JAKARTA – Djayadi Hanan, a politics lecturer at Jakarta’s Paramadina University, believes Yudhoyono has tarnished his reputation as a democratic leader. “People and history will remember SBY as a president who put a halt on the progress of Indonesia’s democracy,” Hanan told the Nikkei Asian Review. “He had the power to stop it and save Indonesian local democracy.”
BANGKOK — The United Nations believes that Burma’s economic prospects could be undermined by volatile commodity prices, as the country’s reliance on the the ups and downs of oil and gas revenues could hinder much-needed fiscal modernization The UN’s Economic and Social Commission for Asia-Pacific predicts 6.2 percent economic growth for Burma in 2012 but warns that the region remains vulnerable to fluctuating prices of commodities such as oil and the ongoing debt crisis in Europe. All the same, Western companies appear eager to tap into Burma’s natural resource bounty, as US and EU sanctions are relaxed or suspended in the wake of a succession of recent reforms such as the freeing of political prisoners and the holding of free and fair by-elections on April 1.
