The FEER Forum

By Baladas Ghoshal

     Sociologists and political scientists may derive satisfaction from their discovery of identity politics, but when applied in practical politics of many developing countries, it may go against the very grain of plural societies and the unity of a country. It becomes even a more dangerous mix when politicians and activists use them to promote their parochial and narrow personal agendas and vote banks at the expense of greater national interests. Instead of aggregating primordial loyalties into civic loyalties and citizenship—a necessary condition for survival of plural and multicultural societies as nations—opportunist politicians indulge in divisive politics and use the lumpen elements of any society to project themselves as their savior and protector.
     The politics of Raj Thakeray in Mumbai, one of India’s most cosmopolitan metropolis and life line of its economy and finance, is a classic example of identity politics gone awry and one that was used to promote interests of an individual embittered by his exclusion due to sibling rivalry from a larger sectarian group called Shiv Sena controlled by his patriarch uncle, Balasaheb Thackeray. His Maharashtra Navnirman Sena had taken Mumbai ransom with its latest tirade against the non-Marathi people (i.e., non natives of Mumbai’s home state, Maharashtra). Continue Reading »

by Jens F. Laurson and George A. Pieler

     When the New York Philharmonic accepted an invitation from the North Korean Government to perform at the East Pyongyang Grand Theatre, commentary either praised the move as a savvy act of cultural diplomacy or condemned it as a public relations ploy for one of the world’s worst tyrants.

     When the United States’ first orchestra takes the stage on Feb. 26, playing to a hall packed with the Politburo’s elite, it will likely be the latter.

     In the best tradition of U.S. cultural diplomacy, this concert showcases the best of American culture. Fine so far, but the New York Philharmonic is wasting a great opportunity to underpin its cultural message with a more significant one about the value of freedom.

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by Jonathan Adams 
    Kosovo’s declaration of independence has opened up a new front in the long-running diplomatic battle between China and Taiwan. It also underscores how Taiwan’s key problem is one of recognition, not whether it should formalize its de facto independence. 

    China opposes Kosovo’s independence, fearing it could set a dangerous precedent for separatist movements world-wide, but especially in Tibet, Xinjiang and Taiwan. That left Taiwan an opening to cozy up to a possible new diplomatic ally. On Wednesday, Taipei announced it had formally recognized the new European state. China’s Foreign Ministry quickly responded with predictable pique: “It is known to all that as a part of China, Taiwan has no right or eligibility to give the so-called ‘recognition’ (to Kosovo).”

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by Husain Haqqani
    In 60 years as an independent country, Pakistan has never changed its government through an election. The polls scheduled for Feb. 18 theoretically provide an opportunity for Pakistanis to clip the wings of the highly unpopular President Pervez Musharraf, who came to power in a military coup in 1999. But will Mr. Musharraf, and Pakistan’s all powerful army, let the people change the country’s history?

    Opinion polls show less than 20% of Pakistanis now approve of President Musharraf, who has been described as an indispensable ally in the war against terrorism by some members of the Bush administration. The depth of opposition to Mr. Musharraf, coupled with his tendency to change or break rules to stay in power, has raised serious doubts about the likelihood of the election being free and fair.   

    Pakistan already faces an al-Qaeda backed insurgency along its border with Afghanistan, which is spilling over into other parts of the country. A rigged election would anger the vast majority of Pakistanis who want to vote for moderate anti-terrorist parties. The ensuing chaos could strengthen the violent Islamist insurgents.

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by Tobias Harris
    In the short pause in mid-January between the end of the lengthy 2007 special session of the Japanese Diet and the opening of the 2008 regular session, the ongoing battle for control of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party burst into the open.

    On Jan. 16, Mori Yoshiro, the former prime minister who since the end of his disastrous premiership in 2001 has played the role of the consummate party elder, delivered an address in which he identified and criticized an LDP backbencher purportedly undermining the Fukuda government. The target of Mr. Mori’s criticism was Nakagawa Shoichi, who served in the important party post of chairman of the LDP Policy Affairs Research Council under former prime minister Abe Shinzo.

