Indonesia's Continued Growth

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Joseph Kirschke
February 29, 2012

Indonesia’s capital city Jakarta at sunset. (Photo: Hywit Dimyadi, Shutterstock)

Last fall, chaos erupted outside a sleek Jakarta mall. Dozens were injured after 3,000 people massed, clashing with police. That the occasion was a BlackBerry launch couldn’t have contrasted more with the riots that undid the autocratic President Suharto 14 years earlier.

The transformation has been epic. Soaring office buildings and more than 500 malls render Jakarta unrecognizable compared to the columns of smoke and chaos that engulfed it in 1998. Mandarin echoes across Soekarno-Hatta International Airport terminals bristling with non-English-speaking Asian businessmen. Lamborghinis, Ferraris and Porsches jockeying with exhaust-spewing trucks and motorcycles for precious potholed space in the capital’s grinding traffic are not out of the ordinary.

The change, bolstered by surging domestic demand and one of the biggest natural resources booms on earth, is being minted. Beginning in December, after a banner year of 6.5 percent growth, a eulogy to the woes of Southeast Asia’s biggest, nearly $1 trillion economy was kicked off through an investment grade rating on its sovereign debt.

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But for the ASEAN G-20, it remains a story of often quiet success beset by nagging difficulties. Indeed, calls are emerging for reassessments by two of the three major ratings agencies—Moody’s Investor Services and Fitch Ratings—who have given the world’s fourth-most-populous country its nod (Standard & Poor’s is expected to follow suit).

Still, few can deny the world’s largest Muslim-majority nation, long overshadowed by terrorism and sectarian upheaval, is experiencing affluence, with some analysts predicting a $9.3 trillion economy by 2030. Beside European debt woes, a sluggish American economy and projections of 2.5 percent global growth, record domestic spending—two-thirds of GDP—is cocooning Indonesia amid increasing suspicions of a Chinese bubble to the north.

China’s potential as the world’s biggest economy and its status as Indonesia’s primary export destination, however, remain essential to continued prosperity—even as labor-heavy industries turn to Indonesia following wage increases on the mainland. India, itself poised to overtake China as the world’s most populous nation, is also on the map.

Last year, Chinese imports from Indonesia topped $21.6 billion, up 53.4 percent from 2010, Trade Minister Gita Wirjawan told The Jakarta Post. In the same period, Indonesia exported $13.3 billion in commodities to India, up 34.8 percent from the previous year.

Traditional non-oil and gas commodities have been crucial. Dominating exports, they contributed 79.6 percent at $162.02 billion—a 24.9 percent increase from the previous year, say government statistics. These included minerals, mostly coal, along with nickel, aluminum and copper as well as commodities like palm oil and rubber. At $203.2 billion, according to Central Statistics Agency data, last year’s overall exports were double 2007′s, and 29 percent over 2010.

Imports outpace exports, but this year Indonesia enjoyed a trade surplus of $26.3 billion—a 19 percent increase over 2010. Demand also continues from emerging economies like Russia and South Africa, where imports have leapt 107 percent. China, Japan and the United States, however, remain the top markets for commodities, at $21.6 billion, $18.3 billion and $15.7 billion, correspondingly. This week, South Korea and Indonesia inked a two-year, $40 billion bilateral trade agreement.

Daunting troubles remain, though. President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono’s much-touted $468 billion “master plan” aside, poor infrastructure bedevils growth: With limited port capacity, businesses spend up to 30 percent on transportation. “The inadequacies in Indonesia’s transportation infrastructure are likely to hinder the country’s global competitiveness unless addressed,” Standard & Poor credit analyst Rajiv Vishwanathan said this week.

Labor unrest darkens the skies, too. Labor laws have frustrated foreign investors, while diplomatic spats have flared over worker protests at 3,000 Japanese, Taiwanese and Korean-owned plants in West Java.

