People’s Power and Manipulated Masses – Asia Times

June 30th, 2009

http://atimes.com/atimes/Southeast_Asia/KG01Ae01.html

By Ava Patricia C Avila and Simon Roughneen

SINGAPORE – Chaos caused by red and yellow clad protestors in Thailand over the past few years must have evoked bittersweet memories for Philippine activists, who donned the same team colors when red pro- and yellow anti-regime protesters took to the streets and brought down Ferdinand Marcos’ authoritarian government in 1986.

The Philippines and Thailand have often been cited for their close political parallels, with both home to thriving civil societies but with political power dominated by traditional political elites. Both are fragile democracies, with a history of political instability, that are trying to leave their martial law baggage behind.

In the past decade, citizen uprisings in each country led to the ouster of democratically elected populist leaders accused of corruption: Philippine president Joseph Estrada in 2001 and Thai prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra in 2006. Still, scholars often overlook comparisons between these two countries given that, as with any bilateral comparison, there are differences that can occlude the obvious similarities.

Thailand escaped colonialism under savvy, modernizing monarchs and has since evolved towards a military-influenced constitutional monarchy. (more…)

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Con job in the Philippines – Asia Times

June 16th, 2009

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Southeast_Asia/KF17Ae01.html

Since the 14th Philippine Congress opened in July 2007, over 30 measures aimed to revise the post-revolutionary

1987 Constitution have been proposed with the dry legality often offset by catchy acronym nicknames such as ‘CON-ASS’, ‘CON-CON’ and ‘CHA-CHA’.

These have been rich pickings for any tabloid headline writer or rabble rouser, with one such item now doing the cyber-rounds listing the “CON-ASS-HOLES” who backed the latest move to change the Constitution. The item refers to those in Congress who on June 2 voted in favor of Resolution 1109, which allows the lower House of Representatives to vote itself into a Constituent Assembly (CON-ASS) without the support of the upper Senate.

CON-ASS, it is believed, will pave the way for constitutional or charter change (CHA-CHA), a move that could enable President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo to extend her term in office beyond the six years mandated by the current Constitution while casting new legal doubts on general elections now scheduled for 2010.

The methodology by which Resolution 1109 was passed is at issue, which was clearly designed to allow the pro-Arroyo lower House to bypass the opposition-led Senate. Ava Patricia Avila, a research analyst at the S Rajaratnam School of International Studies in Singapore, said that the Philippine Constitution states that a Constituent Assembly may be formed by a vote of three-quarters of all members of Congress, but does not state whether the vote must be held separately in the House of Representatives and Senate. (more…)

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Najib takes another brick from the wall – Asia Times

April 30th, 2009

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Southeast_Asia/KE01Ae01.html

SINGAPORE – As Najib Razak, Malaysia’s new prime minister, marks his first month in power, a dramatic policy change announced last week could mark the start the dissolution of Malaysia’s debilitating race-based politics. The promised policy shift ticks a couple of important boxes as Najib bids to contain mounting economic problems and overhaul the increasingly negative image his ruling United Malays Nasional Organization (UMNO) has among young voters and non-Malay minorities.

On April 22, Najib told reporters that foreigners investing in parts of the service sector will no longer be required to take on ethnic-Malays as business partners, as has been required by the New Economic Policy (NEP). The partially deregulated sectors will include health, tourism and business and technology services. His government also said this week it will allow foreigners to hold 70% of local insurers and non-commercial investment banks, up from the previous 49% cap.

The changes indicate how a central tenet of Malaysia’s race-based political and economic system has come under pressure as the country struggles to cope with the global economic crisis and attract more foreign investment.

Ooi Kee Beng, a Malaysia expert at the Institute for Southeast Asian Studies in Singapore, told Asia Times Online that addressing economic problems will be crucial for Najib’s political survival. (more…)

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China’s embrace hits raw nerve – Asia Times

April 3rd, 2009

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/China/KD07Ad02.html

SYDNEY – On April 1, Australia’s Herald Sun newspaper reported that a Chinese consortium was going to buy the Melbourne Cricket Ground and rename it the “Mekong Cricket Ground”.

The scoop came on the back of a furtive meeting between Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd and Beijing’s propaganda chief, Li Changchun, as well as allegations of cozy dealings between one of Rudd’s ministers and a Chinese-Australian businesswoman. Talking heads then navel-gazed for days about whether Rudd’s Sinophilia marked him out as some sort of Manchurian Candidate, a Politburo plant in The Lodge – the official Canberra residence of the prime minister and his family. (more…)

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Between Bali and Obama – Asia Times

November 28th, 2008

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Southeast_Asia/JK26Ae01.html

PORT MORESBY – Speaking in Washington ahead of the recent Group of 20 global economic summit, Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, popularly known as SBY, said his country offered a “shining example where democracy, Islam and modernity thrive together”.

In the same address, he praised President George W Bush as “one of the most pro-Indonesia American presidents in the history of our bilateral relations” while hedging, “There is no better story, no better example, of the virtue of people-to-people connections than the powerful impact of Barack Obama’s election to today’s Indonesians.”

With the world’s single-largest Muslim population stretched across a vast archipelago of over 17,000 islands, Indonesia is an important regional actor and counterterrorism ally for the US. As Southeast Asia’s biggest and the world’s fourth-largest country, Indonesia’s complex domestic politics will represent a significant challenge to Obama’s foreign policy, which is expected to de-emphasize Bush’s counterterrorism initiatives towards the region.

