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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Tigers on the Move? – World Politics Review

June 29th, 2009

http://worldpoliticsreview.com/article.aspx?id=3996

With Thailand posting a 17-year record drop in exports for the first quarter of 2009, and the economy shrinking by 7.1 percent as a consequence, the global downturn is clearly causing severe problems for some one-time stellar performers.

Like its Tiger Economy counterparts, Malaysia and Singapore, Thailand’s exports account for a majority of the country’s economic activity — more than 60 percent in Thailand’s case. Ultimately, these countries depend heavily on Western consumers buying the products they make, or the ones they make components for, depending on the particular industry and local position in the globalized manufacturing chain.

Given their level of openness, and therefore vulnerability, to global economic conditions, perhaps the muting of the Tigers’ roar is not that much of a shock. More surprising, however, was a recent assessment by Ajay Chibbber, former World Bank economist and now the United Nations Development Program’s Asia-Pacific head. “For the first time,” Chibbber told the Financial Times, “there is the possibility that South Asia may have higher growth than East Asia.”

The Tigers could be overtaken, for now at least, by economies such as Pakistan and Bangladesh, which have long been regarded as stagnant basket cases: dependent on aid and/or remittances, and overshadowed by political instability. (more…)

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East Timor PM hit with corruption allegations – World Politics Review

June 26th, 2009

http://worldpoliticsreview.com/blog/blogs.aspx#a3991

DILI, East Timor — Little over a year after declaring his intent to launch an anti-corruption commission, East Timor’s Prime Minister Xanana Gusmao has been hit with renewed graft allegations, this time by ABC Australia.

The story claims that Gusmao’s daughter is a shareholder in Prima Foods, a company that received a $3.5 million food-importing contract signed off on by the PM. (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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Naval Standoff Between Indonesia, Malaysia – World Politics Review

June 12th, 2009

http://worldpoliticsreview.com/article.aspx?id=3910

A revived maritime dispute between Indonesia and Malaysia has led to a series of chest-thumping incursions and face-offs between the two countries’ navies.

The stand-off reached its zenith, for now, after the Indonesian Navy reported Malaysian warships had entered the oil-rich Ambalat area off the Borneo coast several times over the last two weeks. The provocations almost crossed the line into conflict, with an Indonesian vessel reportedly coming close to firing at one of the Malaysian ships.

However, with both sides pointing the finger at the other, apportioning blame for the crisis is difficult. Indonesia claims that the Ambalat oil concession block, which covers about 15,235 square kilometers in the Sulawesi Sea, is an undisputed part of Indonesia, based on the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Seas (UNCLOS).

“Whoever enters the area [without permission] violates the sovereignty of the Republic of Indonesia,” TNI Headquarters spokesman Commodore Sagom Tamboen said.

Malaysia bases its counterclaim on a 1979 maritime map. And as Sam Bateman, co-author of “Good Order at Sea in Southeast Asia,” a report on maritime policy and security issues in the region by the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies, told World Politics Review, an additional complication arises out of the International Court of Justice’s decision to award sovereignty over Sipidan and Ligitan islands to Malaysia. (more…)

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Malaysian Islamist Party to support Catholics? – ISN

June 5th, 2009

http://www.isn.ethz.ch/isn/Current-Affairs/Security-Watch/Detail/?lng=en&id=100969

A row over the use of the word ‘Allah’ by non-Muslims highlights the need for Malaysia’s political forces to repackage their rhetoric in order win over a multi-ethnic population

The latest phase in an ongoing row between the Catholic Herald and the Malaysian authorities took its latest turn last week, with a high court ruling on Thursday effectively upholding the federal government’s 2007 ban on non-Muslim’s using the word “Allah” to denote God. (more…)

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Aung San Suu Kyi: Swimming Against the Tide – ISN

May 15th, 2009

http://www.isn.ethz.ch/isn/Current-Affairs/Security-Watch/Detail/?lng=en&id=100283

Opposition hero Aung San Suu Kyi is faces five years in jail ahead of elections after visitor hands Burma’s junta a timely gift.

Kafka could not have scripted it better. Burma’s iconic opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi was due for release from almost two decades of on-off detention on 27 May. With elections scheduled for next year, her National League for Democracy would – in the unlikely event of free and fair voting – win handsomely, just as it did in 1990. That result landed Aung San her incarceration, once the military junta overturned it. Would the junta have the nerve to do the same again next year? (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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Emerging-Economy Hotbeds Weather Economic Storm – World Politics Review

April 23rd, 2009

http://www.worldpoliticsreview.com/article.aspx?id=3641

Simon Roughneen and Diana Ionescu

As an IMF note to the G-20 leaders gathered at the recent London summit put it, “Growth also plunged across a broad swath of emerging economies. Against this backdrop, global activity is expected to contract in 2009 for the first time in 60 years.”

In 1998, the Asian financial crisis left a lasting mark on politics in Southeast Asia. The Suharto regime fell in Indonesia and, arguably, ongoing turmoil in Malaysia and Thailand can be traced to the impact of ’98.

However, this time around, the region is expected to come through the current recession relatively unscathed, in comparison with a decade ago, and in comparison with Eastern Europe, another market-oriented emerging-economy locus.

The latter region has seen a number of governments fall already, amid concerns that the bailout requirements for shoring up former communist economies might prompt a “thanks but no thanks” response from Western Europe.

However, the idea that Southeast Asia will emerge without at least some political scar tissue is misleading. Recent protests in Thailand have their origins in a color-coded political rift whose history precedes the economic slump. However, with a government unable to act or function effectively, it is clear that the downturn presents Thaksin’s Red Shirts with an ideal opportunity to replicate the previous success of their Yellow Shirt rivals, by undermining a government through street violence. (more…)

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Indonesia: An Unlikely Success? – ISN

April 22nd, 2009

Indonesia could become a beacon for those who believe in Muslim democracies, but as the incumbent seems set to win elections, an economic downturn could provide a sting in the tail.

By Simon Roughneen in Dili for ISN Security Watch
http://www.isn.ethz.ch/isn/Current-Affairs/Security-Watch/Detail/?lng=en&id=99233

As Indonesia reeled from the Asian financial crisis in 1998-1999 riots, insurrection and deadly communal fighting thundered across the land. Ethnic Chinese were massacred in pogroms in Jakarta, while religious, regional and ethnic violence reared in Aceh, Sulawesi and East Timor, with the latter seceding from Jakarta’s rule. (more…)

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