reconciliation and the Thai newspaper The Nation has reported that Thaksin is likely to be awarded a Cabinet role as a special trade ambassador.

Nevertheless a look at the electoral geography of Sunday’s election clearly reveals that the country remains starkly divided. Results from the Election Commission showed that Pheu Thai won 153 of the 195 seats in the north and northeast of the country (including 101/126 in the northeast) while the Democrats won 73 of the 86 seats in Bangkok and the South. Reflecting the ‘class’ division of Thai politics the Democrats won 23 of Bangkok’s 33 seats with Pheu Thai winning ten seats, mostly in the working class fringes of the city.

So a decisive victory for Yingluck results in Thailand electing its first female Prime Minister and a symbolic victory for the rural and urban poor against the middle classes and establishment. It also demonstrated the clear need for national reconciliation in a country that has witnessed over five years of political turmoil. Whether that can be achieved may well depend on the ambitions of the billionaire exile in Dubai and whether Yingluck will be her own (wo)man or the puppet her critics have accused her of being.

Resolving the impasse? Or spiraling towards civil war (Thailand’s election part 2).

2011-06-30T12:26:00.000-04:00

A briefer blog this week as we await the Thai general election on Sunday July 3^rd. Reading various news stories, blogs and twitter feeds the Internet is awash with rumors of potential deals between the Thai establishment and former Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra on the one hand, and threats of a security crisis that could postpone the election on the other.

Watana Muangsook (center)

The behind-the-scenes deal, first reported by Shawn Crispin of Asia Times Online, was allegedly made between Watana Muangsook (representing Thaksin), Queen Sirkit’s lady-in-waiting Jarungjit Thikara and the defense minister Prawit Wongsuwan in Brunei. According to Crispin’s sources the military has agreed to allow Puea Thai to form a government unopposed in the increasingly likely event that it will win Sunday’s poll. In return Thaksin has allegedly agreed not to pursue politically or legally those members of the military responsible both for the 2006 coup that overthrew him as well as those behind last year’s crackdown in Bangkok. In addition the three sides have allegedly agreed to create a commission for reconciliation that will out to a referendum any proposed amnesty for Thaksin and the military.

Queen Sirkit

This story has been reported in the Thai Post and in several prominent blogs within Thailand, although in these reports the presence of the Queen’s lady-in-waiting is omitted. Given that all things ‘royal’ in Thailand are extremely politically sensitive and potentially subject to the country’s lesee majeste laws this is perhaps not surprising. However if any of this is true a deal only between Thaksin and the military is very different to a deal that includes the monarchy given its de facto extra-constitutional role.

However other stories circulating on the Internet suggest something far removed from reconciliation. Indeed on the contrary yesterday the Thai Internet TV station VoiceTV reported that one of the country’s Election Commissioners, Sodsri Sattayatham, announced that if new hostilities broke out between Thailand and Cambodia over the Preah Vihear temple this could lead to an “emergency situation” and a possible postponement of the election. Immediately the blogosphere and twitter started speculating on the prospect of the Thai military engineering an exchange with Cambodian forces in order to justify such a postponement.

What all these rumors speak to is, as this blog pointed out last week, a continuing impasse in Thailand between the rural and urban poor who are supporters of Thaksin and the Thai establishment represented by the troika of the monarchy, the Privy Council and the military allied with elements of Bangkok’s middle classes. Despite repeated attempts to end the political influence of the former Prime Minister the latest polls show Pheu Thai well ahead of the incumbent Democrats including in Bangkok itself where a June 16-22 poll showed PT on 37.9 per cent set to win 22 of the capital’s 33 seats.

Commander in Chief General Prayuth

Ultimately it will be much harder for the troika to oppose and obstruct Pheu Thai if it wins an outright majority rather than a plurality but there are clear elements within the military who are more inclined towards confrontation than reconciliation. During the campaign Commander-in-chief General Prayuth promoted hawkish colonels to take charge in areas of the country where Thaksin’s support base is located, had a very public spat with a Pheu Thai politician over an army-led anti-narcotic program and on June 23^rd put troops on full alert in the event of post election ‘chaos’.

However as Paul Chambers noted in an article in the journal Asian Survey last Fall the military itself is clearly factionalized. He notes that since 2006 the armed forces have become dominated by an arch-royalist Queen’s Guard faction, which consists of a “pre-cadet, class-based ascendancy”. The Thai military, he notes, is thus becoming more united ‘above’ but more ‘fissured’ below as non-commissioned junior officers become increasingly disenchanted with biased promotions processes. In addition he notes that during the 2010 confrontation in Bangkok some of the security forces were unwilling to disperse the crowds because of sympathies with the red-shirts. These soldiers have been nicknamed ‘watermelons’ because they are green outside (i.e. their military uniforms) but red inside.

If Crispin is correct then perhaps Thailand’s leaders have looked into the abyss and ‘blinked’, prompting the alleged dialogue in Brunei. One can only hope so since the alternative risks pushing Thailand ever closer to civil war.

A Very Thai Farce

2011-06-22T14:54:00.000-04:00

Yingluck Shinawatra

Karl Marx once famously quipped in his commentary on the 1851 coup d’etat in France by Napoleon’s cousin, Louis Napoleon, that “that all great world-historic facts and personages appear, so to speak, twice… the first time as tragedy, the second time as farce”. This adage seems about to be realized in Thailand. With the country poised to go to the polls on July 3rd Yingluck Shinawatra, the sister of deposed Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra, looks poised to lead the Pheu Thai party to victory and to become the country’s first female Prime Minister. If this result does come about Thailand’s politics will have effectively come full circle.

On September 19^th 2006 then Prime Minister Thaksin was overthrown in a bloodless coup by the Thai military that was largely greeted with jubilation by the country’s middle-class and traditional elite. Although there is a long history of direct intervention in Thai politics, this was the first time since 1992 that the country had experienced a coup d’etat. The coup occurred following street demonstrations by anti-Thaksin protestors, dubbed the ‘Yellow Shirts’ because they wore yellow signifying their loyalty to the Crown, that had resulted in a contested election which while won by Thaksin’s political party the Thai Rak Thai (Thais Love Thais) had been boycotted by most of the opposition parties. The coup consequently aimed to ‘save democracy’ by ending the stand-off between Thaksin and the protestors.

Former Thai PM Thaksin Shinawatra

Thaksin Shinawatra was, and continues to be, Thailand’s most controversial and polarizing political figure. A former police officer who became a telecommunications billionaire, Thaksin was instrumental in forming the Thai Rak Thai party in 1998 which went on to win the 2001 legislative elections decisively, taking 40 per cent of the vote and 49 per cent of the seats. Thai Rak Thai’s success broke the mould of Thai politics in a number of important ways. Firstly Thaksin campaigned on a nation-wide platform adopting a broadly populist platform that in particular reached out electorally to the country’s rural poor by promising, among other things, comprehensive health care coverage under the ‘30 baht’ project (effectively giving full coverage to all with a $1.00 co-payment). Thus rather than relying on local ‘godfather’s to get out the vote via personal patronage networks and petty corruption, Thaksin instead sought to become the pivotal political power by aiming for, and achieving, a national mandate from the electorate. Consequently his party became the first ever to serve a full term in government, the first ever to be re-elected, and the first to win an overall majority in parliament. Indeed the 2005 election saw TRT win a landslide, 60 per cent of the popular vote and 75 per cent of the seats. Thaksin himself thus would become Thailand’s longest serving democratically elected Prime Minister until his removal from power in the 2006 coup.