Then there’s what Moody’s politely terms “relatively weak governance.” But massive corruption by any other name is President Yudhoyono’s boogeyman. As repeated surveys show Indonesians openly yearning for the tight-fisted, 32-year rule of Suharto, 2011′s Transparency International’s Corruption Perceptions Index holds little surprise: Indonesia ranks 100th out of 182 countries.

But with a fast-emerging middle class and half its population of 238 million under age 30, time is on Indonesia’s side.

Luxury real estate, for one thing, is skyrocketing. A recent survey indicates Jakarta’s high-end property values rose over all Southeast Asian cities at a rate of 14.4 percent, and 3.15 percent over Hong Kong. Competition among consumer goods, political parties and financial services providers, meanwhile, leaves Indonesia spending more on advertising, at $2.11 billion annually, than any other country in the region. Indonesians are second among Facebook users after Americans.

At the beginning of February, the U.S.-ASEAN Business Council arrived with its largest ever delegation of CEOs from 35 companies. As the world’s palm oil colossus, biotech companies are also eyeing Indonesia closely. In January, American multinational Monsanto announced plans for a $40 billion regional corn-seed supply base. The agricultural giant has also been helping the government cultivate rubber and palm oil.

Also that month, the World Bank and the International Finance Corporation reported that opening an Indonesian business is 13 days faster and 8 percent cheaper than two years ago. It noted that Indonesians wait 3.5 times less to acquire construction permits than Malaysians, and 50 percent less than Thais.

Jakarta’s J.W. Marriott epitomizes how Indonesia’s troubled past converges with its evolving role in the global economy. One of Jakarta’s most upscale hotels, its striking frontal façade was destroyed by a 2003 suicide bombing that killed 12 and injured more than 100 others.

Nearly a decade on, a vigilant security cordon still greets visitors, beginning with a police dog nosing past the doors of all approaching vehicles. But in ways more mundane, the Marriott is like any other high-end hotel: A can of Coke at a café inside will cost you $5.

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Pakistan's Women Get a Helping Hand From Maryam Bibi

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Alasdair Soussi
March 16, 2012


Adversity, hardship and personal risk may not be everybody’s idea of a fulfilling work-life, but for Maryam Bibi it comes with the territory. A chief executive of a women’s charity in the volatile city of Peshawar, the capital of Pakistan’s Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP) Province, Bibi has been committed to improving the lot of women and girls in the republic’s rural and notoriously hostile tribal communities since she established her NGO, Khwendo Kor (KK), in 1993. For Bibi, the threat of death is a daily part of life in this most ancient of cities, which, trapped on the frontline of a Taliban-led insurgency, lies on the edge of Pakistan’s tribal belt near the Afghan border.

“It has been always dangerous here, but recently the danger has multiplied due to the war on terror, drone attacks and military operations,” says Bibi, speaking from her home in Peshawar. “Fear is driving everyone. … The fragile security situation and poor law and order have led to increased kidnappings, suicide attacks, targeted killings and an economic crisis. It seems as if the people are left alone because all the security machinery is engaged in securing the more well-to-do, the ministers and so on.

“There are many examples where authorities openly accept they are not in a position to provide security to NGOs and constantly advise them to stop or limit the area of their work. Thousands of people from the tribal areas and KP have become internally displaced and uprooted. All these factors have added to the difficulties of an already poor people and to those people and organizations who would like to help them.”

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KK has been active in KP Province for the past 18 years. With increasing access to education, better healthcare and job creation among its top priorities, it has spent much of those years “helping and facilitating communities—women and children in particular—to reclaim their own basic rights” in a region of Pakistan known for its strong cultural traditions and deep-seated religious adherence to its Islamic heritage.

“I come from Waziristan, and I understand the situation of women in that part of my country,” says Bibi, a widowed mother of four who was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize as part of the “1,000 Women for Peace” movement in 2005. “I was fortunate to become educated—and the credit for that goes to my father, who, as someone who was exposed to educated people himself, was courageous enough to educate his daughters—but even as an educated person I understood how difficult it was to think for yourself as a tribal woman.

