Most of us are fixated on Vice President Jejomar Binay’s now 15 percent – and still plunging – nose dive in poll standing as well as that sprawling P1.2-billion Batangas hacienda with air-conditioned orchid farm or bogus bakery for Makati senior citizens birthday cakes.
Not mine, Binay protests. Allegations of sleaze, lobbed at him by Senators Antonio Trillanes IV and Alan Peter Cayetano, were “malicious thinly disgused politics”, he snapped. “I’m ready to face any fair and impartial investigation of all allegations hurled against me and my family.” Anywhere except before the Senate Blue Ribbon Committe, he clarified.
It takes effort to raise our line of sight beyond our shorelines. That holds whether it be Malaysia’s quarrel over “proprietorship” to the name of Allah, or the Hong Kong standoff between students and embattled “986” (shorthand for chief executive CY Leung).
“Elected” from a committee of 1,200 controlled by Beijing, “986” now twists in the wind. He’s been trashed for a $6.5-million secret dole from an Australian company.
In next door Malaysia, opposition legislator Robert Phang asked Prime Minister Najib Razak in an open letter: Why are we quarreling about God? “We quarrel about almost everything, including something so flimsy as ownership of the word Allah.” Malaysia is becoming to look like a Taliban State where religious authorities suppress different or dissenting religious views.
In Myanmar 3,073 prisoners were released just before it hosts next month’s international summit. US President Barrack Obama and the mint-new Indonesian president Jokowi Widodo, who assumes office October 20, will attend.
Burma’s junta was tarred by it’s earlier suppression of Buddhist monks and citizens calling for release of Nobel Laureate Daw Aung San Suu Kyi. Governance by colonels, however, ended in 2011. Since then, Yangon periodically granted amnesty to prisoners as curtain raisers before diplomatic conferences.
October’s releases were no different. Most who were freed had been jailed for minor crimes, Associated Press points out. At least eight were former intelligence officers arrested 10 years ago as part of a political purge. Fifty-eight were foreign nationals.
Most international sanctions against Myanmar have been lifted. International Monetary Fund estimates Yangon’s economy will grow by eight percent in the near term. Reuters reports: But risks to the economy were growing due to thin external and fiscal buffers. The underlying fiscal deficit is expected to increase to around 5.5 percent of GDP by March.
As mayor of Solo City, in Java, Jokowi Widodo was invited to a magazine’s office for an interview. “Who are you?” asked a reporter who found him sitting alone. The future president-elect stood up, bowed politely and offered his name card. “The image of Joko as self-effacing public servant was born.”
Strengthening Indonesia’s position as the world’s major “maritime axis” is the incoming president’s priority, said transition team deputy Hasto Kristiyanto. Despite the time squeeze, the president-to-be will attend the 22nd APEC Economic Leaders’ Meeting in Beijing on Nov. 10-11 and the G-20 Leaders’ Summit in Brisbane, Australia on Nov. 15-16, Jakarta Post reported. He will only have 10 days plus in office then.
Jokowi takes over Merdeka Palace bucking efforts by trashed old guards to strip Indonesians of their right to vote directly for their district leaders or mayors, writes Elizabeth Pisani. An epidemiologist, Pisani became a foreign correspondent. She authored the book: “Indonesia Etc.: Exploring the Improbable Nation”.
Indonesia seethes from a generational clash — between those whose mindsets were cobbled during 32 years of the Suharto dictatorship power and those who came of age since authoritarian rule collapsed in 1998. In the old guard’s corner is Prabowo Subiant, who promised strong-arm government. In the reformist corner is Jokowi. Prabowo and supporters whipped departing parliament into passing a bill that shunted control over key offices to the largest coalition in the chamber of Prabowo’s rather than the largest party of Jokowi. They’re now dismantling direct elections of district heads and of provincial governors. Expensive and prone to graft, they assert.
Indonesia switched to direct elections in 2005. “Direct elections did not remove money from the nomination and voting process. They did change the way candidates spent that money. Instead of concentrating patronage on party hacks, it reaches now district heads and voters.
“Voters proved sophisticated enough to make fine distinctions.”
They tolerate patronage that delivers jobs and contracts to an office holder’s supporters, as long as they result in schools and roads. “But they do not tolerate out-and-out theft. Incumbents who don’t spread benefits widely are regularly tossed out of office”.
By shunting the choice of district heads back to political parties, Prabowo’s coalition stomped on chances of such candidates emerging in the future. An October newspaper Kompas poll reported that 82 percent of respondents in 12 cities thought 86 percent of politicians were corrupt.
“There is an irony here,” Pisani adds. “Although Indonesians are losing democratic rights, it is happening through entirely democratic procedures”. But Joko is a politician, not a saint, and Indonesian politicians have a talent for unlikely compromise. He could tempt one or two of those parties to scurry over to his side.
Reverting to direct elections and keeping the door to reform open would be the ultimate revenge for Indonesian democracy.