Although popular electorally, Thaksin had become increasingly authoritarian in his exercise of power. His sanctioning of extra-judicial killings in the war on drugs and a crackdown on separatists and Islamic militants in the country’s southern provinces outraged both domestic and international human rights groups. In addition the sale of his family’s 49.6 per cent stake in the telecom giant Shin Corporation to the Singaporean government’s Temasek Holding Company provoked outcry (denounced by among others the leader of the yellow shirt movement Sondhi Limthongkul). Firstly the family netted almost $2 billion from the sale, secondly they paid no capital gains tax on the sale (legal under Thai tax laws at the time) and thirdly critics argued that Thaksin had sold an important national asset to a foreign entity. While an investigation by the Securities and Exchange Commission cleared Thaksin and his daughter of any wrong-doing the perception among middle-class Thais was of increasingly unchecked rule by Thaksin. The above notwithstanding, ultimately the cause of Thaksin’s overthrow was his growing challenge to the country’s traditional elite, headed by the country’s monarchy.

King Bhumipol

The Thai monarchy as an institution has been the one enduring constant in Thai politics during the country’s tumultuous post-war history. Constitutions were introduced and abrogated (17 since 1932), coups and coup attempts toppled relatively short-lived governments as the country fluctuated between military rule and forms of democratic governance. The restoration of the image and institution of the monarchy has been a key feature of the reign of King Bhumipol Adulyadej who having succeeded to the throne in 1946 is the longest reigning monarch in the world. During his 65-year rein King Bhumipol has made strategic interventions that both restored the reverence of the masses towards the monarch and ensured that it played an extra-constitutional role by effectively wielding a super-veto. In addition through the Crown Property Bureau the monarchy owns large amounts of land and equity in Thai companies with an estimated value of $36 billion. The portfolio includes over 36,000 properties, making it the country’s largest landowner, and stakes in some of the largest companies in Thailand including Siam Cement, Siam Commerical Bank, the National Petrochemical Corporation, the construction company Christiani and Nielsen, Deves insurance and ironically Shin Corporation. The CPB pays no taxes, and does not issue an annual report, except to the King.

Thaksin sought to openly challenge this network monarchy (McCargo, 2005) by weakening the ties between the military and the palace and by replacing supporters of the head of the Privy Council Prem Tinsulanonda with his own supporters, loyalists and relatives. To this end he also dismantled army-led security structures in the South replacing them with police-led structures, and openly courted the Crown Prince including, as revealed in Wikileak cables, paying off the Prince’s gambling debts.

Yellow Shirt protest 2008

The coup however failed to settle the ‘problem of Thaksin’. Having forced Thaksin into exile and then dissolving his political party, the coup leaders failed to recognize the underlying and continuing support for much of what he stood for among the electorate. Consequently, much to the chagrin of the coup leaders and the Yellow shirts, the first post-coup election of December 2007 was won by the successor to the TRT, the Peoples Power Party. While the PPP refused to succumb to continuing and intensifying protests by the Yellow Shirts throughout 2008, Thailand’s Constitutional Court again intervened dissolving the PPP for electoral fraud enabling the opposition and pro-establishment Democrat party took office.

Red Shirt protest April-May 2010

Denied their electoral victories supporters of Thaksin followed the example of the Yellow Shirts and themselves took to the streets of Bangkok in protest. Consisting mostly of the rural and urban poor, but joined by disillusioned civil rights and other activists, the ‘Red Shirt’ protests grew increasingly large throughout 2009 culminating in May 2010 with a military crackdown on protestors in which 91 were killed. Critics of the Red Shirts routinely alleged that the movement was little more than a front for Thaksin and that many of them had been paid to protest to serve the former Prime Minister’s political ambitions. Others feared Thailand’s political system was becoming increasingly divided by class.

Yingluck campaigning in Chiang Mai

Into this fray came Thaksin’s sister Yingluck Sinhawatra in May when she was unexpectedly nominated by the latest incarnation of Thaksin’s original TRT, Pheu Thai (For Thais) as their candidate for Prime Minister. With no previous political experience many within Pheu Thai questioned the rationale of the decision, however Yingluck’s nomination has set the political campaign on fire in Thailand. The obvious name recognition aside, her youth, good looks and easy manner have given her ‘celebrity’ appeal. Coupled with the astute decision to appoint campaign managers who previously worked with her brother, Yingluck has opened up the real possibility of Pheu Thai winning the general election and returning a Shinawatra to power. If she does Thailand’s politics will have effectively come full circle rendering farcical the coup and the various court cases that have sort to destroy the political legacy of Thaksin. Already however there are moves afoot to deny Yingluck of any anticipated victory. On June 21^st a petition was lodged with the Department of Special Investigation accusing Yingluck of perjury in the assets case against her brother last year. It seems the farce may have only just begun?

Red Storm Rising or Storm in a Teacup? The South China Sea island disputes.

2011-06-15T12:32:00.000-04:00

Protests in Vietnam against Chinese claims to Spratlys

In 1996 bestselling US author Tom Clancy (Hunt for Red October, Patriot Games, Sum of All Fears) wrote a novel entitled SSN which followed the mission of a US submarine in a fictional war between the United States and China over the Spratly islands. Similarly the plot of the 1997 James Bond movie Tomorrow Never Dies revolves around a disgruntled media tycoon who sinks a British warship in the South China Sea in order to provoke World War Three. While Clancy is synonymous with mass-market political and espionage thrillers, and Bond is.. well Bond, the potential for a wider conflagration in the South China Sea is not purely fictional as Vietnam’s live fire exercise this week demonstrates. The exercises, which came after Chinese surveillance ships obstructed and then cut the cable of a Vietnamese oil survey ship on May 26^th, are merely the latest incident between China and the other littoral states on the South China Sea.

Claim to Spratlys and oil reserves

The South China Sea is one of the largest marginal seas in the world and is bounded by Brunei, China, Indonesia, Malaysia, The Philippines, Taiwan and Vietnam all of whom stake claims to some or all of the islands, islets and reefs within the sea, as well as to the economic resources contained therein. (Only China and Vietnam claim all the islands. Taiwan’s claim is co-terminous with China’s since Taiwan is the successor to the nationalist government of China). The 3000 plus islands, islets and reeds of the South China Sea are grouped into three archipelagos: The Spratly Islands, the Paracels and the Pratas Islands (as well Macclesfield Bank and Scarborough Shoal) of which the Spratlys are the largest. The islands do not contain permanent populations, since there are no fresh-water supplies, no native animals, and many of the formations are at least partially submerged at high tide

The infamous 9-dotted map of
China's claim to the South China Sea

The principal point of conflict and concern among the littoral states of Southeast Asia and China is that the China effectively claims the South China Sea as a ‘Chinese Lake’. Evidence for this comes from the infamous nine-dotted (or nine-dashed) line that the Peoples Republic has used to demarcate its southern border since 1948 and which in 2009 it submitted to the United Nations. First drawn up by the former Nationalist government in the 1930s, the 9-dotted line is deliberately ambiguous because it does not illustrate a specific boundary, nor does it indicate how the lines would be joined up. However if they are taken to illustrate the maximum continuous extent of China’s claim then this effectively means that the PRC stakes claim to approximately 80 per cent of the waters of the South China Sea including all the disputed islands.

Vietnam in turn also claims the South China Sea islands flow from historical activities during the Nguyen dynasty between the 17^th and 19^th Centuries as well as by occupation. In 1975 when the Communists emerged victorious from the Vietnam War, thirteen islands in the Spratlys were occupied followed by another dozen since 1989. Today there are approximately 600 troops are deployed across these islands on semi-permanent structures.

Over the past thirty years there have been numerous incidents and skirmishes between China and her neighbors over the islands. The most significant of these took place in 1988 between Vietnam and China when Vietnamese forces were rushed to Johnson South Reef following the detection of Chinese forces in the area. The Chinese reinforced their troops with three frigates and defeated the Vietnamese. There were over 70 casualties, of which only six were Chinese, and in the aftermath China captured a further six islands in the vicinity. Six years later a similar ‘discovery’ was made by the Philippines at Mischief Reef, only 130 miles from the Philippine island of Palawan. However the Philippines contained their response to diplomatic protests. Since the United States is a treaty ally of The Philippines, any potential conflict with China could have resulted in wider confrontation.

