The red shirts' protest is not as bad as the mainstream media makes it out to be, because if it is looked at from a positive perspective, one can see it as setting new standards in Thai politics - something that would be very useful for achieving true democracy.
winners should be given the right to rule the country. Yet, governments that have been given the mandate to rule by the voting public have been rare since Thailand's 1932 revolution. For instance, even though the current Democrat-led government was put in place through a majority vote from the Lower House, it was not chosen in the 2007 elections. The Democrats only got the chance to form a government after judiciary activists dissolved the People's Power Party and broke up the previous coalition.
The dissolution of a party is often an unusual situation. Historically, it only happens after a military dictatorship and this time around too, the People's Power Party was dissolved by judicial activism that followed the 2006 coup.
However, the red shirts are weakening their stance by siding with former PM Thaksin Shinawatra - who is known for his corruption and abuse of power. Yet, it can be argued that Thaksin is not the only corrupt person - many politicians supporting the current government are no better than him. Besides, with such politicians under its wing, Abhisit Vejjajiva's government cannot be as clean as it likes to present itself.
Still, the reds are not siding with Thaksin just for Thaksin himself - even though he might end up benefiting greatly from the protest - but instead are using him as an excuse to speak up against non-elected politicians delivering policy. True, vote-buying and money politics flourished during Thaksin's time, but money is not the only factor for electoral victory because other parties also use money during elections.
For instance, this government has not exactly ruled out Thaksin's populist policies - slammed by many economists as being bad for the economy - because they are powerful political tools.
Yet, these populist policies did not bring the red-attired men and women to protest on the streets of Bangkok. They are here because they want to be heard and do not want the elite to twist the mandate they give their politicians through elections. Military coups and derived legal tools are just not acceptable to them.
The red shirts are also sending a strong message about the Thai justice system's "double standards" - a very important issue that the society should stop and listen to. The protesters want the elite to get the same treatment under law like the rest of us.
The case of former premier Surayud Chulanont's holiday home on Khao Yai Thiang springs to mind as a perfect example of injustice and inequality. The Office of the Attorney-General decided to drop the case on grounds that Surayud had no intentions of encroaching on the forest reserve. Therefore, the red-shirt movement's fury over this is totally understandable.
Besides, the judiciary has also proved to be colour-coded. Take for instance the case of red-shirt member Daranee Charnchoengsilpakul, who was denied bail and is now serving time for lese majeste. In comparison, yellow-shirt leader Sondhi Limthongkul, who repeated Daranee's words in public, is still walking free even though he faces the same charges because the state prosecution team is not yet ready to file his case in court.
Though this protest might not be able to achieve its goal of toppling Abhisit's government, the elite who rule this country should most certainly stop and listen. The Nation, Bangkok
VIENTIANE - A recent high-level meeting between United States diplomats and the Mekong River Commission in Laos was held amid growing suspicions of China's management of the upper regions of the Mekong River, which in recent weeks has run dry in several downstream countries.
The exchange was seen as the latest overture in a renewed US effort to counterbalance China's rising influence in the region and boost the US's image in a country where for historical reasons it has maintained a low profile. Neighboring China, meanwhile, has recently made deep inroads through trade, aid and investment initiatives.
US Assistant Secretary of State for East Asia and the Pacific Kurt Campbell made a two-day stop in Vientiane this month as part of a wider Asian tour. Campbell met with Lao Deputy Foreign Affairs Minister Phongsavath Boupha, paid a courtesy call on Foreign Minister Thongloun Sisoulith and attended the third US-Lao comprehensive bilateral dialogue.
Although there was little publicity about the meetings, Campbell said in congressional testimony prior to the trip that he aimed to discuss improving bilateral relations and the ongoing cleanup of unexploded US ordinance left behind from the Vietnam War.
Campbell is notably the highest-ranking American diplomat to participate in the US-Lao Comprehensive Dialogue, which aims to improve relations through discussions of shared global and regional policy aims, as well as bilateral issues. US deputy assistant secretaries attended meetings of the talk shop in October 2006 and January 2008.
In reply to questions about US interests in Laos, a US State Department official told Asia Times Online, "We are committed to high-level engagement with the country of Laos" and that greater engagement "is part of our broader effort to reaffirm our commitment to Southeast Asia, including through such innovative programs as the Lower Mekong Initiative".
