Om Swastiastu ...
Only dopes smuggle dope into Bali. This simple truth was demonstrated once again twice last week in a series of drug arrests at Bali’s airport that netted two Malaysian men and one Frenchman.
Local press reports allege the presence of a “mafia” manipulating the local courts, allowing a local businessman to illegally seize valuable private and public assets.
Heavy equipment was sent onto Kuta beach last week to remove rubbish that’s been washed ashore by high waves. Meanwhile, heavy equipment of another kind moved into a another section of Kuta to destroy decades old shade trees obstructing the view of hotel guests.
Read how Governor Pastika’s free public health system has precipitated a ten-fold increase in patients at the island’s public hospitals and prompted moves to try to overcome the log jam.
Property rights apparently will forever remain an area of contention in Bali. We have an aticle relating how local villagers are marching on a house in Petitenget demanding a family move out.
We do some numbers crunching in this edition. There’s an installment of ‘Bali by the Numbers’ that looks at arrival statistics through the end of November 2009. Meanwhile, Bali’s provincial tourism office sets a target of 2.3 million visitors for 2010.
Anak Agung Gde Agung, a man with a deep and penetrating understanding of Indonesian tourism issues, contributes his thoughts in a piece “Indonesian Tourism – a National Tragedy.”
And read our coverage of poor Chris Noth of “Sex and the City Fame.” Sure, New York is nice, but Chris is refusing to sign a new movie contract unless he can bring Sarah Jessica Parker to Bali.
Chris, we’re on your side.
For the full report go to: http://www.balidiscovery.com/update/update698.asp
Om Çanti Çanti Çanti Om ...
J.M. Daniels - Bali Update
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The death sentence being sought for former antigraft czar and murder suspect Antasari Azhar has reignited debate over capital punishment in a country with more than 100 people on death row and which executed 10 people in 2008 — a record for the post-Suharto era.
Rights activists have said that aside from capital punishment being a violation of human rights, the country’s notoriously corrupt judicial system raises the real possibility that an innocent person could end up facing the firing squad.
Antasari, along with middle-ranking police officer Wiliardi Wizar and businessman Sigid Haryo Wibisono, is facing the death sentence for allegedly plotting and ordering the murder of businessman Nasrudin Zulkarnaen in March last year.
Prosecutors in Antasari’s case argued that death was appropriate for the defendant, in line with the legal principle that provides for heavier sentences for the instigator of a crimes. In separate trials, prosecutors sought life sentences for the five men who carried out the murder — although they were sentenced to jail terms of between 17 and 18 years.
Rights activists argue that prosecutors are applying double standards, pointing to the handling of the 2008 trial of a former top intelligence official, Muchdi Purwoprandjono, who was accused of ordering the murder of Munir Said Thalib, a prominent human rights activist.
Usman Hamid, chairman of the Commission for Missing Persons and Victims of Violence (Kontras), which Munir founded, pointed out that the prosecutor in charge of Muchdi’s case, Cirus Sinaga, is also leading the prosecution in Antasari’s trial.
But in Muchdi’s trial, Cirus only proposed a 15-year sentence despite the fact that he had earlier demanded a life sentence for the man who carried out the murder, Pollycarpus Budihari Priyanto.
Lawyers also point to inconsistencies in the case of Hutomo “Tommy” Mandala Putra, the youngest son of former President Suharto, who ordered the July 2001 murder of a Supreme Court justice who had upheld his conviction for graft.
The two men convicted of carrying out the murder were sentenced to life in prison, while Tommy received a 15-year jail term and served less than a third of that after a series of sentence reductions.
“The Tommy case is one more proof of how unpredictable our justice system is,” said Alamsjah Hanafiah, a lawyer whose client, Gunawan Santoso, is awaiting execution for his conviction in a separate murder case.
“Tommy and Gunawan faced exactly the same charges. Both were accused of premeditated murder, hiring hit men to carry out the murder and fleeing justice. But what a contrast of fates for Tommy and Gunawan.”
Alamsjah said on Friday he was preparing to file for a judicial review with the Supreme Court.
According to Kontras, at least 109 people are currently awaiting execution by firing squad. Convicted drug dealers make up roughly half of that figure.
Authorities in 2008 executed 10 convicts, including three people convicted in the 2002 Bali bombings. That figure matched 1986 for the most people executed in Indonesia in a single year.