Such small-scale incidents however do matter. Most importantly because freedom of navigation through the South China Sea is essential to international trade between Northeast Asia and the rest of the world. For example 41,000 ships pass through the waterway annually, twice that through the Suez Canal, and three times that which passes through the Panama Canal. Estimates put total trade via Southeast Asian sea-lanes at 39 per cent of Japan’s total trade and 27 per cent of China’s. In addition the majority of oil imports for China, Japan and South Korea all come through the South China Sea as do almost two-thirds of liquefied natural gas shipments.

Military structure in Spratlys

So if the waters are so vital to international trade why are states willing to assert their claims over others risking conflict and disruption to that trade? The answer inevitably is oil. According to some experts, though the figures are disputed, beneath the South China Sea there could be 200 billion barrels of untapped oil, equivalent to 80 percent of Saudi Arabia's oil reserves. Thus control the waters and you can claim the resources beneath them. This jurisdictional right for coastal states over seabed resources was codified in 1982 in the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS). For example, within the UNCLOS is the right to exploit living and nonliving resources of an island or archipelago by permitting the establishment of a 12-mile territorial sea around the island and a 200-mile exclusive economic zone.

Hence the scramble for the Spratlys is not about the possession of a few hundred uninhabited reefs and islets that are often partially submerged but about energy, economics and geostrategic concerns. This is why it matters to the Philippines that they recently found and removed Chinese territorial markers on Boxhall and Douglas Bank, or that the increased presence of Chinese surveillance ships in the waters is treated with growing concern by nearly all of the littoral states.

The former Ukranian carrier Varyag soon
to be China's 1st aircraft carrier

Furthermore, behind all of the rhetoric and saber rattling in recent weeks lies the longer term concern along China’s neighbors about China’s growing military threat to the region. Since 2000 China’s military budget has grown from $14.6 billion to $91.5 billion recording an average annual spending increase of 12.9 per cent annually. To date China’s ability to project its force into the region has been limited but recent improvements in in-flight refueling, and the growth of the PRC’s submarine fleet, have changed that. Worse still the refitted former Ukranian aircraft carrier the Varyag will soon be launched as China’s first aircraft carrier. Originally ‘intended’ to be a floating casino in Dailan, over the past few years a stream of photographs on military enthusiasts websites showing the construction of a sloping takeoff deck and a new command tower clearly revealed that the Varyag’s purchase had little to do with entertainment. Speculation was finally brought to an end at the beginning of June when the chief of China’s military staff Chen Bingde confirmed that the carrier was being built and could be ready in weeks.

While China has sought to reassure its neighbors that it has no interest in military solutions to the island disputes and welcomes joint economic development with no requirement that this be contingent on accepting Chinese sovereignty over the islands, its neighbors are skeptical about such reassurances. Concerns only reinforced by strong denunciations by China of any exploitation of resources in the area without its approval. On June 9^th, for example, Chinese Ambassador to the Philippines, Liu Jianchao, stated “[w]e are calling on other parties to stop searching the possibility of exploiting resources in this area where China has its claims. If these countries really want to do so, they have to inform the Chinese about the possibility of having joint cooperation”.

For the time being large-scale military conflict in the South China Sea is unlikely. The size of the South China Sea and the distance of the islands from the coasts of the respective claimants create enormous logistical problems. Many of the islands are over 1000 miles from mainland China and more than 300 from The Philippines and Vietnam. Thus any effective occupation or prolonged control is limited, while patrols could only be effective for relatively small areas. In the longer term Southeast Asian countries are increasingly beginning to recognize, some reluctantly, that the only guarantor of security and the maintenance of the waters as ‘open’ is to ensure the continued engagement of the United States as an Asian power. For the time being this chimes with Washington’s own strategy for the region. However with growing budget woes and US forces already overstretched globally there is no guarantee that this will continue indefinitely. So for the time being the ‘spat in the Spratlys’ may be a storm in a teacup, however fortune tellers have long read the symbols and patterns left by loose tea-leaves as a form of divination. In this light while major conflict in the South China Sea is arguably in no-ones’ interest there remains the potential for that conflict.

Singapore's General Election: First signs of a chink in PAP's armor?

2011-05-23T14:52:00.000-04:00

Map of 2011 Election results

On May 7th Singapore held its 16th parliamentary election (its 11th since independence from Malaysia in 1967) with the governing Peoples’ Action Party winning 81 of the 87 seats in parliament. While the result was never in doubt, it is testament to the unequal and undemocratic nature of the country’s political system that the result has been widely hailed as a major setback for the government.

Singapore’s political system for those who don’t know is one of the most heavily loaded in favor of a governing party anywhere in the world. Indeed the length to which the PAP has gone to create an institutional framework to ensue their hegemony is almost unique among countries that ostensibly claim to be both liberal and democratic.

The most blatant example of this institutional engineering is the Group Representation Constituency. First introduced in YEAR the GRP was ostensibly introduced to ensure minority representation in parliament. However in practice it has become another means to hinder the ability of opposition parties to effectively compete against the PAP. A GRC is effectively a ‘super-constituency’ that elects between four and six MPs. Unlike in a single-member constituency, where an MP is elected on a simple plurality, in a GRC political parties field ‘teams’ of candidates and a simple plurality across the GRC sends ALL members of the team to parliament.

While the GRC arguably perversely accentuates the tendency for plurality electoral systems not to reflect fair shares of the overall vote, it has also proven to be a major obstacle to weak, poorly resourced opposition parties for a number of other reasons. Firstly the cost of competing in a GRC is very expensive. In the May 7^th election each candidate was required to place a deposit of $16,000, which in the largest GRCs meant the opposition had to place a deposit of $96,000. What the GRC has meant is that opposition parties have been rarely willing to commit large proportions of their limited budgets to contest such constituencies. In addition the rules for ‘teams’ stipulate that the team must include candidates from a single party (so no coalitions) and include candidates from the island’s minority populations, principally Malay and Tamil. Finally since their introduction the PAP has consistently headed its GRC teams with prominent Cabinet ministers and often, most notably in 1997, shifted high profile figures to head teams where PAP believed their slate was more vulnerable. The net impact of this has been that a large number of elections in GRCs since 1988 have been uncontested. For example while only the Tanjong Pagar GRC was uncontested in 2011, in 2006 seven GRCs were uncontested returning 37 of PAP’s 81 M.P.s!

Low Thia Kiang, leader of
the Workers' Party celebrates winning
the Aljunied GRC

To understand how we can interpret the May 7^th election as a relative setback for the PAP and a triumph for the opposition we have to crunch some numbers. Firstly the PAP’s share of the vote fell from 66.6% to 60.14% making this the worst performance by the PAP since independence in 1963. Secondly although the opposition only won six seats in parliament, this was a new record, up from a previous high of four in 1991. However the greatest psychological blow for the PAP, was its first ever loss of a GRC to the opposition. With 54 per cent of the vote the Workers Party won the Aljunied GRC. This was a double blow since it meant that the country’s Foreign Minister George Yeo, a two-decade veteran of Singaporean politics, lost his seat in parliament. Elsewhere PAP’s share of the vote fell precipitously in a number of other seats. In the East Coast GRC PAP’s vote fell by 9 per cent from 63.86% to 54.83% while in the Joo Chiat Single Member Constituency Charles Chong narrowly held on by 382 votes from his challenger. In Potong Pasir the margin was even narrower with the wife of the leader of the Singapore Peoples’ Party falling short of victory by 114 votes.