“I only wanted to work, and not have to be dependent on others just because my husband was ill. And when he died I wanted to do things for myself, but when I found I was not culturally permitted I was shocked. Then, when I came to know other women, I was even more shocked by their situation when I saw how they were living in extreme poverty, how they were not educated and how they were being exploited. It was then that I realized there was an opportunity to do something for women. So I established this organization so we could take ownership of our own identity and bring about structural changes within the family and within the system.”

Bibi was born in Mali Khel, a small village in the Jani Khel area of Frontier Region Bannu, in 1950. As the third consecutive daughter, she was not entirely welcomed by her illiterate mother—or her family at large—who had prayed her entire pregnancy for a son. But her mother’s prayers were soon answered when, immediately after giving birth to Bibi, further labor contractions resulted in a twin brother, who, unlike his baby sister, was welcomed into the world to the sound of celebratory gunshots.

Born into a society in which tribal feuds and protecting one’s honor through acts of vengeance were a common part of everyday life, Bibi was forced to marry her schizophrenic cousin, who beat her often and kept her strictly veiled. By her mid-20s, Bibi’s life mirrored that of most other tribal women: married with several children and shut away from the outside world with little prospect of a rewarding future. But one day, after a visit from her younger sister, who had become a doctor, Bibi realized that, as an educated woman herself, she alone possessed the keys to her own liberation.

“I myself come from a tribal area where the literacy rate is very low and poverty is widely spread,” says Bibi, who began her long journey out of servitude by buying a buffalo with the idea of selling its milk. “And it was exposure to education that took me out from the vicious circle of poverty and ignorance.

“I see and experience every day how my very close relatives, cousins and others—both men and women—who are illiterate and poor are suffering mainly because they cannot read and write so are excluded from the decently paid job market. They have serious health issues and are excluded from policy decision-making processes. Education also enriches, refines and sharpens analytical intellectual capacities and helps women in particular not only to better cope with adversities, but to come out from the difficult situations they are faced with due to their gender.”

Since its foundation, KK has grown in strength. In 1993, Bibi began with just four staff members, working from a single office in Peshawar. Today, KP Province is home to several functioning KK offices, and staff members number in the hundreds. Among its many noteworthy achievements, Bibi’s organization has established community-based primary schools for girls; created adult literacy centers for women; trained young women in the villages as teachers; and introduced micro-credit schemes, which, by way of village shops, street vending, vegetable production and the manufacturing and selling of craft goods, have given many women unprecedented levels of financial independence. Bibi has not rested on her laurels, however, and KK’s ambitious projects continue to thrive.

“We’re working on a very interesting and important project for women to have rights to consent in marriage and rights to inheritance,” says Bibi, whose work regularly takes her across her native land and overseas. “Both these rights are largely denied in the most conservative and patriarchal societies of Pakistan and in our province of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and the Federally Administered Tribal Areas in particular, though these and almost all human rights are clearly given to them in Islam and in the Pakistan constitution. In this project we have engaged mosques, imams, lawyers, health practitioners and community leaders to have educative dialogues, seminars and community-level women and men’s group discussions.

“We have had extremely positive results. Some imams said they had never previously thought of ever giving sermons in mosques about women’s rights in Islam, as discussing such issues is not part of our culture.”

Indeed, when one imam, who had agreed to give a Friday sermon in his mosque on this very topic, mysteriously delayed his address by several weeks, Bibi initially feared the worst, only to make a heartening discovery.

“After I enquired on the delay, he said that he himself had not given any inheritance prospects to his own sister and daughter, so he first ensured to do so and after that delivered a very effective Friday sermon,” she says.

With her achievements came new friendships, and none more so than with the city of York in northern England. It was there in 2002 that the U.K. Friends of Khwendo Kor (Frok) was established to aid and support the work of KK. And at the world-class University of York, Bibi completed a master’s degree in philosophy in 2008 and also received an honorary doctorate in July last year.