Just days before SBY’s US visit, Indonesian authorities executed three of the men involved in the 2002 Bali bombings, a terror attack that killed 202 civilians, many of them Australian and European tourists. The potential for a backlash after the executions remains hard to quantify, but for now appears to be minimal, according to experts. (more…)

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Who shot JR Horta – Asia Times

September 4th, 2008

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Southeast_Asia/JI04Ae02.html

DILI - Turbulent East Timor may going through its own Watergate, or at least a watershed political moment depending on which version of the events of February 11 finally emerges as the truth. Conflicting accounts, questionable evidence and reversed recollections continue to cloud an alleged assassination attempt on the president and prime minister that sent a popular rebel leader to an early grave.

East Timor’s post-independence politics have confounded outside observers, and for the most part the Timorese themselves. Simultaneously transparent and opaque, what was thought to be a mono-cultural, impoverished, Western-backed, state-building poster-child has morphed into a divided half-island, with obscure tribal-linguistic rivalries once considered dormant since stirred by political rivalries and manifested in quasi-mysterious gangs.

The Timorese political elite remain at odds along familiar regime lines, demarcations so old that these rivalries were, broadly speaking, established when Richard Nixon was still in the White House and more sharply honed in the 1980s – when soap opera addicts spent months wondering who shot J R Ewing, the fictional Texan oil mogul in Dallas.

But East Timor may now have its own Watergate, or at least a watershed political moment depending on which version of the events of February 11 finally emerges as the truth. (more…)

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Lebanese Christians mull Damascene conversion – Asia Times

August 2nd, 2008

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/JH02Ak04.html

BEIRUT – Renewed fighting last weekend in Tripoli, in the northern Sunni-dominated region, demonstrates Lebanon’s precarious peace, and a potential rise of Salafist-jihadi influence, in response to the seemingly irresistible will to power emanating from Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah’s southern Beirut lair.

Ahmad Moussali is professor of political science and Islamic studies at the American University of Beirut. He told Asia Times Online, “A lot of Saudi money has been put into the north to cultivate Wahhabi/Salafist ideology, to counter Hezbollah,” reflecting wider Sunni-Shi’ite regional rivalries.

“These radicals see the Lebanese army as weak, and [ruling coalition] March 14 Sunnis cannot stop them confronting Shi’ites or Alawites [a sect of Shi'ites].” (more…)

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East Timor faces new rebel threat – Asia Times/ISN/Asia Sentinel

February 12th, 2008

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Southeast_Asia/JB16Ae01.html

http://www.asiasentinel.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=1043&Itemid=172

http://www.isn.ethz.ch/isn/Current-Affairs/Security-Watch/Detail/?ots591=4888CAA0-B3DB-1461-98B9-E20E7B9C13D4&lng=en&id=54128

An apparent coup attempt has left East Timor president Jose Ramos-Horta in critical condition and underlines the shakiness of the country’s transition from occupation through UN fief to fragile state.

He has undergone emergency surgery in an Australian hospital after being shot during an assassination attempt at his residence on Monday in the Timorese capital, Dili.

The leader of the plot, former military police chief-turned-renegade-soldier Alfredo Reinado, was killed during the dawn shootout at Ramos-Horta’s residence, a few hundred meters from Dili’s beach road, just after the president took his usual morning seaside stroll. (more…)

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Philippines teeters on brink of total war – Asia Times

August 17th, 2007

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Southeast_Asia/IH17Ae01.htm

The Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) have launched a new military campaign against radical Muslim insurgents in its southern regions, an offensive nominally aimed at finishing off the hobbled 300-member Abu Sayyaf terror group, but one that also threatens to widen the conflict with two ceasefire groups, the Moro National Liberation Front (MNLF) and the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF).

Manila recently ramped up its military deployment to the restive region, where estimates of soldiers on the ground ranging widely from 5,000-12,000. (more…)

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An alleged terrorist goes legit – Asia Times

July 14th, 2007

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Southeast_Asia/IG14Ae01.html

DILI – After spending two years in prison on terror-related charges, Abu Bakar Ba’asyir, widely regarded as Indonesia’s most radical Islamic cleric, is plotting his next career move: into mainstream politics.

A spokesman for Ba’asyir’s Indonesian Mujahedeen Council (MMI) told Indonesian media last week that the controversial cleric is weighing a run for the presidency at the 2009 polls. Ba’asyir’s spokesman said that before officially declaring his candidacy, “He wants to see what people say first.”

Ironically, perhaps, the radical cleric would likely aim to run on a morality ticket, attempting to seize on growing public cynicism over official corruption, including recent damaging allegations that President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono received illicit funds to finance his 2004 election campaign. (Yudhoyono has denied the allegations, which were lodged by an opposition politician).

Ba’asyir was sentenced to two and a half years in prison in March 2005 on conspiracy charges related to the 2002 Bali bomb attacks, which killed 202 people, mostly foreign tourists. That sentence was eventually reduced and he was released last December, irking Canberra – many of those killed in Bali were Australians – and enraging the victims’ family members.

Western officials have contended that Ba’aysir is the spiritual leader of Jemaah Islamiyah (JI), an Indonesia-based Islamic radical group accused of various terror attacks, including the 2002 Bali bombings, the 2003 J W Marriott Hotel bombing in Jakarta, which killed 14 people, and the 2004 Australian Embassy bombing, also in the Indonesian capital. (more…)

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