Foreign Minister George Yeo became the biggest
scalp of the night for the opposition

Such results are even more of a surprise given the array of mechanisms by which the PAP has ensured an uneven playing field. Singapore’s mainstream media (print and television) is compliant with nine of the country’s newspapers controlled by the government owned Singapore Press Holdings. In addition all seven of the free-to-air television stations and 14 radio stations are owned by MediaCorp which is owned by Temasek, a holding company wholly owned by the government of Singapore. Satellite television is illegal (since private ownership of a satellite dish is prohibited) although some foreign stations are accessible via the country’s only cable provider, StarHub, which is also partially owned by Temasek. Naturally such controls ensure that opposition access to the media is extremely limited and coverage of elections is by at best pro-government by default and at worst a tool of the PAP.

Chee Soon Juan, leader of the opposition
Singapore Democratic Party (SDP), barred from
running for election after being made bankrupt in 2006

Freedom of speech is also constrained by laws inherited from the British, most notably The Sedition Act, which outlaws ‘seditious speech’ or the distribution of materials with ‘seditious tendencies’. In addition the government has very effectively used defamation laws to silence critical voices. One of the most famous involved opposition leader Chee Soon Juan who it was judged defamed Lee Kuan Yew and Goh Chok Tog when he alleged they had used public funds during the 2001 elections. Chee was forced to over $300,000 in damages. Unable to do so Chee declared himself bankrupt and was therefore barred from standing in the 2006 election since Singaporean law forbids bankrupts from running for office. The use of libel, and the threat of it, has been widely criticized internationally, including by the US State Department. In addition the Societies Act limits freedom of assembly since it requires organizations of more than 10 people to register with the government, and police approval for public assemblies.

While the Internet is widely accessible the Singaporean government monitors online material and ‘symbolically’ blocks a whole host of pornographic websites. The government has also threatened bloggers with the country’s libel laws and in 2006 introduced a legal prohibition on political blogs and podcasts during election campaigns. (Since the law was unable to prevent Singaporeans blogging from overseas the ban was lifted for the 2011 election). Furthermore in 2008 the government arrested two bloggers, one for allegedly inciting racism, the other Gopalan Nair for insulting the Singaporean judiciary!

All of the above mechanisms have ensured that Singapore has for all intents and purposes operated as a one-party state for most of its history. Indeed so overwhelming has PAP’s dominance been that between 1968 and 1989 it actually held all seats in parliament. In tacit recognition that this made a mockery of the notion that Singapore was a democracy the government mandated for the creation of non-constituency members of parliament (NCMPs) in 1984 to give opposition parties a voice.

In this light then the results of May 7^th can be seen as a major setback for the PAP and perhaps a turning point in Singapore’s political development. Clearly in Singapore, as in many countries around the world, new media are providing means to circumvent censorship and control. Most notably by enabling users to be both consumers and producers of information blogging has become a low-cost way for opposition voices to reach out to a mass audience while social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter are facilitating the real-time transmission of information.

Lee Kuan Yew, Singapore's Minister Mentor
and Prime Minister 1959-90

We should not overstate their significance however. Most commentators on the election results regard it as evidence that younger voters are no longer ‘nostalgic’ about the achievements of the PAP nor sufficiently motivated by ‘developmental legitimacy’. For a growing number of Singaporeans ‘threats’ against voters who express their support for opposition candidates are regarded as increasingly unacceptable and dissatisfaction with the strictures of control in Singapore have most recently revealed themselves in an Institute of Policy Studies survey which found that over 20 per cent of young Singaporeans want to leave the country. Worse still this group is disproportionately drawn from middle to high-income families, is predominantly English speaking and better educated. Indeed one survey has placed Singapore’s outflow at the second highest in the world, figures only offset by record inflows of foreign workers. In a globalizing world it seems some Singaporeans, not content to wait for political change, are simply choosing to leave behind the strictures of their mother country. For the rest perhaps May 7^th will mark the beginning of something new?

Britain's Royal Wedding and Southeast Asia's Meddling Monarchs

2011-04-29T18:17:00.000-04:00

An estimated audience of two billion people worldwide apparently tuned into watch Britain’s royal wedding between Prince William and Kate Middleton. For many the institution of monarchy is an anethma to a modern democracy and yet the crowds that thronged to watch the new royal couple make their way to Buckingham Palace (and the wider global television and internet audience) clearly demonstrate that for many the pomp, circumstance and pageantry of the British royal family are a welcome distraction from the divisiveness of party politics, and the harsh realities of the marketplace.

While Britain’s monarchy is the most-famous royal household in the world some 40 plus countries worldwide and over half a billion people live in countries are still headed (even if only titular) by royalty. In Asia the most famous monarchy is the Imperial Household of Japan which is the also the world’s oldest hereditary monarchy, allegedly dating back 2700 years to the mythical founder of Japan, Jimmu. However there are another seven countries in Asia that have monarchies of which three are found in Southeast Asia: Cambodia, Malaysia and Thailand. While the Malaysian monarchy is a unique product of the country’s independence (Malaysia has an monarch elected for five years by, and from, the Sultans that head nine of the country’s 13 states) in Cambodia and Thailand the monarchy has played an important stabilizing role during long periods of political instability, confrontation and conflict.

King Bhumibol of Thailand,
the world's longest reigning monarch

In Thailand the monarchy is both largely revered, has vast economic holdings through the Crown Property Bureau, and is a key political actor, although in a deliberately ambiguous and opaque way. Since his ascendance in 1946 King Bhumibol has effectively exercised an extra-constitutional ‘super-veto’, adroitly intervening in Thai politics during periods of crisis in 1973, 1976, 1992 and 2006. Faced with 15 coups, 16 constitutions or charters, and 27 Prime Ministers, the King Bhumibol has been the one constant feature of the Thai political landscape and while widely considered to be extremely conservative and nationalistic, retains enormous popular support. Whether this is for the King himself or the institution of the monarchy is difficult to assuage since public criticism of the King or monarchy remains punishable by up to 15 years in prison under the countries lesee majeste laws.

Former King of Cambodia,
now 'Father-King' Norodom Sihanouk

In contrast the monarchy in Cambodia has had a much more tumultuous history, largely because it has repeatedly intervened in the country’s post-colonial politics directly and explicitly. While the monarchy in Cambodia can also trace its history back almost 2000 years, following independence in 1955 the monarchy played a much more direct political role before being abolished in 1970 only to be restored twenty-three years later. The story of Cambodia’s post-colonial monarchy is overwhelmingly dominated by the figure of King Norodom Sihanouk. Ascending to the throne in 1941, Sihanouk abdicated the throne in 1955 to take a more active role in politics (sic) as leader of the Sangkum movement (an alliance of four small monarchist parties, that governed Cambodia until 1970). During this time Sihanouk would hold office as Prime Minister six times (ten times in total) and in 1960 when his father, who replaced him as King died, Sihanouk proceeded to change the constitution of Cambodia making him ruler as Prince for life.

'Prince' Sihanouk in 1970
(Prime Minister 10 times 1945-62)

In 1970 a right-wing coup by General Lon Nol abolished the monarch establishing the Khmer Republic. Forced into exile Prince Sihanouk publicly sided with the communist Khmer Rouge which overthrew Lon Nol’s republic five years later. Despite the mass atrocities committed by the Khmer Rouge regime between 1975 and 1978, when Vietnam invaded in 1978 to overthrow Pol Pot’s regime Sihanouk would express his support for the Khmer Rouge, eventually becoming President of the exiled Coalition Government of Democratic Kampuchea (a coalition that included the Khmer Rouge).

During the 1980s Sihanouk’s Machiavellian machinations enabled him to win the support of the Reagan administration in Washington as a third alternative to the Vietnamese installed government and the remnants of the Khmer Rouge who were now fighting as an insurgent group. After a comprehensive peace agreement was signed in 1991, Sihanouk returned to Cambodia from exile (1993) as King of the restored monarchy with his second son Prince Ranariddh as co-Prime Minister. Eleven years later in 2004 Sihanouk would abdicate for a second time, this time on health grounds, paving the way for a hastily convened throne council to appoint his eldest son Prince Norodom Sihamoni as King.