“Maryam is indeed remarkable,” says Marilyn Crawshaw, the chairwoman of Frok and an honorary fellow at the University of York. “At one level, she presents as quite an ordinary woman—very first impressions are of a quiet, conservatively dressed woman with a fairly quiet and calm demeanor. At another level, it soon becomes clear that she has a steely determination and a wholly unambiguous commitment to improving the situation in her part of the world and is utterly focused on that. Her ability to understand ‘the personal is political’ is remarkable.

“In my view, Maryam is right up there among the most important people in our time—nationally and internationally—and I suspect that her legacy will remain for many years to come.”

As a woman who has had to confront violent Islamist radicals who see both her and KK as advancing a Western agenda—”our offices have been attacked, our staff have been kidnapped”—Bibi is keen to promote the true nature of her work in the rest of the Islamic world, not least the Middle East.

“That our work gets recognition in other Muslim countries is of critical importance to us, and not only because we are Muslims and share this sisterhood and brotherhood all over the world where Muslim populations reside,” she says. “Generally, people and governments in non-Arab Islamic countries look up to Arab countries for guidance and learning for higher Islamic values because Islam originated from there. They also seek monetary assistance from the Arab countries that are better off due to oil.

“All these factors put Arab countries in a powerful position.

Unfortunately, their policies towards non-Arab countries have massively contributed to the miseries of people in Pakistan, in particular those of women and girls.”

For Bibi, who Crawshaw describes as “very humble and appearing constantly and genuinely surprised by the accolades that come her way,” her transformation from subjugated tribal woman to international human-rights activist will never truly sink in.

“Receiving an honorary doctorate from such a prestigious university as the University of York was not even in my remotest imagination,” says Bibi, who adds that “as long as Allah gives me the opportunity to serve my community—especially women”—she has no plans to ever retire.

“This honor has been overwhelming and humbled me. Many times, I still cannot control my tears when I think of this honor and the grand ceremony of receiving it in front of more than a thousand highly educated people. The award has perplexed me—I truly feel I must do better but I don’t know how to do better. But it has strengthened my belief in human values that are beyond race, origin, gender and culture.”

Alasdair Soussi is a Scots-born internationally published freelance journalist and writer, specializing in Middle Eastern and Islamic affairs and Scottish politics. He has written for the likes of The Irish Times, The National, Maclean’s, BBC Online, Al-Jazeera.net and the New Internationalist. His website is www.alasdairsoussi.com. You can follow him on twitter.com/AlasdairSoussi.

View the Worldpress Desk’s profile for Alasdair Soussi.

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Two NPA guerrillas surrender to soldiers in Sorsogon

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Two New People’s Army guerrillas surrendered after a ten-minute clash with government troops in Sorsogon on Wednesday.

31sth Infantry Battalion commanding officer Col. Teody Toribio said the encounter took place in Magallanes town’s Barangay Siuton in Sorsogon in Bicol at about 5:20 p.m. on May 1.

Citing information from Capt. Christopher Santander, who led the government troops during the firefight in Siuton, Toribio said soldiers were on combat patrol when they encountered the 10 communist rebels.

Also, Toribio said two of the insurgents surrendered and soldiers recovered three M16 rifles, a landmine, subversive documents and campaign paraphernalia at the clash site.

The captured rebels were identified as Judy Torres a.k.a. Ka Roy, 33, a resident of Brgy Dolos, Bulan, Sorsogon while the other was Jomar Gracilla a.k.a. Marvin, 19, of Brgy Pili, Magallanes.

They belong to the NPA’s Larangan 1, the former Front Committee 80 in Sorsogon, Toribio said.

“We heard voices shouting for surrender, I immediately ordered for a ceasefire to my men. They were laying face down on the ground with their firearms by their side when they were captured,” Toribio quoted Capt. Santander as saying.