But rights group Imparsial says the death penalty belongs to a bygone era and should be abolished.
The death sentence is against the 1945 Constitution and reflects 19th century values of retribution, which doesn’t apply in today’s society. By Heru Andriyanto for the Jakarta Globe
This week marks the 50th anniversary of the U.S.-Japan alliance, but the Obama administration seems sincerely flummoxed as to whether to bemoan or commemorate the occasion.
On the one hand, U.S. officials have reacted with considerable discomfort to the more independent and assertive policies of the new Japanese government. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates called Tokyo’s desire to reopen debate about the location of U.S. bases in Okinawa “counterproductive” and the alternatives to current plans “politically untenable and operationally unworkable.”
On the other hand, President Obama observed during his visit to Tokyo in November that the U.S.-Japan relationship must be one of “equals” and “not a senior-vs-junior partnership.” And Deputy Secretary of State James Steinberg last week welcomed the “expression of Japan’s vibrant democracy” and the opportunity to “conduct an open dialogue on shaping the future of the alliance.”
As the Obama administration struggles to sort out its Japan policy, it should tilt decidedly toward welcoming rather than rebuffing the fresh approach of the government of Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama. While a cold response to his more assertive foreign policy is predictable — Tokyo since World War II has consistently deferred to its U.S. protector — it is sorely misguided. In questioning the location of the Okinawa bases and seeking a relationship with China not entirely mediated by Washington, the new government is not attempting to demote Japan’s alliance with the United States. On the contrary, it is seeking to update the alliance to the new political and strategic environment in the region.
Rather than warning Tokyo to return to the fold, Washington should work with the Hatoyama government to forge a healthier and more mature relationship.
The election last year of the Democratic Party represents a watershed in Japanese politics, bringing to an end the post-war reign of the Liberal Democratic Party. In breaking the lock that the L.D.P. had on Japanese politics, the D.P.J. has cleared the way for pressures long pent up to rise to the surface. Many voters long for Japan to become a “normal” country — one that assumes more geopolitical responsibility and conducts a foreign policy made in Tokyo, not Washington.
Mr. Hatoyama has pledged to address citizens’ concerns about the social ills that U.S. bases have brought to their communities. And he has vowed to cut back the power of entrenched bureaucrats, who for decades preserved the status quo on foreign policy.
Among older Japanese, for whom the U.S.-Japan alliance enjoyed a sacred status, this status quo was more than acceptable. But younger Japanese have begun to ask tough questions — to which Mr. Hatoyama is seeking answers.
Tokyo’s search for a more autonomous foreign policy is also a reflection of a changing strategic environment. China’s rise is reshaping the region. It has become Japan’s largest export market. Beijing has discovered the merits of regional engagement, opening the door to a new level of dialogue with Japan. Meanwhile, North Korea’s nuclear program has provided a new urgency to regional dialogue, encouraging Japan to step out from behind the shadow of U.S. power.
Japan is in many respects beginning to travel down the road taken by Europe after the fall of the Berlin Wall. With the end of the Cold War, the European Union both quickened its pace of regional integration and yearned for more autonomy from Washington. Germany and France even led the charge against the Iraq war in 2003, and the trans-Atlantic alliance emerged the stronger for it. Europe no longer grumbles about the excesses of U.S. power. And the United States enjoys the benefits of a more independent and capable Europe that is shouldering a heavy burden in Afghanistan, leading the effort to curb climate change, and helping to stabilize the global economy.
Japan needs to similarly update its alliance with the United States, getting a measure of distance from Washington, but ultimately making the partnership stronger and more mature. Japan has the potential to be a regional leader on peacekeeping, foreign aid and clean energy technology.
As Japan deepens its bilateral relationship with China, the two countries may finally have the opportunity to replicate the kind of rapprochement achieved by France and Germany after World War II. In the same way that Europeans built a self-sustaining regional peace, Japan should capitalize on the stability afforded by its alliance with the U.S. to make a push for Sino-Japanese reconciliation and regional integration.
A more assertive and independent Japan promises to do much more for East Asia and the United States than a Japan that defers to Washington. It is past time for Washington and Tokyo to bring the alliance into the 21st century.
G. John Ikenberry is a professor of politics and international affairs at Princeton University. Charles A. Kupchan is a professor of international affairs at Georgetown University and a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. By G. JOHN IKENBERRY and CHARLES A. KUPCHAN for the International Herald Tribune
India’s population is growing fast, posing a threat to the country’s sustained development. But there is a lack of political will to tackle it.
