Category: Politics

It takes chutzpah for a country that has an unacknowledged nuclear arsenal to point the finger at another country for clandestine nuclear activities and to demand military action to halt them.  (more…)

Critics of Malaysia’s longest-serving prime minister, Mahathir Mohamad, used to joke that he would like to be prime minister for life. Today, that prediction may have a ring of truth, although others believe the incumbent PM, Najib Abdul Razak, would like to stake the same claim. (more…)

Britain has entered a new era of ultra-hung politics. Were last night’s local election results replicated on a national level, Labour would win 283 seats (up 21), the Conservatives 280 (down 38) and the resurgent Liberal Democrats 22 (up 10). (more…)

The deceitful exaggeration of the threat that China’s rise allegedly poses for countries in the Asia-Pacific has been exposed by a number of analysts in Australia, including Brian Toohey. There is no need to reprise their arguments here, other than to say that in what passes for scholarship in the West, it is has become routine to portray China as being “aggressively expansionist” with much less discussion about its legitimate historical claims in the Asia-Pacific. (more…)

The Malaysian Election Commission has just issued a staggering list of seven countries which they say have taken up its offer to come and monitor the up-coming elections to ensure they are free and fair – and free from fraud.

The list includes three of the world’s most authoritarian regimes; two countries described as ‘Hybrid’ (part-authoritarian) by The Economist Democracy Index and two ‘Flawed Democracies’ under the same index. One of the countries has just come out of a state of emergency following a blatant coup against the rule of law and is not even rated on the index.

Malaysians will be left wondering if this is an idea of a bad joke on the part of Najib and his flunkies at the EC or whether he has set out to humiliate his own country in a misguided attempt to rebuff the apparent insult by Britain, Europe and Australia, who have expressed concerns about the conduct of GE14?

As every Malaysian knows, Prime Minister Najib Razak has described Malaysia as a ‘perfect’ democracy and has in the past resisted the idea that the country should be insulted by the imposition of external election monitors, a measure urged by NGOs and the opposition.

Despite numerous reports and judicial complaints about bribery, coercion and blatant cheating at previous elections Najib stated in January, for example, that”the chances of cheating are non-existent”.  Over the weekend his Foreign Minister retorted to the UK’s suggestion of election monitors by thundering:

Malaysian democracy is to be monitored by the Malaysian electorate, and the Malaysian electorate alone. To assume that anyone else has the right, ability and competence is an insult to each and every Malaysian voter. [Anifah Aman]

In fact, Malaysia is rated as a far from perfect democracy in the international independant rankings, and all denizens will know why. It comes 59th on the list of 168 countries in The Economist’s list, just above Mongolia, and it is placed in the category of a ‘Flawed Democracy”.

Room for improvement after all!

The message is therefore clear.  If Malaysia was willing to bring standards of better practice to the monitoring of GE14, there are 58 countries above it in the rankings to which the Election Commission could turn for support.

These include 19 countries from around the world, which are described as ‘Full Democracies’ in the rankings. However, instead, Najib and his Election Commission cronies have, in this semi-Uturn, resorted to some of the world’s most repressive governments to profer their monitoring support.

These include authoritarian regimes, whose expertise lies more in the stage management of pretend elections, rather than the holding of genuine elections.  Is that the sort of advice and supervision that Najib is actually looking for?

If so, Malaysians have even more reason to be worried about the conduct of GE14 than before.

Malaysia’s Chosen ‘Democracy’ Oberservers So Far

So, let’s look at the list of countries that the Election Commission has invited to observe GE14, according to today’s reports.

Firstly, you have Azerbaijan and Cambodia, which come 148 and 124 out of the 168 countries on the Democracy Index respectively and are described as Authoritarian Regimes.

Authoritarian

Authoritarian

Next, you have Thailand, which suffered an army coup in 2014 and remains under martial law.  The army have been signalling they will hold elections again at some point, but they have kept arbitrarily delaying that date – a planned election last year has been postponed till this year, with no guarantees.

On that basis the country comes 107 on the index and is described as a ‘Hybrid Regime’.

Hybrid

The other Hybrid Regime is Kyrgyzstan. This deserves some plaudits for being the only country in post-Soviet Central Asia that has achieved any form of democracy, but this is by virtue of having held its first ever peaceful transfer of power involving elections (if suspect) just last year. Good on Kyrgyzstan, but has it got guidance on democracy to support Malaysia?

Hybrid

We then have two so-called  ‘Flawed Democracies’, including nearby Indonesia, which these days looks near to beating Malaysia on the Democracy Index (it was a much reversed situation a decade or so ago), standing at number 68.