King Sihamoni of Cambodia

While Cambodian politics since 1997 has taken a decisive turn towards authoritarianism under the premiership of Hun Sen, the succession of Sihamoni as King was notable for a lack of political controversy and largely consensual agreement. Furthermore as a former ballet choreographer who lived most of his life abroad, first in Prague and then in Paris, Sihamoni seemed perfectly suited to be the kind of titular constitutional monarch largely characteristic of the remaining monarchies in western Europe. However unlike Queen Margarethe of Denmark, Queen Sofia of Spain, King Harald of Norway, Crown Prince Philippe of Belgium and the Grand Duke and Duchess of Luxemburg, Sihamoni declined his invitation to the ‘wedding of the year’.

No longer ‘In the Bottle’? LGBT rights in Malaysia and Southeast Asia.

2011-04-25T12:54:00.000-04:00

Malaysia's Women's Minister
Shahrizat Abdul Jalil

Last week 66 young boys in the conservative largely Muslim state of Terengganu, Malaysia, were sent to a special ‘re-education’ camp for displaying signs of effeminacy which if left ‘unchecked’, state official argued, could “reach the point of no return”. In other words they could ‘become’ gay or transsexual. While the women's minister, Shahrizat Abdul Jalil, criticized this move, neither the state government nor the Federal government has yet acted to do anything about this. But we should not be either shocked or surprised since gay rights in Malaysia are largely non-existent. Only a month earlier for example, Malaysian radio stations chose to deliberately ‘garble’ the line, “No matter gay, straight or bi, lesbian or transgendered life, I'm on the right track, baby" in the Lady Gaga song “Born this Way” for fear of being fined by the government for breaking rules on ‘good taste… decency.. [or for being] “offensive to public feeling”. Indeed as the current trial of the opposition leader, and former deputy Prime Minister, Anwar Ibrahim visibly demonstrates, the country’s religious and political elite continue to regard homosexuality as a morally repugnant way of life. Thus in Anwar’s case putting him on trial for sodomy (which is punishable by up to 20 years in prison) has proven a ‘convenient’ and sadly rational tactic by the government to destroy his political career and tarnish his public image.

But Malaysia is by no-means on it’s own in the region in its staunchly conservative stance. When it comes to Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender rights, Southeast Asia is found severely wanting. While Thailand might be infamous for its transsexual ‘lady boys’, same-sex marriage and same-sex adoption remain illegal, and there are no anti-discrimination laws nor laws concerning gender and identity expression. Arguably the most gay-friendly country in Southeast Asia (perhaps surprisingly given that it is overwhelmingly Catholic) is The Philippines, where same-sex adoption is permitted and since 2009 openly gay men and women have been allowed to serve in the military. However even here anti-discrimination law is largely absent nationally, while same-sex marriages or civil partnerships are not officially recognized. And yet Thailand, Cambodia and The Philippines are in a veritable league of their own compared to the rest of the region. In Burma, Brunei, and Malaysia homosexuality remains illegal with harsh prison sentences the normal punishment; none of the ten Southeast Asian countries recognize neither same-sex marriages or partnerships; only two allow same-sex adoption (Cambodia and The Philippines); three allow gay men or women to serve in the military (The Philippines, Thailand and Singapore) and none have passed anti-discrimination laws.

To defend this appalling track record, arguments have been made about ‘cultural and spiritual pollution’ from the decadent (sic) West, and about the incompatibility of homosexuality with the teachings of Islam and other religions. In mot cases the opposition is pure bigotry and drawn from the view that regards LGBTs as nothing more than deviant ‘life-style’ choices. The head of Malaysia’s controversial Islamic Affairs department in an interview with Time magazine in 2000 epitomized this view when he remarked that homosexuality “is a crime worse than murder”. When asked if it was wrong for two people of the same sex to love each other he rebuked the questioner replying, “Love? How can men have sex with men? God did not make them this way. This is all Western influence”. In even starker terms former Prime Minister of Malaysia Dr. Mahathir Mohamad warned in a national day speech in 2003 that “if there are any homosexuals in Malaysia they had better mend their ways.” In the same speech he also criticized the West saying that, “they are very angry—especially their reporters, many of whom are homos—when we take legal action against these practices.” But it is not simply Malaysia where such views remain widespread. For example, a crowd of extremists shut down the 4th International Lesbian and Gay Association Asia conference that was supposed to take place in Surabaya, Indonesia between 26th and 28th March 2010. In addition all 150 participants had to evacuate the conference hotel.

However perhaps there are the first signs of change. This year the first gay movie to be made and shown in Malaysia has proven to be a box-office success. Despite being required to make some 30 minutes of editing by the country’s film censorship board, the movie “Dalam Botol” (In a Bottle) tells the story of a young man who has a sex-change operation to please his male lover, although he later regrets the decision. While there are no love scenes, nudity or kissing, the movie does open with a bare-chested male couple massaging each other on a beach at night. Ironically perhaps the movie has been slammed not just by conservative Muslim groups but also by gay rights activists because the main character eventually regrets his decision. One activist remarked in an interview with the British newspaper The Guardian that, “The ending is very negative. Having the main character regret being gay and falling in love with a woman is not going to help our image problem here." Pang Khee Teik of Sexuality Independence echoes this view arguing that, "Many of us Malaysian gays, lesbians and transgenders have absolutely no regrets being who we are." While the plotline was clearly influenced by Malaysia’s film production code, which states that LGBT characters when depicted on screen must realize they are at fault for their sexuality, and reform themselves, the film’s producer Raja Azmi Raja Sulaiman defends the movie arguing that "If my film has a message, it’s please don’t change yourself for love. My friend [on whom the movie was based] has suffered so much, and I don’t want other people to suffer like him." Nevertheless the fact that the movie was made, made it to the screen, and took over $350,000 in its first five days (recouping its cost), is quite remarkable. As the film's producer remarked in an interview with Associated Press, "Even five years ago we wouldn't have been able to make it". If from small acorns mighty oaks do indeed grow, then Dalam Botol may just represent the first few vulnerable shoots of attitudinal change on LGBT rights.

Sensational campaign, predictable result, unclear lessons: The 10th Sarawak state elections.

2011-04-19T23:03:00.000-04:00

On April 16^th the east Malaysian state of Sarawak went to the polls for the 10^th time since Sarawak joined the Federation of Malaysia in 1963. In many ways Sarawak is very different from other states in Malaysia. Of a population of just over 2.5 million, Malays (the dominant ethnic group in Malaysia as a whole) constitute a little over 21 per cent, with Chinese comprising between 27-29 per cent. The rest of the state’s population consist of 27 different ethnic groups of which the Iban, constituting 31 per cent of the total population, are the largest. In addition Sarawak is not only home to the largest number of Christians in Malaysia (in a country where Islam dominates social and political life), but where Christians constitute the largest segment of the population (around 43 per cent). Separated from peninsular Malaysia by 370 miles Sarawak had a very different colonial history to the peninsular and economically despite a wealth of natural resources the state remains one of Malaysia’s poorest states. However despite the array of Sarawak specific political parties the politics of Sarawak have largely conformed to the pattern in Malaysia as a whole. In other words component parties of the governing Barisan Nasional (principally the PBB) have held power in the state since 1963 with Abdul Taib bin Muhamad of the presiding as the state’s Chief Minister since 1981.