India's population grew from 345 million in 1951 to about 1,162 million last May. It is growing by around 16 to 17 million every year.New data shows that India will overtake China as the world's most populous nation by 2025 -- five years earlier than estimated.
Discussing the baby boom is not considered politically correct. Political parties mention it, if at all, only in passing in their poll manifestos. "Go out and multiply", faith-based parties advocate, to keep up the numbers of those of their faith compared with others. Social and economic justifications and virtues are many. A family with daughter(s) wants a son. Although elders no longer bless the new bride with the traditional "may you bear a hundred children," the attitudes have not changed. Children are still "god-sent".
Statistics are reeled out and concerns expressed. After half a century of a halting, half-hearted effort at curbing it, people look furtively at the inverted red triangle, the symbol of the government's population control programme. Despite the declining poverty rate, about 25 per cent of India's population (about 290 million people) still do not earn enough to afford even two square meals a day.
As India moves ahead economically, its massive population poses a threat to sustainable development and demands immediate attention.
The only "action", if one may call it that, is caused by the pressure of urban economics that forces people to have smaller families. In rural areas, the situation has changed only marginally.Population growth in India has important implications for socio-economic development and quality of life.Amidst slogans of a "resurgent", and "incredible" India, its excessive population growth is reflected in widespread hunger, poverty, unemployment, lack of physical and health infrastructure and increasing scarcity of basic resources such as food, water and space in several areas, despite concerted development efforts.
The baby boom has contributed heavily to the development model being totally skewed, one that can only encourage disparities and inequalities. The latest UN projections say India will have two billion people by 2101 if the population continues to grow at the current rate.
The comparison with China is inevitable. In 1979, China's fertility rate was 2.8, while that of Kerala state in south India was 3. By 2007, 28 years after it forced a coercive one-child policy on its people, China's fertility rate stood at 1.7. Kerala reached the same figure but without treating its people like laboratory rats.
Kerala's success stands on three pillars: Education, Employment, Equality. On the ground, the three Es translate into a high literacy rate, regular income for families and confident women. While Kerala's neighbouring states in the south have emulated this, the rest of India, particularly the north, has not kept pace.There is a north-south divide on the population front. The disparities are evident in human development indicators in the more populous north.
India's flawed population policies were uncoordinated and haphazard in the Nehru years, when more hands at work were considered an economic asset. The graph really went up from 1961.Experts blame the emphasis on sterilization, which was started in the late 1960s. Indians fell for terms like "population explosion", coined by the West which saw the growing population of India and China as a security threat during the Cold War days, says A.R. Nanda, executive director of the Population Foundation of India, a non-governmental organisation for demographic studies.
The sterilisation programme went overboard during 1975-77 when India witnessed an internal emergency. Public fears, real or imaginary, mattered and Indira Gandhi's government was defeated in the subsequent general election. This has since been seen, and cited, as the cause for removing any form of coercion in the population control programme. Indeed, the nomenclature has changed from "family planning" to "family welfare".
The first National Population Policy was drafted as late as 2000. Half a century was lost.
Population growth cannot be controlled by coercive measures but with economic growth, education for all and empowerment of women.But this has had the effect of throwing out the baby with the bath water. The population is booming at a faster pace than the three Es and infrastructure can cope with. A recent "Global Economic Prospects" report projects that one quarter of India's population would be below the extreme poverty line, earning less than US$1.25 (RM 4.25) a day, by 2015. The official estimates provided by India's National Sample Survey show a poverty rate of 27.5 per cent in 2004-05.
The massive population base and its rapid growth continue to be a major challenge to socio-economic progress and sustainable development. India needs a three-pronged attack. With a new surge in the field of education -- the Indian Parliament passed the Right to Education Bill last year -- a major part of the problem has been addressed. The next stage is healthcare, followed by the size of the family itself.
The road is long and full of obstacles. But it must be travelled. By MAHENDRA VED for The New Straits Times Kuala Lumpur
Ms Kartika Sari Dewi Shukarno, 32, a former model set to be caned for drinking a beer has lost her job and her husband.
The Malaysian from Perak made international headlines when she was ordered to be caned six times and fined RM5,000 (S$2,060) in July last year for drinking alcohol in public.