That eight-month-old initiative was likely the focus of talks when Campbell met officials of the MRC, an inter-governmental body that promotes and coordinates sustainable management and development of the Mekong River basin and maintains its secretariat in Vientiane. The Lower Mekong Initiative was launched by the US in cooperation with Laos, Thailand, Cambodia and Vietnam during meetings on the sidelines of the July 2009 ASEAN Regional Forum in Thailand. The US has so far pledged US$7 million for environmental programs on the lower Mekong.
According to a US State Department statement, the program promotes cooperation on issues of regional importance and focuses on environment, health, education and infrastructure. The statement also gives an overview of the components as strengthening water management, including a partnership between the MRC and the Mississippi River Commission, protection of forests, science partnerships and the advancement of clean energy programs.
Other details are scarce, and it appears the initiative is still at the exploration phase of areas for cooperation. Yet the initiative may allow the US to gain traction vis-a-vis China on an important issue in a region the US has been accused of neglecting in recent years. This is certainly the case in the increasingly important strategic regional crossroads of Laos, which shares a land border with China.
Before a regional tour of Asia earlier this month, Campbell told the House Foreign Affairs Committee, "The Asia-Pacific region is of vital and permanent importance to the United States and it is clear that countries in the region want the United States to maintain a strong and active presence. Our policy will ensure that the United States acts as a resident power and not just as a visitor, because what happens in the region has a direct effect on our security and economic well-being."
Little aid
In Laos, the US's resident power is meager. A Congressional Research Service (CRS) report on US-Lao relations released in January stated that the "US provides relatively little foreign assistance to Laos". In 2009, the US provided just $5 million in assistance to Vientiane, and the 2010 Congressional Budget Justification for Foreign Operations said this year it will provide only marginally more at $5.15 million. CRS noted that this was much less than the $65 million given to Cambodia in 2009.
The budget is stretched thinly across programs covering unexploded ordnance (UXO) removal, counter-narcotics operations, programs for improving trade capacity, HIV/AIDS prevention and treatment, the recovery of Americans still missing in action since the Vietnam War and military education and training.
The largest assistance program is the continued removal of remnants of the more than 2.5 million tons of bombs dropped on Laos during the 1960s and early 1970s. According to a State Department official, $3.25 million was given to Laos in 2009 for UXO removal and abatement. While the US may view the program, as noted in the 2010 Congressional Budget Justification for Foreign Operations, as advancing "humanitarian and economic goals" and creating "a climate of cooperation that advances other policy goals", many Lao view the program as the US belatedly taking responsibility for cleaning up its own mess.
At the same time, the US is engaging Laos economically through an expansion of technical assistance to enhance its capacity to implement trade agreements and modernize its legal and regulatory framework. The US Agency for International Development (USAID), the government's aid organ, is facilitating a trade reform program aimed at improving Laos' ability to gain accession to the World Trade Organization, implement the US-Lao Bilateral Trade Agreement and participate in the planned ASEAN Economic Community slated for 2015.
The 2010 budget cited these initiatives as "probably the most important action the US government can currently take to influence the future direction of Laos' policy". US trade and investment in Laos is meager compared with China, Vietnam and Thailand, which respectively account for 8.5%, 15% and 35% of Laos' total trade. US trade with Laos quadrupled to $60 million in 2008 from $15 million in 2006, led by Lao exports of garments, but the US still ranks as Laos' seventh-largest trading partner.
To facilitate greater trade, President Barack Obama in June removed Laos and Cambodia from a blacklist that had prohibited the US Export-Import Bank from financing US companies seeking to do business in Laos. The demonstrated commitment by Laos to opening its markets was the cited reason for the policy shift. The removal of Laos from the trade blacklist may encourage some US companies to invest in Laos, but investment is unlikely to rise soon to the levels of Vientiane's main investors, Vietnam, China, Thailand and South Korea.
US programs in Laos also suffer from a low profile compared with the aid efforts of other countries, especially China. USAID and other American agencies, including the Department of Defense, Department of Health and Human Services, Department of Agriculture and Department of State, all have various programs in place across the country. USAID programs cover creating alternative livelihoods for former opium poppy farmers, medical and quality-of-life assistance to UXO victims, and promotion of environmental protection, among others.
Many programs, however, are in remote areas and are rarely seen or appreciated by the average Lao. Moreover, USAID still suffers from an image problem in Laos, where some members of the Lao government and general population believe it still functions as a cover for Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) activities and information gathering. Those views are a holdover from the 1960s and 1970s, when much of the US's "secret war" in Laos was run through the CIA, whose agents allegedly often took USAID covers.