For all the opposition’s aim of denying the BN its two-thirds majority in the state legislature, the result of the election was never in doubt. Instead the election campaign itself became a) a proxy for the continuing struggle between Anwar Ibrahim’s Pakatan Rakyat opposition coalition and the BN leadership b) a test of support for the premiership of Najib Tun Razak in order to determine whether the country’s 12^th general election will be held this year or next and c) a test of whether the Pakatan Rakyat could take its brand of a multi-ethnic alternative to the BN beyond peninsular Malaysia. Sarawak matters because as a result of deliberate malportionment the state returns 31 seats of the country’s 222 seats in parliament, approximately 14 more than it would if constituencies were equally. In the 2008 general election while the Barisan Nasional suffered its worst election result since 1969, Sarawak delivered the coalition 30 seats of its total haul of 140. Indeed with the seats won in neighboring Sabah (24) many commentators concluded that the results from East Malaysia kept the Barisan Nasional in power. Thus the Sarawak state elections served were seen as a bell weather that could determine if the Barisan Nasional had recovered sufficiently to call an early snap general election.

Chief Minister of Sarawak, Abdul Taib Mahmud

The campaign was lively to say the least with the country’s anti-corruption commission (MACC) admonished for failing to take any action against Chief Minister Taib over the acquisition of over 1.5 million hectares of Native Customary Rights land for his relatives and supporters. These revelations came two months a Swiss NGO (The Bruno Manser Fund) had early revealed a massive timber corruption scheme that involved kickbacks to the Taib family. The report blacklisted 49 Taib-linked companies in 8 countries. In addition according to a separate report by the opposition Democratic Action Party Taib had also failed to account for $1.5 billion of Sarawak state funds between 2007-2010.

Opposition leader Anwar Ibrahim

The Barisan Nasional countered with their own claim that they had discovered a sex tape involving opposition leader Anwar Ibrahim. Already on trial for a second time for alleged sodomy (homosexual sex is illegal in Malaysia), pro-government newspapers broke the story that a sex tape had been ‘found’ in a Kuala Lumpur hotel room on February 29^th purportedly showing Anwar engaged in sexual activity with a ‘fair-skinned’ woman. As both sides threw proverbial mud at each other Prime Minister Najib decided to campaign actively himself in Sarawak promising Chinese voters in Kotah Sentoh blatantly proclaiming that “If you vote for BN, Sarawak will develop faster”. UMNO also wielded the full weight of its media dominance to ensure that support for the Barisan in the state would hold up to the opposition challenge.

The results when they came proved mixed for both the ruling coalition and the opposition Pakatan Rakyat. Declaring it would deny the Barisan its two-thirds majority the opposition only managed to capture 21 per cent of the state’s seats. While Anwar’s own party in the opposition coalition (Partai Keadilan Rakyat, PKR) fared quite badly, winning only three of the 48 seats it contested, the largely chinese Democratic Action Party (DAP) did extraordinarily well captured 20 per cent of the vote (placing it second behind the PBB) doubling the number of seats it won from six to twelve. Furthermore having only contested 15 seats in total the DAP’s strike rate was particularly impressive. On the government side while pro-Barisan parties won 77 per cent of the seats, this represented a loss of eight seats compared to 2006. Furthermore the BN’s vote share was down 6.5 per cent to only 55 per cent of the total vote.

Prime Minister of Malaysia and leader of the
United Malays National Organization
Najib Tun Razak

So what can we conclude from the Sarawak elections? Well assuming that the state’s elections are indeed a bell-weather and not a reflection of local issues, it would appear that neither the opposition or the governing coalition have made any substantial progress in either winning over or winning back the electorate respectively. Despite the high profile campaigning of Prime Minister Najib the BN’s vote was still down on 2006, but equally neither PKR or PAS (the Pan-Malaysian Islamic party) were able to establish themselves in East Malaysia (PAS failed to win any seats and captured only 1.4 per cent of the vote). The fact that the BN’s vote share was only down six per cent was neither a ringing endorsement for Najib nor a decline significant enough to undermine his authority. What it will likely ensure is that Najib replaces Taib as Chief Minister sooner, rather than later lest he become a liability in the next general election. As to that election, I would speculate that after this vote an early election (within the next 6 months) is now less likely than it was before. What the election does demonstrate conclusively is that the next general election campaign when it does come will be dominated by more sensationalism, scandal and sleaze.

Cambodia, war crimes and the issue of retribution.

2011-04-11T18:17:00.000-04:00

Comrade Duch on trial

On March 30^th this year in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, a frail looking 68-year old former math teacher, Kang Kek Lew, had his appeal against a 35-year sentence for crimes against humanity, murder and torture rejected by the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia. The man in question, better known by his nom de guerre Comrade Duch, ran the infamous S-21 prison camp between 1975 and 1979 during which time an estimated 15-20,000 people were tortured and killed.

Like Laurent Gbagbo of The Ivory Coast, who was captured by French and UN forces today (April 11), one of the most striking things about such figures is how ordinary they look once they no longer exercise the authority they had. This notwithstanding, Gbagbo’s arrest and Duch’s appeal both raise the difficult issue of how to deal with former leaders accused of committing atrocities against their own citizens. In the case of Gbagbo the prosecutor for the International Criminal Court, Luis Moren-Ocampo, has already been in negotiations with African states about a referral of recent events to the ICC. In the case of Duch, he remains the only person so far convicted for the horrific events known as the Killing Fields.

Photos of children killed at S-21

The Killing Fields refers to the period between 17 April 1975 and 6 January 1979 when Cambodia was ruled by the Communist Party of Kampuchea, better known by their moniker the Khmer Rouge. Led by Pol Pot the Khmer Rouge instigated a radical program of cultural, social, political and economic reform largely modeled on China’s failed Great Leap Forward (1958-61). Glorifying the ‘heroic role’ of the peasant (the ‘old people’) the Khmer Rouge aimed to create a classless society by depopulating the country’s cities and forcing the urban population (the ‘New’ People) into agricultural communes. Most dramatic was the forced emptying of the capital Phnom Penh. Home to approximately 2.5 million at the time of the revolution, the city, including its hospitals, was forcibly evacuated. History and society would begin again from a Year Zero in which ‘Democratic Kampuchea’ would forge its own glorious revolution. However like previous attempts at total revolution the revolutionaries soon became mass murderers

Skulls at the S-21 museum

In the three years and nine months the Khmer Rouge ruled Cambodia approximately 1.7 million died, 21 per cent of the country’s population. Of these it is estimated that half were executed while the rest died of starvation or illness. What differentiates the Cambodian genocide from its counterparts is that the killings were instigated by the country’s own government against its own population. For this reason the term autogenocide was coined in order to distinguish the horrific events from episodes where a particular ethnic or religious group was the target of systematic extermination. Justice and retribution for these exterminations however, would wait nearly three decades.

Between 1979 and1989 the vagaries of the Cold War intervened. Defeated by a Vietnamese army that ostensibly claimed to be liberating the Cambodians from their oppressor, the Khmer Rouge were shamefully supported as a guerilla force by Western governments to ‘balance’ Soviet influence in Indochina. Peace talks were finally concluded in 1991, which brought an end the civil war and transferred authority to a United Nations Transitional Authority. Two years later power was transferred to an elected government and it was this government that four years later in 1997 called upon the United Nations to assist the country in creating a judicial body and process to try the leaders of the Khmer Rouge.

The ECCC, Cambodia

Despite this it would take another eleven years before hearings at the ECCC would begin. The intervening decade was beset with fractious squabbles between the government of Cambodia and the UN over the thorny issue of sovereignty. Initially the United Nations proposed the creation of an international tribunal modeled after the International Tribunals for Yugoslavia and Rwanda. The Cambodian government rejected such proposals seeking instead to insert national legal institutions into any such organization, while in 2001 the UN pulled out of negotiations because it concluded that the conditions did not exist for a fair and independent trial. Eventually in 2003 the two sides agreed to the creation of a hybrid body comprising both national and international judges. However, further delays resulted due to the alleged inability of the Cambodian government to finance the tribunal. Critics have argued that the real reason for the obstruction and delay was the fact that the government of Cambodia under prime Minister Hun Sen included several former Khmer Rouge defectors.