The two were brought to the 31IB headquarters and were treated well, Toribio said. — LBG, GMA News

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Beijing's Pollution Alarms Neighbors

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John Daly
February 19, 2013

Severe air pollution on Jan. 12 in Beijing, China. Air quality index levels were classed as “Beyond Index.” (Photo: Hung Chung Chih, Shutterstock.com)

The good news for the Chinese leadership is that their fiscal policies have paid off, producing both the world’s second-largest economy and the globe’s leading creditor nation in less than a generation.

The bad news is that the country’s hell-bent drive towards industrialization has brought in its train a host of collateral problems, not the least of which is pollution. Last month Beijing’s air pollution soared past levels considered hazardous by the World Health Organization (WHO).

Prior to that, the government often played down the pollution in Beijing, insisting it was merely fog, despite evidence to the contrary that was plain for all to see. Earlier this year, following public pressure resulting from hourly air-quality readings first published in 2011 by the U.S. embassy in Beijing, which Chinese authorities had previously denounced as “foreign interference,” the municipal officials took notice. On Jan. 12 the air-quality monitor operated by the U.S. embassy in Beijing recorded a Particulate Matter PM 2.5 level of 886 micrograms a cubic meter, nearly 35 times what the WHO considers safe.

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How bad?

On Feb. 5 flights were grounded as visibility fell to about 200 meters across Beijing. Last month Beijing’s Jiangong Hospital recorded a 30 percent spike in cases involving respiratory problems, and the hospital’s Emergency Department Chief Cui Qifeng noted, “People tend to catch colds or suffer from lung infections during the days with heavily polluted air.”

A Chinese Academy of Engineering specialist in respiratory diseases, said of Beijing’s current pollution, “It is more frightening than SARS. For SARS, you can consider quarantine and other means. But no one can escape from the air pollution and indoor pollution.” The six-month SARS epidemic in 2003 killed 775 people in 25 countries.

Causes?

Beijing alone now has 5 million cars choking the streets, spewing their exhaust into the air. More importantly, the nation’s pollution problems are caused by China developing at a speed and scale unprecedented in history, which has produced widespread environmental degradation that the central authorities have been slow to acknowledge. Aside from vehicle exhaust, thermal energy plants utilizing the nation’s poor-grade coal power the country’s factories, providing the heat for hundreds of millions of homes as they belch toxins into the atmosphere.

The toxic air threatens to become an international issue as well. Drifting across the Sea of Japan, the smog is now impacting parts of Japan, with the Japanese Ministry of the Environment’s website on Feb. 5 being overloaded. One ministry official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said, “Access to our air-pollution monitoring system has been almost impossible since last week, and the telephone here has been constantly ringing because worried people keep asking us about the impact on health.”

While the Japanese government remained discreet about air quality issues, Ministry of the Environment official Yasushi Nakajima was more blunt, stating, “We can’t deny there is an impact from pollution in China.” According to National Institute for Environmental Studies researcher Atsushi Shimizu, the prevailing winds from the west carry air pollution over western Japan. The pollution from China has exceeded government limits for particulate matter. The government focuses on particles 2.5 micrometers or less in diameter, whose concentration has been reported as high as 50 micrograms per cubic meter of air in northern Kyushu. The Japanese government limit is 35 micrograms.

Solutions?

Responding to the recent crisis, Beijing’s city government ordered 103 heavily polluting factories to suspend production and told government departments and state-owned enterprises to reduce their use of cars by a third.

More immediately, on Feb. 6 the Chinese government issued a timetable for its program to upgrade fuel quality, aiming to implement a strict standard nationwide by 2017, upgrading its standard V for automobile petrol, with sulfur content within 10 parts per million before the end of the year.

But the country’s long-term solutions will not be inexpensive—reducing the use of coal, forcing cars to use efficient pollution-exhaust equipment, and developing mass transit options to reduce the country’s rising love affair with the automobile.

China now has the wealth to implement such solutions; whether the political will is there is quite another matter. Should authorities not act, then they’d better ramp up the country’s health insurance policies, as undoubtedly more and more workers will be getting sick.

This article was originally published by Oilprice.com.

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India's Water Woes: Is Interlinking Viable?