The US has also moved to expand relations with Laos' military. Following the first exchange of defense attaches in 30 years in 2008, the US opened in December a defense attache's office at its Vientiane-based embassy. The US is also teaching English language and military professionalism to Lao soldiers through its International Military Education and Training (IMET) program and has slots for the training of eight officers in the US.
A long-running sticking point in US-Lao relations was largely removed in December when Thailand forcibly repatriated some 4,371 ethnic Hmong refugees from a camp in its Petchabun province and another 158 from an immigration detention center in Nong Khai. Lao and Thai government officials claimed the Hmong were economic migrants, but human-rights activists and American Hmong claimed at least some were refugees with real fear of persecution if returned to Laos.
The Hmong claimed to be members of a resistance movement made up of former fighters recruited by the CIA during the Vietnam War. US support for the Hmong during the war and perceived tacit approval for the ongoing activities of Hmong in America led by former General Vang Pao and others has long made Lao officials skeptical of US intentions.
Vang Pao and his supporters were dealt a blow in 2007 when the elderly general and several of his lieutenants were arrested in a US government sting operation, allegedly for plotting to overthrow the government in Vientiane. Although Vang Pao was later dropped from the indictment and serious legal questions remain about the methods used in the sting operation, the arrests sent the message that the US would no longer tolerate Hmong anti-government activities.
The Lao government has promised to allow the returnees to apply for resettlement in foreign countries, and the US, Australia, Canada and the Netherlands have offered to take them in. However, the Lao government now claims that the Hmong no longer want to leave and no requests have been made. Officials from the US embassy and several congressman have been able to visit the returnees now housed in two resettlement sites.
A State Department official told Asia Times Online that the US government is pleased that the international community is being granted access to the Hmong and encourages Vientiane to continue allowing regular international access. The US is also planning to provide "supplemental food and basic needs assistance to the returnees and is prepared to do more, if the Lao government agrees".
Geostrategic aims
Vientiane appears receptive, if guardedly, to US overtures. Laos' leaders likely see the utility of having the US as a counterbalance to China's growing influence in the country.
While many Laos are pleased with the growing links to China and the increased number of goods available and the money to be made from trade, a growing fear of Chinese domination exists. In particular, there is a perception that the growing number of Chinese arriving to work and live in Laos constitutes a sovereign threat that has been accentuated by the government's granting of large-scale, long-term land leases to Chinese companies.
China's policies towards the Mekong are also worrisome considering Laos' main population centers are along the river. Although China claims the situation is the result of a drought in its southwest, some are not convinced and blame Beijing's large-scale dam construction on the upper Mekong. Laos and the MRC have a weak bargaining position when it comes to China, but increased US interest in the form of the Lower Mekong Initiative may provide some muscle to their complaints.
Vietnam, which has long been Laos' main patron and ally, is also keen to see Laos forge better relations with the US as a means of maintaining its own interests in the country as well as blunting China's influence. Chinese largesse has meant Hanoi's once dominant position in Laos has lost ground. Vietnam's historical animosity towards China has been enhanced in recent years due to continued disputes over the possibly oil-rich Spratly and Paracel Islands in the South China Sea.
Should Laos improve its relations with the US, Vietnam's western flank would be better protected and Hanoi would have a stronger position in both Laos and in negotiations with China.
China made extensive inroads into Southeast Asia after the 1997 Asian economic crisis due to a policy shift that emphasized development aid, economic incentives and cultural exchanges over hard strategic power. These moves were made easier by a general perception among ASEAN states that the US was focused elsewhere, largely on the "war on terror" in Iraq and Afghanistan. It was certainly not lost on regional leaders that then US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice skipped two ASEAN summits in three years.
In contrast to the slow improvement in relations between Laos and the US, China's presence has grown rapidly after a period of cool relations in the 1970s and 1980s. Beijing provided generous assistance to Laos following the 1997-98 economic crisis and has since risen to become Vientiane's principal source of economic largesse through grants, low-interest loans, foreign investment and technical assistance.
CRS's January 2010 report stated that Laos receives approximately $400 million in bilateral and multilateral assistance annually. China's portion of that assistance is hard to gauge since its foreign aid programs typically entail a much broader range of activities than what is normally considered as overseas development assistance. This assistance includes concessional loans, grants, debt relief, public works projects, energy development, agricultural training, investments on preferential terms and the construction of schools, medical facilities and infrastructure.
