16 posts tagged “politics”

Thailand turns into Indonesia - and vice versa

http://www.smh.com.au/opinion/thailan...

Thailand likes to call itself The Land of Smiles. And for a while after the advent of democracy in 1992 this seemed to be unusually accurate for an official slogan. Democracy seemed to flourish. Even during the traumatic Asian economic crisis of 1997 the generals stayed in their barracks. Growth quickly returned. The tourists flooded in. Foreign investors smiled on the Thais, who returned the favour. In the parallel universe known as Indonesia, the picture was more ominous. Its slogan, Unity in Diversity, seemed an exercise in dark sarcasm. Diversity was hammered into frightened unity by its military dictator, Soeharto. When the Asian crisis forced Soeharto out of power in 1998 the outlook only seemed to darken. A succession of simpletons and underperformers took the presidency. The economy was moribund. Islam woke from its long slumber under Soeharto and seemed to be asserting itself. Its diversity would now be repressed by the Muslim majority, it appeared. Indonesia's prospects seemed to go from bad to worse. Terrorists bombed tourists in the peaceful holiday destination of Bali. The Petri dish of Indonesian Islam seemed to be breeding a newly virulent form of violent extremism. Investors gave the country a wide berth. If Thailand seemed to represent sunrise in South-East Asia, Indonesia appeared to be the region's nightfall. Today we see an extraordinary role reversal.

Interesting opinion piece.  I don't follow Asian politics as closely as I used to and have only been vaguely aware of what has been happening in Thailand.  I wonder if the Indonesians on Vox agree that the situation in Indonesia is starting to improve?  It is 13 years since I was in Indonesia proper (a short holiday to Bali doesn't really count).  I was working in government there during the dying days of the Suharto administration so got to witness some of the corruption and lethargy first hand.  I even spoke to older Indonesians who claimed that things were better under the Dutch than they were under Suharto.  I would love to think that this description was an accurate one:

"Indonesia in 2008 is a stable, competitive electoral democracy, with a highly decentralised system of governance, achieving solid rates of economic growth, under competent national leadership, and playing a constructive role in the regional and broader international community."

 

Indonesia flag (with clipping path)

 

Should Anna Bligh be grateful for compulsory voting?

http://www.apo.org.au/webboard/commen...

Apolitical voters plump for the devil they know, argues GRAEME ORR THE QUEENSLAND Labor government was returned with a comfortable majority, albeit with a small majority of votes. But a huge swing and a hung Parliament was expected, so there will be months of reflection and soul-searching amongst practitioners and students of politics. A couple of bogeymen have already been summonsed. Did opinion polls lull the LNP into a false sense of security? Did opposition Leader Springborg conjure memories of the old Nationals, and deter the supposedly sophisticated suburbs of Brisbane? Or did Premier Bligh morph from potential villain to historic heroine in her frenetic final days of campaigning? We have been here before. The 2004 Howard–Latham election springs to mind. An ageing government appears on the ropes, but a resurgent opposition falls short at the final hurdle. Commentators search for answers in entrails of the final days of the campaign, or in some (previously unnoticed) superiority in the incumbent leadership. We routinely ignore one obvious factor: compulsory voting. Compulsion gets-out-the-vote. This is typically understood in the limited sense of sparing parties the expense and innovation of inspiring their likely supporters. But compulsion works in a more fundamental way. It favours governments because it usually reinforces incumbency. Invariably, the electorate reports it is as motivated by positives (liking one party) as negatives (disliking the alternatives). But that bald statistic masks a subtle truth. Most who feel positively about a party do so because they identify with it. They are the rusted-on. But staunches do not decide elections. Elections are decided by the lukewarm – voters who, at best, have a weak identification with a party or leader. They tend to be apolitical rather than policy-oriented. They drift, stick temporarily and eventually shift, for negative reasons. Their disillusionment, when strong enough, enacts the truism that o...

I don't think I realised until recently quite how unusual the Australian system of compulsory voting is.  According to the Wikipedia entry on compulsory voting, Australia is only one of 32 countries in the world to have compulsory voting and one of only 19 to enforce it.    A full list of these 19 countries is as follows:

• Argentina (compulsory for citizens between 18 and 70 years old, non-compulsory for those older than 70)
• Australia (compulsory enrollment and voting for local, state^*, and national elections for all adults over 18).
• Belgium
• Brazil (non-compulsory for citizens between 16 and 18 years old and those older than 70; military conscripts cannot vote)
• Chile (enrollment voluntary)
• Cyprus
• Democratic Republic of the Congo
• Ecuador (compulsory for citizens between 18 and 64 years old, non-compulsory for those older than 65)
• Fiji
• Liechtenstein
• Nauru
• Peru (compulsory for citizens between 18 and 70 years old, non-compulsory for those older than 70)
• Singapore
• Switzerland (compulsory in the Canton of Schaffhausen only)
• Turkey
• Uruguay

The Wikipedia entry also has a good summary of what are generally considered the pros and cons of compulsory voting, one of which is explored in the article by Graeme Orr, ie, that it tends to result in the apathetic masses being the ones who decide upon the outcome of any election and that it also tends to favour incumbent governments (although there are plenty of other factors influencing this).  I wonder what the world would be like if other nations, such as the US, had an enforced system of compulsory voting like Australia does.  It would probably mean a greater proportion of women voting as well as those from traditionally marginalised, disadvantaged backgrounds (including many of those who cast their first vote in the Obama-McCain election).   

As an aside to this, I remember voting almost flat on my back after having a caesarean operation only a day or so before a NSW State election.  Two polling officials came and stood by my bedside to assist me to vote after I had let one of them know (during a 'door knocking' round of the hospital wards) that I would be unable to make it to the portable polling booth they had set up in the hospital foyer.  The Upper House voting was particularly challenging as the paper for that was about the size of a small table cloth.  I think this story really highlights how serious Australians are about compulsory voting. 