The ECCC presents an interesting case study of the difficulties in dealing with atrocities conducted and committed by officials of a former, usually authoritarian or military, regime. Political transitions rarely result in a complete replacement of one ruling elite by another. Instead they are often messy and muddy compromises in which the issue of impunity from justice is often dealt with behind-the-scenes. Nevertheless, however such compromises are made, and why, society as a whole often clamors for punishment and retribution. The argument is made that punishment is both an appropriate response to moral atrocity, and necessary to deter future actions. In addition, others hold that it is a necessary condition to ensure long-term peace, national unity and democratic consolidation.

Whether you accept these premises or not recent history is replete with responses that “have ranged from historical amnesia to intermediary strategies of amnesty and truth telling to limited purges (lustration) and trials” (Amstutz, 2004). Ultimately the scope, successes, or failures of such attempts will always be dependent on the specific constellation of power in each relevant country and the wider geopolitical framework. What might be possible in Yugoslavia, may not be possible in The Ivory Coast, Libya, Indonesia or Cambodia. In the case of Cambodia however complete justice will never be fully attainable since the architect of the country’s horrors, Pol Pot, died of heart failure on April 15^th 1998. He unlike Kang Kek Lew will never be held to account.

Asia: What’s in a name?

2011-03-28T22:44:00.000-04:00

Asia from space

One of the first things I was required to do upon recently taking over as Director for the Center of Asian Democracy at the University of Louisville was to define the organization’s goals and the strategy. This naturally entailed defining the geographical scope of Asia for the purview of the Center. Such a task however is not as easy as it might first look.

Consider the myriad of ways in which we currently conceptualize Asia in today’s world. By way of illustration I selected a number of famous newspapers from around the world to see how they dealt with. In Britain the BBC News website divides World news into the ‘Asia-Pacific’ and South Asia. The left-leaning newspaper The Guardian prefers South & Central Asia on the one hand and Asia-Pacific on the other. The Telegraph curiously divides this region into: Asia, China, Central Asia and Australasia; The Times of London into Asia and Afghanistan(!) In the United States The New York Times prefers an all-inclusive Asia-Pacific; as does The Washington Post; while the Wall Street Journal also chooses and inclusive ‘Asia’ tab but supplements this with separate tags for China, Hong Kong, India and Japan. Finally the Los Angeles Times goes with Asia while creating a separate category for Afghanistan and Pakistan.

The final five choices in my far from scientific survey of the world’s press are the French newspaper Le Monde, The Times of India, The South China Morning Post, The Times of South Africa and The Australian. Here there is even less agreement. While the French opt for the all-inclusive ‘Asia-Pacifique’, the others for the most part bracket news on Asia as ‘World News’. For the Times of India news is divided into Pakistan, South Asia, China and the Rest of the World(!); Hong Kong’s South China Morning Post naturally considers Hong Kong news and news from China as being distinct with the rest of Asia lumped together in ‘Asia and the World’; the Times of South Africa distinguishes between Africa and the World while for The Australian there appears only to be national news and world news!

The point of the exercise above is to demonstrate that the process of identifying and determining what constitutes a region and who comprises it are far from simply an exercise in geography and instead a discursive exercise that is shaped by cultural, economic and strategic factors. Geographically Asia itself is somewhat artificial since the term Eurasia (Europe plus Asia) is a more accurate depiction of the landmass that stretches from the Pacific to the Atlantic. Nevertheless Asia is widely recognized among geographers as comprising the area east of the Ural mountain chain in Russia, south of the Caucasus Mountains, bounded by the Pacific, Indian and Arctic oceans. Nonetheless few today would include the states of the Middle East (or Western Asia) as comprising part of what is commonly regarded as Asia.

European Colonialism in Asia

For much of the 19th and early 20th Century how we defined regions and areas of the world was a by-product of European colonialism and European conceptions of their own enlightened superiority and ‘divine’ mission to raise up the non-White peoples of the world. Thus much of the world was demarcated from a European perspective. Today’s Middle East was known first as the Levant (Latin for East) and then as the Near East so as to distinguish it from the Far East. Asia itself was largely defined by the colonial power that exercised political power or dominant influence. Thus terms such as Northeast Asia, Southeast Asia, and South Asia were largely absent. Instead peninsular Southeast Asia was defined as Indochina by the French while the Malay world was artificially divided between the British territories on the peninsular and the Dutch East Indies (modern day Indonesia). The former was itself divided between The Straits Settlements, the Federated States of Malaya and the Unfederated States of Malaya. Of these The Straits Settlements were administered until 1867 by the infamous East India Company. The Philippines, a Spanish colony until 1898, were administered from Mexico from 1565 to 1821 as part of the Viceroyalty of New Spain, and following Mexican independence in 1821 directly from Madrid. Thus for over 300 years The Philippines looked to its East, to the Americas and Europe rather than to its neighbors in Asia.

Today’s demarcation of Asia into Central, Northeast, Southeast, South and Southwest is similarly more of a reflection of the changes in the geopolitical environment than as a result of Asians themselves. Of these Southeast Asia emerged first during the Second World War following the creation by Winston Churchill in 1943 of Southeastern Asia Command (SEAC). Initially the area of operations for SEAC included India, Burma, Sri Lanka, Malaya and the Indonesian island of Sumatra with offensive operations in Thailand (Siam) and French Indochina. At the end of the war SEAC’s operational area was extended to include the Dutch East Indies and Indochina. The continuation of the use of the term Southeast Asia after the Second World War initially has much to do with the Vietnam War and of the United States global battle to contain the spread of communism. As part of its efforts to do this the United States attempted to form a regional equivalent to NATO. The Southeast Asian Treaty Organization was thus formed in 1954 comprising Australia, Thailand, the Philippines, and New Zealand, and Pakistan. (What is interesting to note about SEATO was not just that is was largely a failure but that its membership only comprised three actual Asian states, the remaining five were ‘Western’).

Similarly Northeast Asia was largely defined both by ‘not’ being Southeast Asia but also because of its geo-strategic importance. Comprising Japan, Hong Kong, North Korea, South Korea and Taiwan Northeast Asia comprised front-line states in the struggle against communism during the Cold War. Following the Korean War (1950-53) the United States afforded enormous strategic importance to the remaining ‘free’ countries of Northeastern Asia and encouraged and assisted these countries in their economic development. As the 1970s and 1980s progressed these countries became the famous Asian tigers whose developmental performance became a model for the developing world.

Finally the term Asia-Pacific is relatively new emerging in the late 1980s to reflect the growing economic importance of East Asia and its trading links with North America and Australasia. Estimates suggest that this ‘new’ region accounts for some 40 per cent of the world’s population, approximately 60 per cent of world GDP and 44 per cent of world trade. While APEC has its origin in the Japanese sponsored Pacific Trade and Development forum and the Pacific Basin Economic Council, both founded in 1968, it was not until two decades that such energies developed significant momentum. This momentum would culminate in the creation of APEC (the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation) in 1989 which would evolve into a 21 nation economic and trade body encompassed Northeast Asia, Southeast Asia, North America, Mexico, Peru and Chile as well as Australia, New Zealand and Papua New Guinea. With China (re)emergence as a major global economic power and greater regional integration among Southeast Asian nations some within Asia have called for new forms of regional organization that, reflecting this dynamic, would exclude the United States and its allies in Australasia.

To conclude where is Asia is as much determined by the “slings and arrows of outrageous fortune” than it is by any nominally neutral and abstract expression of geography. Instead what is Asia will undoubtedly continue to be determined by the broader cultural, economic, social, political and strategic realities of the 21st Century.

Waiting for Godot: Democratization in Southeast Asia.