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by Michael Vatikiotis
    Jusuf Ronodipuro never wore his revolutionary credentials on his sleeve.  The man who first brought knowledge of Indonesia’s freedom to the world’s attention by reading out the proclamation of independence on Aug. 17, 1945, was never one to boast about his role in the country’s colonial struggle. He called himself a “bit player.” Yet Ronodipuro, who died at the age of 88 on Jan. 27, 2008, in Jakarta, was a quiet inspiration for generations of Indonesians who, if they were lucky enough to know him, saw through him the extent to which the ideals and values of nationhood had been squandered and lost.

    Born in Salatiga, in central Java in 1919, Jusuf enjoyed the reasonably privileged upbringing of the Javanese priyayi class. He attended good native schools and found work in Jakarta working for General Motors. When the Japanese invaded the young Jusuf found work as a reporter for the Hoso Kyoko Japanese military radio station. It was here in August 1945 that Jusuf was called upon to broadcast the declaration of independence, which was hastily read out on Aug. 17 by Sukarno.

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by Ahmad Faruqui
    Having orchestrated many an electoral charade during the past eight years to keep himself in power, President Pervez Musharraf now faces what may be the final test of his political career: the Feb. 18 parliamentary election.

    There is a small chance that he may postpone the polls on one pretext or the other but it seems increasingly unlikely, now that U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has given him a public reminder about the need to hold free and fair elections. While Mr. Musharraf’s name will not be on the ballot box in any constituency on Feb. 18, the outcome of the elections will seal his fate. Three outcomes are possible of which two spell catastrophe for him and one spells a middling type of existence that is very different from the “unity of command” mode that he has gotten used to.

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by Jeremy Wagstaff

The only time Suharto was seen crying was when his wife, Ibu Tien, died in 1996. As with most the key watersheds in the New Order, the moment is cloaked in mystery. But his tears told us more about the man than anything else he said or did in 31 years of being Indonesia’s president.

    Some time between 3 a.m. and 4 a.m. on Sunday, April 28, Ibu Tien had awoken. She slept alone: They had been married 48 years but in recent times had grown apart. She had grown tired of the trappings of power, and had watched as her children’s avarice destroyed the family and as her husband renege on promises to step down. The previous day she had visited her beloved horticultural garden outside Jakarta. None of her family was with her and, to those who accompanied her, it seemed as if she was saying goodbye.
She died on the way to hospital. Word quickly spread and Javanese began to whisper: the spiritual mandate, or wahyu, was with her. Suharto cannot last long without her. Even his own guards talked of it among themselves. Suharto wandered around in a daze as the nation, nursing an affection for her that seemed to transcend the gossip about her dark influence, was swept by mourning. Continue Reading »

(This article first appeared in Edit Page of The Wall Street Journal Asia on Monday, Jan. 28. )
 
by Hugo Restall

Will history treat Suharto kindly? Certainly many of his countrymen today do not. Last year students protested in Jakarta over the government’s decision not to prosecute him for corruption, even as the former Indonesian president lay on his sickbed. Abroad, too, it is fashionable to sneer. Many mention him in the same breath as Mobutu Sese Seko, another officer turned strongman, who plundered Zaire from the mid-1960s to the late 1990s. Suharto is accused of similar avarice over the same period, and vastly inflated estimates of his family fortune are blithely tossed around.
But the pendulum of condemnation has swung too far, and Suharto’s death yesterday should be the impetus for a reappraisal of his legacy. While it is right for the unsavory aspects of the “New Order” government to be remembered, the positive contributions of the man who made Indonesia a respected member of the international community deserve at least equal emphasis.
Consider that when Gen. Suharto came to power after a failed communist coup in 1965, Indonesia was an economic basket case and a troublemaker in the region. The pro-communist populism of President for Life Sukarno had led the country down a dead end. Think of him as the Hugo Chavez of his era. Continue Reading »

by Maureen Aung-Thwin
    The Burmese military under Gen. Than Shwe has crushed another popular uprising and at least temporarily reconsolidated control. The world briefly united in condemnation, but is being appeased by promises of dialogue with Nobelist Aung San Suu Kyi and “road maps to democracy.”

    In reality, Burma today might be at a tipping point, for three reasons.

    First, the disastrous economic situation, which triggered the protests, cannot be solved by the current military junta, even with $2 billion annual natural gas revenues, which are wasted on armaments and prestige projects such as the new capital.
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