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Sameer Jafri
September 25, 2011

How interlinking might be mapped out. Surplus areas in blue, marginal surplus in green, deficit in pink, marginal deficit in yellow, and marginal deficit (surplus by import) in shaded pink.

India, a country of over 1.2 billion, is faced with acute water shortage. The crisis will grow worse if it is not tackled in time. A large part of Indian territory is dependent on southwest monsoons to fulfill its water requirements. With monsoons becoming more erratic and uncertain with every passing season, there is an urgent need to manage this scarce resource in such a way that it can sustain a burgeoning population.

One such solution being debated is interlinking major river systems in India. This idea had its conception in K.L. Rao’s proposal of linking the Ganga river basin with that of Cauvery by canal. It was followed by British Captain Dastur’s plan of “Garland Canal” put forward in the 1950s. At the outset, this inter-basin approach seems attractive and refreshing. It is based on the fact that huge disparity persists between the regions of India in terms of water availability. While the glacier-fed Himalayan rivers flowing across the Great Indian Plains are perennial in nature, the peninsular river systems on the other hand are strictly seasonal with four months of southwest monsoon rains accounting for more than 80 percent of their flow. While Himalayan rivers are susceptible to floods, at the same time, their Peninsular counterparts are drought prone. Therefore, the idea is to divert water from surplus regions to water-deficient areas.

The claim is that interlinking would not only result in optimum utilization of water resources, but would also bring many socio-economic and environmental benefits. Firstly, the construction of canals to transport water will facilitate irrigation in vast rain-fed tracts of the country, thereby contributing to agriculture development and food security, besides providing a cheap and eco-friendly means of navigation. In addition, the project is expected to generate hydropower, thus contributing to energy security. Rise in the level of groundwater in command areas will lead to growth of forests and greenery. Last but not the least, it is hoped that this project would bring in national integration, which this country badly needs in the present times of turmoil.

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Although the picture being presented looks very rosy, a close check brings dark reality to the fore. First of all, any project of such a magnitude requires detailed planning and analysis. The fact that ground work for smaller projects like Bhakhra-Nangal on Sutlej and Sardar Sarovar on Narmada took decades, itself suggests that little has been done hitherto to go into the probable fallouts of this project. In 2000, the government constituted a task force headed by Member of Parliament Suresh Prabhu to go into the details of this project. Its report and also the reports and recommendations of many previous committees remain classified to date.

The presumption of “surplus” availability of water during floods, which is at the genesis of the project, is starkly misleading since the catchment areas of Himalayan rivers also witness droughts during dry season. Since pressure on water resources happens more in dry season, huge investment will need to be made in storage facilities. And the question of where these sites would be located and how they would impact local ecology and landscape remains unanswered.

Some estimates suggest that the cost of the project may exceed a staggering $250 billion. Where will this huge amount of money come from? In these times of economic uncertainty, government is not in a position to set aside such a huge amount of money. Private investment could not and should not be sought since it brings along the danger of corporatizing water itself. To finance this project, the government would have to turn to the World Bank or the Asian Development Bank for loans, which often come with conditions attached. Hence, before making any decision, the government needs to ascertain, by carrying out a comprehensive cost-benefit analysis, whether the returns from the project are worth increasing the debt burden on exchequer.

A legitimate fear regards the threat this project may pose to ecology. Making way for canals, irrigation networks, dams and reservoirs would mean clearing huge tracts of virgin forests, submergence of land and digging of mountains. This is bound to pose a grave danger to the macro-environment of the country. Further, preventing water from flowing into the ocean would have ramifications for marine life and biodiversity in downstream deltaic regions, which would adversely impact local economy.

In a densely populated country like India, even a small-scale project would require relocation of masses. In this particular case, the project would lead to displacement of millions of people. Hence, before embarking on implementation, it is the duty of the government to determine whether it is potent enough to compensate and rehabilitate such a large number of people, since the past experiences of the Sardar Sarovar project and the like suggest otherwise. Moreover, the quantum of energy required to lift the water up hills, mountains and difficult terrain would be enormous, which is very difficult to manage for an already energy-deficient country like ours.