2011-03-18T17:27:00.000-04:00

In Samuel Beckett’s famous absurdist play the two principal characters, Vladimir and Estragon, wait endlessly in vain for the arrival of Godot. Observing politics in Southeast Asia one can often feel like Beckett’s two characters when it comes to waiting for democratic reforms and political liberalization. Frequently there are false dawns, and multiple setbacks but over the longer term surprisingly little seems to actually change. Currently according to Freedom House’s annual Freedom in the World survey only one country, Indonesia, is listed as being ‘free’ with five countries (Brunei, Burma, Cambodia, Laos and Vietnam) designated ‘not free’ and five as being ‘partly free’ (East Timor, Malaysia, The Philippines, Thailand and Singapore). Freedom House’s overall rankings are derived from separate measures of political rights and civil liberties in which 1-3 is free, 4-6 partly free and 7-10 not free.

What is striking from the longitudinal data, however, is that the group of countries designated not free has been unchanged over the last 20 years (although Cambodia was briefly designated as being partly free between 1993-1995). Similarly those countries designated as being partly free have undergone little change. Malaysia and Singapore have remained firmly in the ‘partly free’ camp because of legislative restrictions on civil and political rights and elections in which the playing field was clearly skewed against opposition parties. While Thailand made the transition from partly free to free in 1998 the 2006 military coup moved Thailand into the not free camp where it remained until elections were resumed in 2008 since when it has been classified as partly free because of ongoing political instability. Similarly The Philippines has oscillated between partly free and free due to pervasive political corruption and political violence, both during election campaigns and against journalists in the country. Indeed the only ‘bright spot’ in Southeast Asia has been the democratic transition in Indonesia following the resignation of the country’s authoritarian leader General Suharto in 1998. Since then Indonesia’s trend lines saw the measure of its political rights improve from 7 to 4 in 1999 and from 4 to 2 in 2006. Concurrently civil liberties improved from 5 in 1997-8 to 4 in 1998-9, before improving to 3 in 2006. As a result since 2006 Indonesia has not only been designated as ‘free’ but has been widely viewed as the most democratic country in the region.

Bangkok's glistening MBK mall

What is noticeable about the data discussed above is how little has actually changed in Southeast Asia despite over three decades of dynamic economic growth and major geopolitical changes in the international political system -- of which the transition to democracy in Eastern Europe represented a major advance of political freedoms globally. Such resistance to widespread reform of political and civil rights seemingly contradicts the prevailing theories of democratic transition that widely accept a strong positive correlation between economic growth and political liberalization. Such views, dubbed transition theory, largely support the notion that as a country’s economy grows it will see the emergence and strengthening of an educated, literate and increasingly articulate middle class that will demand greater political freedom. Combining core business elites, the intelligentsia, non-profit groups and students this consistency is regarded as been crucial for the maintenance of political legitimacy. Widespread disaffection among the middle classes is therefore seen as being a bell-weather for change with prominent defections to the political opposition potential game changers in the process of democratization.

HINDRAF protests
Malaysia 2007/2011

One only has to pay a cursory visit to Southeast Asia to see the trappings of conspicuous consumption one clearly associates with the emergence of a vibrant middle class. Equally the growth of civil society can also be clearly discerned both organically and as a result of the support of Western and international advocacy groups, while more recently online activity has seen a proliferation of critical voices on the Internet. Nor are mass protests and demonstrations unusual. In Malaysia there have been recurrent large-scale protests both in support of political reform (the reformasi movement in 1998-9, the Bersih rally in 2007) and ethnic minority rights (the Hindu Rights rallies of 2007 and 2011) while since 2005 Thai politics has been bedeviled by the politics of mass protest and the seemingly intractable division between red shirts and yellow shirts. One is thus forced to ask why despite such dynamics Southeast Asia seems largely resistant to change?

Naturally there is no single simple answer to this conundrum. However one can identify a number of probable causes. Firstly in many of the countries of Southeast Asia the middle classes have been at best ambivalent towards democracy and at worst hostile towards it. The nature of political authority in many of these countries has made the middle classes dependent on the state for contracts, employment and patronage. In Malaysia this has been compounded by the country’s delicate ethnic balance, and by the corresponding affirmative action program for the dominant Malay ethnic group.

Another explanation for middle-class quiescence comes from the legitimacy accorded to existing regimes from rising living standards. Consistently high levels of economic growth combined with low levels of unemployment have given governments across the region a reservoir of support referred to as development legitimacy. Thus while the middle classes across Southeast Asia might be conscious of limitations on their political freedom they are willing to accept such restraints so long as the government is able to continue to deliver rising prosperity.

Police in the Malayan emergency

A third factor has been weak party political systems and the repression of trade unions and the radical left. This was a result of the Cold War ideological competition between the United States and the communist Soviet Union as well as the existence and persistence of left-wing insurgencies. Across Southeast Asia newly independent regimes were challenged by left wing pro-communist forces; from the Vietnam War on mainland Southeast Asia to the Emergency in Malaysia and the existence in Indonesia, prior to the political violence of 1967, of what was briefly the 3^rd largest communist party in the world. Such ideological struggle resulted in the marginalization and repression of socialist and other left-leaning political parties in countries such as Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, the Philippines and Singapore. In contrast in Cambodia, Laos and Vietnam the success of socialist parties in their insurgencies and civil wars led to the creation of one-party states or, as in the case of Cambodia, by a political system overwhelmingly dominated by the former communist party.

General Suharto
President of Indonesia 1967-98

Finally some academic voices argue that the region is culturally pre-disposed towards authoritarianism because of the dominance of communitarian values as opposed to individualism. Dubbed ‘Asian Values’ such arguments stress the cultural legacy of Confucianism and Eastern philosophy with its emphasis on stability, order, harmony and hierarchical social relations. The result is deference and quiescence to single party political systems and strong personal leadership typified by Lee Kuan Yew in Singapore (Prime Minister from 1965-1990), Mahathir Mohamad in Malaysia (Prime Minister from 1981-2003), General Suharto in Indonesia (1967-1998) and Hun Sen in Cambodia (1985-present). Such cultural arguments are difficult to sustain given both the bewildering ethnic and religious diversity of Southeast Asia, and the fact that more culturally homogenous Asian countries such as Japan, South Korea and Taiwan are all fully functioning liberal democracies.

The truth is that no-one factor provides a simple explanation for the persistence of authoritarian and semi-democratic regimes in Southeast Asia. Overall the region as whole presents something of an enigma for the study of political change in Asia and throws a large spanner in the works for those who articulate seemingly inevitable processes of democratic transition and economic development. While one cannot rule out the possibility that events like the Jasmine revolution sweeping the Arab world might occur in Southeast Asia the persistence of limited freedom suggests that like Vladimir and Estragon those eager for democratization might be waiting for ‘Godot’ for a long time to come.

The Jasmine Revolution II: Will the revolution be tweeted?

2011-03-10T13:18:00.000-05:00

Use of cellphones was ubiquitous in
the recent Egyptian revolution

Courtesy of Slate magazine
http://tinyurl.com/63ttddf

In terms of the diffusion of ICTs and the question of digital divides, the diffusion of mobile phones has far-outstripped the penetration of personal computers and fixed landlines in the developing world. For examplel, it is estimated that within 5 years mobile Internet access will exceed PC Internet usage. Already 20 per cent of cellphones worldwide are 3G with sales of the iPhone and Android driving this figure ever higher. In addition as Howard notes it is largely irrelevant whether cellphone and social networking users are largely urban and middle class since these groups invariably form the social elites upon which regime legitimacy effectively rests in authoritarian countries. In addition internet penetration rates are often an inaccurate measure of the number of people who have access to the internet since it is difficult to measure the number of people who access the Net via cybercafés. In addition computers and cellphones are often shared among families.

Reference: Howard, N. (2011) The Digital Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy, New York: Oxford University Press.