Flawed

Following that, an relatively impressively placed, if tiny, Timor Leste, which has put to one side former years of dreadful fighting and repression to stand at number 43 on the list, well above Malaysia.

What tips Najib and the Election Commission may be hoping to gain from the emissaries of these countries; how many observers each will send or how these folk will be deployed and managed remains a mystery.  One thing is certain there isn’t much time to organise them.

However, it is perhaps the final country on the list that is most baffling, but perhaps most telling.

The Maldives have been in a State of Emergency since the start of the year as, beset by corruption allegations, President Abdulla Yameen pitched himself into an outright confrontation with his own justice system and Supreme Court.

January 29, 2018 the Supreme Court received a petition from the opposition alliance in the Maldives to temporarily remove President Abdulla Yameen Abdul Gayoom and appoint investigators to look into allegations of corruption and misrule.

Following on from this, on February 1st, the Court ruled that the trial against the former President Nasheed, which began in 2012, was unconstitutional and also ordered the release of nine opposition MPs, resulting in an opposition majority in the Maldives.

Nasheed responded with a 45 day  State of Emergency in February (that was then extended for another 30 days) and not only that, he ordered the arrest of two Supreme Court judges, including the Chief Justice, as heavily armed troops stormed the country’s top court.

He also arrested his half-brother the former president Maumoon Abdul Gayoom.

According to Amnesty International Yameen has also outlawed peaceful protests, and has been imprisoning people solely for exercising their rights to freedom of expression and peaceful assembly.“While some protestors have since been released, many of those arrested during the state of emergency remain under detention.” [Amnesty]

Why, one wonders, did Najib’s Election Commission think it was appropriate to ring up the Government of President Yameen, under such circumstances, to ask if he could help with supplying observers for the upcoming election?

After all, Yameen must be pretty preoccupied.

This article first appeared in the Sarawak Report on 23 April 2018

 

 

Much has been written about the recent Kim:Moon Summit and its communique. The signs on the interKorean front are encouraging but all still hinges on how the Kim:Trump Summit. It will have to address the absolutely critical issue of “denuclearisation” – what it actually means and how could it be achieved. There is still  far to go and the challenge for Trump is to find a way short of Armageddon that will really so diminish the North’s nuclear and ICBM capability that he can claim a victory.   (more…)

Australia proclaims the importance of a rules based international order but it is not at all clear what those rules are, let alone who observes them and who doesn’t. Even where there is agreement on what the rule is countries interpret it to suit their interests. There are no countries in a position to cast the first stone. International agreements might reasonably be seen as rule setting but there are few such bodies where every country in the world has signed up and many important ones have not been accepted by one or more of the major world powers. I try to ask here some of the questions  that we should be looking at.  I suggest that Australian leaders reflect Australia as it used to be and not as it increasingly will be. This influences their approach to the world and to rules today. (more…)

CHINA is not a rising power, it has already risen – and we can either embrace it now or face “punishment”, an expert says. (more…)

While the US will be without an Ambassador in Canberra for a while it can be forgiven for thinking it will be able to rely, on our own home-grown Alliance advocates.   (more…)

‘MALAY TSUNAMI’ TO DECIDE MALAYSIAN ELECTION

Next Wednesday 9 May, Malaysia’s fourteenth general election will take place.I think it’s going to be a cracker.After speaking to Malaysians across the country – I sense there is something different about this election. In previous polls, there was always a sense of resignation that the ruling coalition would cruise to victory until the stunning Opposition gains in 2008 and 2013 reduced the Government’s majority to just 22 seats.

(more…)

Iran continues to be stereotyped in western media as a rogue state full of corrupt mullahs ,an abuser of human rights, an exporter of  Islamic terrorism to Syria, Iraq, the Gaza Strip and Yemen, and an extremist  theocracy with territorial and nuclear ambitions on a collision course with Saudi Arabia, Israel and their backer, the United States .

A three-week tour of the country in April 2018 by the Australian Institute of International Affairs  provided a much needed reality check, and an update on a country first observed by this writer as a young Australian diplomat during the Shah’s time in 1971-73. (more…)

In early April, NSW Governor David Hurley spoke about Indonesian-Australian relationships. Although largely ignored by the mainstream media his speech was not the usual white bread served by those elevated to positions supra-politics.

Hurley launched some awkward statistics:

* Thirteen percent of Australians see Indonesians as trustworthy. Switch that around and the figure is 53 percent .

* Nineteen per cent of Australians say they have a good knowledge of Indonesia. The reverse is 43 percent.

* Unfavourable perceptions of the people next door? Australians 47 percent, Indonesians just ten percent. (more…)

Simon and Garfunkel sang of the dangers of the sound of silence. But in Australian Foreign Policy,  we need more of it. (more…)