China has placed considerable emphasis on creating a positive image in Laos through the construction of high-profile projects such as Vientiane's National Culture Hall and the central Lan Xang Avenue, leading to its famous Patouxy monument. A Chinese company was responsible for building the main stadium for the December 2009 Southeast Asian Games, held for the first time in Vientiane. China also trains hundreds of Lao military and government officials in its schools and offers numerous scholarships for promising Lao students to study in Chinese universities. It has also set up schools providing subsidized education for Laos eager to learn Chinese.
Beijing's foreign aid comes with a commitment of non-interference, different from the strings often attached to US and European aid that requires demonstrable progress in areas such as human rights improvements and corruption eradication.
The day before Campbell's recent visit to Vientiane, the State Department released its 2009 Human Rights Report. Under the entry for Laos, while indicating that human rights had improved somewhat, it noted that political freedom was limited, freedom of speech and freedom of the press were not respected, prison conditions were harsh and corruption in the government and judiciary continued. The report also noted that Laos had made some progress in enforcing its anti-human trafficking law, while also noting its increasing role as a transit country.
Those criticisms aside, US participation in the Lower Mekong Initiative and other efforts to counterbalance China's influence will likely win favor in Laos. While the US may not any time soon compete dollar for dollar with China's generous assistance, better publicized bilateral programs could start to narrow the gap in public perceptions and set the stage for a heartier competition for diplomatic influence. By Brian McCartan Bangkok-based freelance journalist. Asia Times
Political chaos beckons—unless there is an election and an honest discussion about the monarchy’s future
FOR decades Thai politics suffered from a surfeit of pragmatism. Indeed, grimy compromises were dignified as “Thai solutions”. Parties tussled over the perks of office, without letting policies or principles get in the way. When the bickering became too intense, the army would step in—18 times since the advent of constitutional monarchy in 1932. Presiding over a messy but largely functioning polity has been a revered king, Bhumibol Adulyadej, whose admirers have no difficulty in reconciling the contradictory ideas that he is both “above politics” and also the guarantor of stability.
These days, pragmatism has given way to dogmatic intransigence. Huge demonstrations on the streets of Bangkok this week by red-shirted anti-government protesters have produced few hints of compromise. Contributing to this febrile atmosphere is an unspoken fear. King Bhumibol, 82, has been hospitalised for several months. Although he is reportedly in better health now, Thailand needs to start thinking about what will come when his reign ends. That the succession may be rocky only adds to the threat from the political stand-off. Thailand urgently needs to rediscover its lost flair for pragmatism and to rebuild a functioning political system.
Looking on the bright side
As a red-shirted sea flooded Bangkok this week, the government’s supporters played down the tumult. At least it was mostly peaceful, as The Economist went to press, unlike the street battles seen in late 2008 and last April. The stockmarket actually rose. Rather than the 1m demonstrators the organisers had promised, “only” 100,000-150,000 took part. And they, sneered government supporters, were probably all paid to turn up by the fugitive billionaire and former prime minister they support, Thaksin Shinawatra. The mass blood donations for supplies to splatter on the office of the prime minister, Abhisit Vejjajiva, was a creepy stunt. Under this reasoning, the calm, resolute Mr Abhisit was right to defy mob rule and the demand for the dissolution of parliament, and wait to unveil an orderly, slow electoral timetable.
This complacent analysis flatters Mr Abhisit (the staunch democrat actually scurried to take refuge in an army barracks). It also understates Thailand’s difficulties in four ways. First, the red shirts do enjoy considerable popular support, and not just in the poor north-east from which so many hail. Mr Thaksin was a high-handed leader convicted of corruption. But his policies, such as affordable health care, helped the poor. “Populism”, sniff his critics. But popularity is what competitive politics is about, and the present government has shamelessly borrowed his policies. Second, whatever Mr Thaksin’s faults, his supporters have a point. He was ousted by a coup in 2006 and the present government was installed, with the backing of the army, by a parliamentary fix, not an election.
Third, the political system has all but broken down, as the government itself tacitly admits when it argues that an election would not solve Thailand’s problems.
It may well be right. Democracy works only when the parties that lose an election accept the outcome. And if, as might well happen, Mr Abhisit’s government lost an election to proxies for Mr Thaksin, the same alliance of military and civilian elites that toppled him in 2006 and his allies in 2008 might again reject the popular verdict. Instability would persist.