She would be the first woman caned in Malaysia under Islamic law. The punishment is enforced only in Pahang, Kelantan and Perlis. Civil law does not allow caning for women. The Pahang Syariah High Court abruptly postponed her caning in August until after the Muslim holy month of Ramadan. The religious authorities there upheld her caning sentence in September, but did not set a date for it to be carried out.
The court's caning order has caused serious damage to Malaysia's international image as a moderate Muslim country. But some Muslim groups have backed the sentence and asked critics not to interfere with laws meant for Muslims.
There have been other cases of Muslims, including women, who were caught drinking, but almost all of them pleaded not guilty and appealed against their sentences.
Thai police have found caches of weapons in the houses of rogue army Major-General Khattiya Sawasdipol and some associates in a raid, bringing the underlying volatility of the country’s political conflict into sharp focus. The major-general is now under investigation over a grenade attack last week on a building in the Thai army’s headquarters in Bangkok, which houses the office of army chief Anupong Paochinda.
Nobody was injured in the attack, which appears to have been meant as a warning.
Days before, Khattiya had been suspended for insubordination over his continued high-profile support of anti-government “red shirts”, as well as an unauthorised visit to Cambodia to meet ousted premier Thaksin Shinawatra. The grenade attack spooked the government, and also pointed to the possibility of fissures in the army.
Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva yesterday called a meeting of the National Security Council, telling reporters afterwards that the government had acted according to the law, so the red shirts had no reason to resent the raids. Foreign Minister Kasit Piromya also briefed diplomats on security measures in the event of protests in Bangkok — especially at the airport — in coming weeks. He spent much of the time explaining the Thai government’s achievements and objectives, while police and army officers were on hand to brief the diplomats about security and contingency plans for ensuring that Suvarnabhumi International Airport stays open.
The focus on the airport was sparked by a plan announced this week by the red shirts of the United Front for Democracy against Dictatorship (UDD) to stage protests on the road to the terminal. The stock market dipped on news of the plan, as traders recalled the closure of the airport by the right-wing People’s Alliance for Democracy (PAD) in 2008.
The red shirts, however, have since dropped the idea of the airport protests. Last week’s grenade attack compounded the jittery atmosphere in the capital.
Khattiya, a maverick combat veteran better known by his colourful nickname Seh Daeng, has openly defied the army’s top brass.
After his suspension, he reportedly said that only the Thai king could fire him, and that he could make it difficult for General Anupong to walk the streets if the army chief persisted in targeting him.
In 2008, he gave dozens of young men daily combat training in full public view, saying he was grooming them to protect red shirts from the PAD, which was then campaigning to oust the Thaksin-loyalist People Power Party government. Khattiya relishes the maverick, folk-hero image attributed to him, and is often scornful of “golf soldiers” — indicating a vein of resentment present in some quarters of the army, of officers who are promoted to privileged posts because they are close to some of the capital’s elites.
Fears of a market bubble in China have tempered enthusiasm for investments in that country even as confidence in U.S. markets has risen, according to a Bloomberg News survey.
China, the world's fastest-growing major economy, is viewed as a bubble by 62 percent of the respondents. About one-third said China offered the best investment opportunities over the coming year, almost tied for first place with the United States and Brazil, though down sharply from October, when 44 percent ranked China best.
This time, nearly three of 10 investors said China posed the greatest downside risk, ranking it the second-riskiest market after the European Union.
"We think that China is producing and is building up inventories at a rate that no other country or region can follow at the moment," said poll respondent Alcibiades Angelakis, head of marketing and research at Epic Investments in Athens. "This cannot continue for a long time, and we fear that in the second half of this year things will slow down."
Concerns over a potential bubble in China have been mounting recently. Hedge fund-investor James Chanos, president and founder of New York-based Kynikos Associates, one of the first investors to foretell the 2001 collapse of Houston-based energy company Enron, has said China looks like "Dubai times 1,000 -- or worse."
Chinese lending limits
After new bank lending in China last year surged to a record, banking regulator Liu Mingkang said he has told some banks to limit lending and restrict overall credit growth.
China's benchmark Shanghai Composite Index dropped 95.02 points, or 2.9 percent, on concerns that the nation's central bank may raise interest rates. The index has lost 3.8 percent this year, making China the worst performer among the world's 10 largest stock markets.
China reported that its gross domestic product surged to 10.7 percent in the fourth quarter, marking its fastest growth in any quarter since 2007.