Fiction nurtures the soul - a must for even hard-hearted politicians | smh.com.au

http://www.smh.com.au/opinion/fiction...

This revelation from a parliamentary colleague got me thinking. Where would we be if we all lost the lessons of some of the great works of fiction? Where would we be if young people listened to this politician and stopped reading anything but textbooks? Is it a good thing that a leading politician would boast about cutting himself off from the world of novels? Why should we encourage young people to keep reading novels when there are so many other forms of modern entertainment?

2 comments

I can't understand why so many people, particularly men, seem to look down their noses at fiction.  Theories and hard facts are all very well in their place but the world also needs people with vision and imagination and I think reading fiction helps to encourage this. 

Just in case anyone has seen this and actually believes it to be true:

KEVIN RUDD has become the latest victim of an email hoax which claims to report his inflammatory comments about Muslim immigration to Australia. Mimicking a news agency report, the email reads: "Rudd angered some Muslims on Wednesday by saying he supported spy agencies monitoring the nation's mosques. "Immigrants, not Australians, must adapt. Take it or leave it. I am tired of this nation worrying about whether we are offending some individual or their culture." According to the website hoax-slayer.com an identical email did the rounds last year, attributed to John Howard. But that hasn't stopped it being posted on bulletin boards in the United States and Britain (including, bizarrely, a forum about the British weather and a blog on the mass circulation Daily Express newspaper) in recent weeks. There is also evidence the email has reached mailboxes in Africa, New Zealand and Singapore. (Source: http://www.smh.com.au/national/oh-kevin-you-didnt-20090303-8nhz.html )

Why do people feel compelled to make things like this up?  And more to the point how is it that so many people  get sucked in by them? 

Rudd_Gillard

Show us who you idolized as a teenager.

Paul Keating Treasurer

Some people will find this extremely sad but I was a huge fan of politician Paul Keating in my late teens (around 17-18 years old).  He was Treasurer when I was at high school and just starting to take an interest in politics.  I studied a lot of his economic reforms as part of my high school economics course and admired what he was trying to achieve (it probably also helped that I was too young to be affected by some of the negative fallout such as the rising interest rates).  After university, I worked in Canberra under both the Hawke and Keating Labor governments and came to admire Paul Keating even more then.  Not only was he extremely witty (as evidenced by this archive of some of his more famous insults) but his politics seemed so courageous and forward-looking, including his vision of Australia as a republic and his belief in closer ties between Australia and its Asian neighbours (this latter also benefited me personally as an Asian linguist). I was working in Jakarta when the Howard Government got elected and I honestly felt like not coming home.  Sure enough many of my worst fears were realised in the following years and it wasn't long before I packed up and left Canberra for Sydney.  I just couldn't stand working for that "dessicated coconut" and his cronies any longer.      

I was out driving on the weekend and noticed a man and a woman with four children all on bikes crossing the road in front of me.  Something about them caught my attention and when I looked a little harder, I realised it was the former Premier of NSW, Morris Iemma, and his wife and four children out for a Sunday ride!  I like that they are still living in the electorate even though it is in a fairly dodgy part of Sydney.  Iemma once caused a minor stink when he joked that comedian, Vince Sorrenti, "was the was the first person to move from Punchbowl to Vaucluse without a balaclava".  Most locals just thought it was funny. 

Cyclists crossing road

Quote your neighbour on Wednesday - featuring Tom

http://thetomzone.vox.com/library/pos...

First off, I should explain that I divide the December 25th holiday into two components: Christmas and X-mas.  The Christmas part is a very simple thing: a simple celebration of hope and good cheer in the darkest part of the winter.  X-mas is the brash, noisy, flashing, stressful, gift-buying, relative-seeing, mandatory party-attending stuff that drives me crazy.  X-mas is about enforced fun and cordiality and commerce.  Christmas is Forrest Gump setting out running across America; X-mas is the whole circus it had evolved into when he stopped.

I really liked this post by Tom on the US election.  As for me down here in Australia, I am quite relieved that the pre-election 'circus' is almost over.  We seem to have been hearing more about it than we did about our own election this time last year.  Looking forward to hearing the result though and then seeing what comes next. 

I firmly believe that the amount of influence someone gets in determining a name for a child should be largely proportional to the amount of effort put into bringing that child into the world.  Even putting politics aside, the absolute gall of this guy astounds me. 

Dad names baby after McCain and Palin - but doesn't tell his wife

October 16, 2008 - 6:04AM

A supporter of Republican presidential candidate John McCain and running mate Sarah Palin went beyond a bumper sticker and named his newborn daughter after the duo.

The baby's name, Sarah McCain Palin Ciptak, came as a surprise to her mother.

The parents had agreed to name the girl Ava Grace, but father Mark Ciptak instead filled out the birth certificate with the political name to draw attention to the candidates, he told local newspaper the Kingsport Times News.

He only later told his wife, Layla.

"To be sure, she was not quite fond of me or of what I had done, but we've had some time to talk it over, and she has been really supportive through it all," Ciptak told the newspaper.

The name has drawn a slew of media attention, and the couple said they have not decided whether to keep the name or have it changed to their original choice.

I remember a friend telling me about her mother's discovery that the name her husband had suggested for their baby daughter (which she had agreed on) was actually the name of his old girlfriend back in Poland.  She was hopping mad when she found out but was, unfortunately, more than 20 years too late to do anything about it. 

I think if I was Layla Ciptak I would not only be changing the baby's name to Ava Grace but also getting rid of the surname Ciptak.