Fourth, and perhaps most important, the backdrop to this week’s street theatre is the looming royal succession. The king, who has reigned for six decades, is widely revered. His anointed successor, the crown prince, is not. Indeed, he is widely disliked and already shows signs of meddling in politics. Although, in theory, the monarchy inhabits a realm far above the murk of daily government, it has been an important source of legitimacy for the unelected prime minister. The king accepted the coup that overthrew Mr Thaksin in 2006. His senior advisers blessed it. And he never publicly repudiated the yellow-shirted “royalists”, whose revolt in late 2008 led to the downfall of a government led by Mr Thaksin’s proxies.
The sound of silence
The fear is not just that the present government relies on tacit royal endorsement for its legitimacy. It is that the king’s death will remove a moderating influence that has kept irreconcilable political differences in check. Heightening fears is the almost total silence on the issue in Thai public life. Harsh laws against lèse-majesté ensure that the future of the monarchy is a matter of private gossip, not public debate. This leader, and our article considering the succession in some detail, could not appear in Thailand. Indeed they will cause great hurt and offence in some quarters there. We regret this. But to discuss Thailand’s future without considering its monarchy is itself to belittle an important national institution.
That discussion needs above all to happen in Thailand—as it did in the period up to 1932. The country’s present political quagmire seems impassable partly because debate over what to do is so stunted. But there is a way out. It would involve an early election, producing a government with popular legitimacy. It would probably also entail a decentralisation of power away from Bangkok so that citizens of regions such as the north-east feel less alienated from their rulers—a sense of alienation that, more than ethnic or religious tensions, underpins the long-running, bloody insurgency in the Muslim-majority southern provinces. And a true “Thai solution” would also imply a monarchy genuinely above political meddling or manipulation.
This would be in the royal family’s own interest. Republicans lurk in the wings, but a majority still respects the king. The monarchies in Malaysia and Cambodia have painfully lost influence to populist commoners. By the time Nepal’s princelings woke up they were citizens of a republic. Hence, to endure, the monarchy has to win a debate, not suppress one. And it would surely be better for Thailand to discuss all this under a monarch trusted by many to have their interests at heart. Difficult and distressing today, Thailand’s national soul-searching will only grow harder. From The Economist print edition
BEIJING — This is a nation that builds dams, high-speed rail lines and skyscrapers with abandon. In newly muscular China, sheer force is not just an art, but a bedrock principle of its seemingly unstoppable rise to global prominence.
Who has more to lose in the showdown over Internet censorship?
Now China has tightened its grip on the much more variegated world of online information, effectively forcing Google Inc., the world’s premier information provider, to choose between submitting to Chinese censorship and leaving the world’s largest community of Internet users to its rivals. It chose to leave.
Google’s decision may not cause major problems for China right away, experts said. But in the longer run, they said, China’s intransigent stance on filtering the flow of information within its borders has the potential to weaken its links to the global economy.
It may also sully its image — promoted to its own people as well as to the international community — as an authoritarian country that is economically on the move, perhaps even more so than the sclerotic, democratic West.
“The Chinese are very serious about pushing their soft-power agenda,” Bill Bishop, a Beijing Internet entrepreneur and author of the technology blog Digicha, said Tuesday. “Google just put a big hole in that sales pitch, and I think they know that.”
China’s leaders appear fully aware of their dilemma. But at this stage in China’s history, and given the Communist Party’s determination to maintain absolute rule, they still put political control ahead of all other concerns.
“What does Google’s exit say? What it says publicly is what everyone deeply engaged in China knows privately,” Kenneth G. Lieberthal, a Brookings Institution scholar and former Clinton administration adviser on China, said in an interview.
“This is a system with very substantial domestic imperfections,” Mr. Lieberthal said. “And the view from afar that this is simply an unstoppable juggernaut — that they have found the keys to the magic kingdom — is not correct. China’s leaders understand this as well as anyone.”
The conclusion of Google’s four-year Internet experiment in China — an effort to transplant Western free-speech norms here — was anything but smooth. On Monday, it effectively shut down the search engine it hosted inside China, after declaring in January that it would stop cooperating with Chinese censors.
As Google began redirecting tens of millions of mainland Chinese users early Tuesday, Beijing time, to its Hong Kong-based Web site, google.com.hk, parts of the company’s remaining mainland operations quickly came under pressure from Google’s Chinese partners and from the government itself.
China’s biggest cellular communications company, China Mobile, was widely expected to cancel a deal that had placed Google’s search engine on its mobile Internet home page, used by millions of people daily. One official in China’s media industry said that the company was scrapping the deal under government pressure even though it had no replacement lined up.
