China’s Riches Won’t Bring Freedom
Modern history is the story of how liberal democracy, originating in the United Kingdom and America, spread around the world. This may sound like an absurd fantasy. In actuality, this Whiggish narrative of progress underpins most newspaper editorials, political commentary and speeches in the West, and frames larger views of political developments in the non-West. more »
Business Regulation Made Smarter
Regulations are a necessary evil. We regulate how businesses are set up, governed, and how they deal with creditors. Without these regulations, there would be chaos. But regulations and regulatory processes can and do unintentionally choke and strangle business. Investors, both foreign and local, who have experienced what is required to establish a business in more »
Adat Law Needs to Adhere to Human Rights Standards
This week a joint United Nations Development Program and the Indonesian National Development Planning Agency project Strengthening Access to Justice in Indonesia (SAJI) held its fourth workshop in Palu, Central Sulawesi. The workshop aimed to strengthen adat (the informal justice system) in the province and focused on enhancing the existence of customary law by making more »
How Did a Junior Officer Get Away With Rp 1.5 Trillion?
When former National Police Traffic Corps chief Insp. Gen. Djoko Susilo was indicted for graft at the Jakarta Anti-Corruption Court, people were staggered by the vast amount of wealth the two-star general had accumulated. His fortune includes dozens of properties, each bigger than a football field, that span seven provinces. Djoko also owns several luxury more »
Indonesia, Philippines and Myanmar Doing Well, But Leaders’ Legacies Could Be Easily Undone
Voters in the Philippines appear to have delivered a resounding victory to President Benigno Aquino in midterm elections. The son of former President Corazon Aquino looks set to control both houses of Congress, giving him a mandate to continue his reform policies. His biggest worry now is making them stick. In the first half of more »
Obituary: Ashgar Ali Engineer, a Life for Peace
I paused my work upon hearing the gloomy news of the death of Asghar Ali Engineer, one of the world’s greatest scholars of Islam, last Tuesday, after a prolonged illness. Born in 1939 in the town of Salumbar in the western Indian state of Rajasthan, Engineer was a prolific writer who authored more than fifty more »
United States Action in Syria Could Sway Iran
Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad must be pleased at how, within a week, the conversation has shifted from his regime’s alleged use of chemical weapons to an international peace conference on Syria’s civil war. The idea of ending the bloodshed — and presumably addressing Syria’s chemical weapons as well — through an accord similar to that more »
Fifteen Years After Suharto, Indonesia Has Made Great Steps Forward
For most people, the great events of the day are sideshows to their own lives. The urgency of family, friends, God and work trump what the American poet William Stafford called the “grotesque, fake importance” of “great national events.” Sometimes, however, the knock of history intrudes upon private life, and a public question must be more »
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Help Myanmar Manage Its Mandela Moment
Activists complain that US President Barack Obama, who welcomed Myanmar’s President Thein Sein to the White House on Monday, is embracing the former general too soon, before he’s proved his reformist bona fides. In fact, Obama is late to the party. Nowadays international businessmen, academics and aid workers throng Yangon’s dilapidated airport. In parts of more »
1:00 pm May 21, 2013No CommentRead More