Censorship, of course, is not new in China. The government has never released its grip on the information industry, and if anything has steadily tightened supervision of the Chinese Web in the past couple of years. Those restrictions have not noticeably inhibited its economic growth, which remained robust even as the West staggered through its worst recession in decades.
But China also does not acknowledge to its own people that it censors the Internet to exclude a wide range of political and social topics that its leaders believe could lead to instability. It does not release information on the number of censors it employs or the technology it uses for the world’s most sophisticated Internet firewall. Its 350 million Internet users, many with fast broadband connections, are assured they have the same effectively limitless access to information and communications that the rest of the world enjoys.
Google publicly challenged that stance in January, and reinforced its ideological opposition to China’s policies by finally pulling the plug on its mainland search engine after a failed round of talks with Chinese officials. That forced Chinese leaders to defend their control of the Web, which they did partly with an outburst of nationalism and vitriol.
The cost, at least with some influential sectors of its own society, could be steep. In the technology sector, Google is viewed as an innovator that has spurred rapid development of the Chinese Web. Its departure will leave some Chinese companies with greater influence, but could also stifle competition, some fear.
"Google is good at innovation, and when it leaves, the rest of the companies in China will lack motivation. Without its countervailing power, the industry won’t be as healthy,” said Zhang Yunquan, a professor at the Institute of Software at the Chinese Academy of Sciences.
Fang Xingdong, chief executive of Chinalabs.com, said the vast majority of Chinese Internet companies invested little in research and “simply copy each other’s technology.” With Google’s departure, their profits may rise, but China’s Web space will begin to stagnate, he predicted.
Despite China’s mantra that the Google issue should not be “politicized,” it is, at the end of the day, highly politicized, especially inside China.
Xiao Qiang, founder and editor in chief of China Digital Times, said that China’s leaders once saw the Internet as having both political and commercial uses that balanced each other to a degree. “But increasingly they see it as a political space,” he said.
The implication of that thinking, post-Google, is that companies that want to be major players on the Chinese Web will have to prove their political fealty to the leadership, much as traditional media companies do. “Chinese companies have to be collaborators,” Mr. Xiao said.
One Western official in China said that the leadership is now treating the Internet as a “core interest,” an issue of sovereignty on which Beijing will brook no intervention. The most commonly cited core interests are Taiwan and Tibet, the third-rail issues in China’s international diplomacy.
That could make it even harder for China to negotiate Internet freedom issues with the United States and other nations. In fact, even among those who argue that China will do just fine without Google, China’s battle with the Internet giant is seen as a proxy for its broader confrontation with the West over rights, trade, climate change, and declining American hegemony.
“I believe Google got some support from the U.S. government,” said Yan Xuetong, director of the Institute of International Studies at Tsinghua University. “This means the American government will adopt a tougher, more aggressive policy toward China.”
By MICHAEL WINES
Gemunu Amarasinghe/Associated Press
David Barboza contributed reporting from Shanghai, and Edward Wong and Jonathan Ansfield from Beijing. The New York Times
State visits are carefully scripted events. They are the icing on the cake of a bilateral relationship; the tip of the iceberg of a substantial and complex weight of interaction. The popular media - and sometimes those elements of the media that really ought to think about what they choose to publish - is no place to conduct international relations.
The visit to Australia by President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono is an exemplar of this theory. The president addressed the Australian parliament: his speech was workmanlike, essentially positive, and basically good public relations, as all such speeches should be. They are an opportunity to present a public face to bolster the substantial private dealings that go on between national leaders. But they almost never canvass the detail of a bilateral relationship or discuss the deep and interwoven nature of official contact.
For this reason it is unhelpful for veteran observers of (and past participants in) the Australian relationship with Indonesia to fall into the trap of populist commentary. Hugh White, an Australian academic whose scholarship in defence matters is beyond reproach, was one such victim of the reflected spotlight effect during Yudhoyono’s visit. He was reported as saying Australia’s relationship with Indonesia was easier when Indonesia was a dictatorship.
In a sense that’s correct: when there’s just one point of view to consider, and no need to take account of any others, several layers of complexity are absent. But this is because dictators never represent their countries - though they may conflate their own interests and those of the nation. “L’Etat, c’est Moi” is a general delusion.
White also criticised Australian policy towards Indonesia as essentially crass, saying it emphasised populist (and essentially negative) elements of the relationship and actually achieved very little. His thinking goes far deeper than that. But being selectively reported is the penalty that attaches to shouting while the bandwagon passes by. You are both right and wrong.
It’s clear - just for instructive example - that in the 1990s former Australian Prime Minister Paul Keating and former foreign minister Gareth Evans achieved a level of working relationship with President Suharto that fed all three prideful egos. The fall, again in all three cases, followed not long after. Politics, like nature, has an unforgiving bent; the common weal always turns, eventually.
It fell on those three principally through the collapse of Indonesian and Australian policy in East Timor. The illegality of the 1975 invasion and the self-serving acquiescence of Australia (and other nations) over it finally resulted in catharsis. The primary fault lay then - in 1975 - with Portugal, which after 400 years of Iberian indolence in the territory ran away in 1974 rather than face the moral obligations it had acquired in relation to the Timorese people.
The struggle of the East Timorese for freedom from Indonesian control over the quarter century that followed the 1975 invasion finally ended after the United Nations sanctioned the use of military means to replace the Indonesian apparatus in the territory in 1999. Indonesia withdrew - a courageous decision of then president Habibie - in the face of Australian-led international pressure. That was, at the time, a low point in relations between Jakarta and Canberra. History will view it differently, as a crucial - and crucially, positive - turning point.
Courage was the key on both sides of the argument. It is doubtful the world would have acted as it did in East Timor in 1999 without the strong Australian leadership shown at the time. Another president - not Habibie - might have rashly drawn Indonesia into a showdown at least as damaging (and unnecessary) as Confrontation in the 1960s.
Throughout Indonesia’s history as a modern state, the Australian interest has always lain in co-operation with its northern neighbour. Too many people have forgotten - or have never known - that the independence struggle in the years immediately after World War II was significantly assisted by the Australians (then as now committed members of the Western alliance) refusing to allow their ports to be used by the Dutch - and British in the early stages of the conflict: remember Surabaya - to support efforts to re-establish control over the Netherlands East Indies.
Today the relationship is much deeper, the product of policy and effort on both sides over the six decades of Indonesia’s independence. The politics of the media age creates the need for sound bites and daily headlines. But this is merely reflective: little glints of light on the tip of the iceberg.
It may be the case, as Hugh White and others would assert, that agreements to fight people smuggling, honorary awards of national decorations, and all the paraphernalia of the modern public relations state are essentially symbolic and side issues. But when you have a complex relationship to nurture and manage, and the ignorant in full cry (the democratic deficit we all live with) it is better to provide a few loaves and the odd circus and to work quietly, away from the mob, on the real business of international relationships. By Richard Laidlaw
The author lives in Bali. He worked for many years in the Australian media, including The Courier-Mail in Brisbane.
The Philippines role model on democratic practices, the United States, has a poisoned political discourse. It is said that the partisan divide is so unbridgeable that you cannot pass legislation on the scale of the Civil Rights Act in the context of the present Capitol Hill. The tone of the debate has been nasty, cold and brutal.
There is a real danger that our post-election mind-set would be exactly like this. The lingering or spillover passions would be so intense that the next president would not get the courtesy “honeymoon period” of, more or less, 100 days.
The practical solution to avoid a crippled start for the next president must be found, said presidential candidate Gilberto Teodoro. Whoever wins the election should listen to his proposed solution—to prevent the passion of politics from paralyzing the next president from Day One.
Teodoro proposes a multi-partisan cooperation on a few reforms areas that would be held sacrosanct and declared as beyond politics. These are educational reforms, health care reforms, seeking the peace and modernizing our not-too-world-class infrastructure among others. These urgent and life-and-death issues should be placed in a non-partisan ground called “ zone of peace.” All political leaders, regardless of persuasion, party and stripe, should make a commitment to work hard to reform these areas.
We can argue passionately about the less important concerns below the “zone of peace.” But the urgent task of reforming the urgent policy concerns should be spared from the usual bitterness of Philippine politics, said Teodoro.
Teodoro’s next step should be drafting such covenant and forcing all candidates to sign it. The first 100 days of the next president should be the most important of his, or her six-year term. A dramatic start focused on the urgent reform issues would enable the next president to finish with a Shakespearean
bang—and not with a whimper.
There is no time to waste. More, the next president should hit the ground running after the swearing in.
While Noynoy Aquino stirs the deepest of emotions from his followers and supporters (they will follow him anywhere), his cousin Teodoro challenges the mind. He has summed up his challenge in two words, which is, “evolving paradigms.” He takes on the toughest of social and economic problems and—in understandable terms—proposes what should be done—all doables and within the funding capacity of the state. Localized peace process, the sustainability of farming as a profession, avoiding the traps of a one-dimensional agrarian reform program, the roadmap to universal health care, attaining educational reforms from an entirely new perspective.
There should be 21st century ideas for the new century and the new world, he argues. Underpinned in this is the recognition that the old ways, the orthodox solution, will no longer work.
You may vote or you may not vote for Teodoro but you have to listen to what he says. We really have to evolve paradigms and shift governance into a 21st century mode to make the next president succeed.
The educational standards should live up to the demands of a Knowledge Society. The lack of uniformity in farming economics has to be bridged. The inter-faith prayer sessions and community-level discussions can do more for the peace process than diktat from the national government and foreign mediators—no matter how well meaning.
The strategy for attracting infrastructure investments should be reviewed and amended. There should be fresh components to an economic program geared at meeting an eight percent growth rate. The only issue that he cannot seem to translate into really understandable terms is the strategy to end the armed insurgencies. In that area, he is using a jargon that is beyond us.
There are scores of well-meaning Filipinos who love their country and who love it deeply that are praying for a contest between the Cousins—Aquino and Teodoro. There is this sense that the country would be well-off with either one, one promising to stamp out the cancer of corruption and a complete break from our sordid present and one devoted to evolving paradigms in governance.
One promises to govern on integrity, drawing from a great legacy. And the other promising to govern from clarity based on well-defined policy prescriptions—the president as a policy wonk.
There is this feeling that either one would be a good choice. And good for the country as well. BY MARLEN V. RONQUILLO for The Manila Times
IT'S likely that Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim, as de facto Parti Keadilan Rakyat supremo and Dewan Rakyat opposition leader, has the busiest schedule of all Malaysian politicians.
Here's a sample: London rendezvous with British members of parliament urging them to intervene on his behalf to stymie Sodomy II, appointments with world and non-governmental organisation leaders on pressing global anxieties and ceramah urging the gallery to remain steadfast with his political vision.
People unfamiliar with Anwar's travails in Malaysia would think that he was a global statesman of sorts, one who relishes a world stage to flex his grand foresight into what is wrong with the planet.
In between all that, Anwar is juggling with serious party infighting and rabid PKR dissenters, and in his latest escapade ignited a flashpoint in the house when he claimed that the 1Malaysia gameplan was blueprinted from "One Israel", a concept launched during Ehud Barak's tenure as Israeli prime minister in the 1990s.
Anwar banked his allegation on Apco Worldwide, the international public relations agency which he said was hired by the government to manage 1Malaysia in the same manner it handled the One Israel campaign.
Then Anwar got into a little jam: Apco emphatically denied anything of the sort. Yesterday, the Barisan Nasional members decided to call Anwar's bluff by filing a motion to refer him to the rights and privileges committee for misleading the house.
Anwar has yet to clarify his position after the Apco denial, prompting Datuk Abdul Rahman Dahlan (BN-Kota Belud) to move the motion against an incredulous but furious opposition.
The opposition bloc heckled violently against Rahman's merits to move the motion, claiming, as Lim Kit Siang (DAP-Ipoh Timur) did, that Rahman had no locus standi, but without wondering whether there was substance in Anwar's claims.
This was, after all, the same charmer who sold them the idea that he had the numbers to take down the BN government on Sept 16, 2008, an idea totally discredited as a bald-faced fiasco.
But credit goes to Anwar for his great salesmanship or, to be precise, a risk-driven gambler who knows how to up the ante to rattle his rivals and bluff his way into winning a big pot with measly pairs when the other players possess flushes.
Thrilled anticipation awaits Anwar's response to the full weight of the government's retaliation but a profound thought is gnawing away in everybody's head: why is Anwar even bothering with puny Malaysia when the world is his true calling? Why is he still obsessed with becoming prime minister, attacking Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Razak with all his might, when he has the world literally at his beck and call?
Anwar should seize this moment, maybe even lobby to become the United Nations secretary-general, a position that probably befits his grandi-loquence and a move his American backers would likely support.
Then he could use his wits to solve the world's titanic grievances. Palestine vs Israel, India vs Pakistan, terrorism, climate change, child labour ... there are enough problems to last 10 lifetimes.
It is time that Anwar realises that there is simply not enough room in Malaysia for his inflated grand designs. Editorial, New Straits Times Kuala Lumpur