Independent India has witnessed many inter-state disputes over sharing the waters of a single basin: the Cauvery water dispute between Karnataka and Tamil Nadu as well as the Krishna water dispute between Karnataka, Maharashtra and Andhra Pradesh, to name a couple. Though there are legal and institutional mechanisms in place such as river water tribunals and inter-state councils to settle such disputes, there is no such mechanism that could look into any such inter-basin dispute, which would be bound to arise once execution of the project is taken up. It would breed unwanted antagonism and animosity among states. Apart from engineering inter-state conflicts, this project has the potential to cause diplomatic attrition with neighboring countries. For instance, Nepal has its own plans to exploit the Himalayan rivers in the future, which may not be compatible with India’s plans. Similarly, Bangladesh will go frenzied if India tries to divert Brahmaputra waters. Perhaps aware of the potential dangers expressed above, the then Minister of Environment and Forests Jairam Ramesh remarked in 2009, “The interlinking of rivers will be a human-ecological-economic disaster. It is easy to do interlinking on paper. Interlinking of rivers has limited basin values, but large-scale interlinking would be a disaster.”

What is the solution, then? There is no single solution for India’s water woes. We need a multi-dimensional approach to deal with this problem. Immediate answer lies in catching the water where it falls and preserving it for dry season—in other words, harvesting the rainwater by setting up watersheds at the local/village level, especially in rain-fed areas. A blend of traditional knowledge and modern science is needed to manage this scarce resource. If some sort of inter-basin mechanism seems inevitable, it may be better considered in terms of small linkages at regional scale, provided it causes minimum displacement and environmental loss and ushers in maximum benefit for the people.

Sameer Jafri is a political analyst based in India who writes on global and geopolitical issues. He can be reached at sameer.jf@gmail.com.

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NPA guerrillas free abducted mayoralty bet in Davao Oriental

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New People’s Army members on Thursday evening freed a mayoral candidate who was abducted in Davao Oriental on Wednesday for allegedly failing to pay permit-to-campaign fees.

Davao Oriental police chief Senior Superintendent Jose Carumba said Ronie Osnan was released at 5:30 p.m. Thursday, dzBB’s Davao affiliate Raul Tolibas reported.

The report said Osnan was not harmed by the rebels but will be brought to Mati in Davao Oriental for debriefing.

Police could not immediately say if Osnan was released because he paid for a permit to campaign.

Earlier reports said Osnan is an independent candidate who was abducted at 1 p.m. Wednesday after a sortie in Barangay Kampawan, Baganga.

A separate report on Bombo Radyo said Osnan appeared tired and hungry after his release late Thursday. — LBG, GMA News

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Cops seize firearms, ammunition from Negros mayor's house

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Police seized a cache of high-powered firearms and ammunition from the residential compound of a Negros Occidental town mayor during a predawn search Thursday.

The Philippine National Police used a search warrant to inspect the compound of Pulupandan Mayor Magdaleno Peña, radio dzBB reported.

Peña was not at home at the time the raid was conducted, but may face charges of illegal possession of firearms, Western Visayas police head Chief Superintendent Agrimero Cruz Jr. was quoted in the dzBB report as saying.

Among the high-powered firearms seized from the house were an AK-47 assault rifle, an M-16 rifle and a shotgun, along with a cal-.45 pistol.

The PNP Criminal Investigation and Detection Group was still conducting an inventory of the firearms and ammunition found in the raid as of Thursday afternoon, the dzBB report said.

Police have been intensifying their efforts against illegal firearms as the campaign period for the May 13 elections is in the homestretch. — BM, GMA News

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Dreams Come True Band

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Worldpress.org
January 3, 2012

Dreams Come True performing at the Highline Ballroom in New York on Oct. 9 & 10, 2011. Miwa Yoshida (center), Masato Nakamura (far right).

2011 was another banner year for the Japanese superstars Miwa Yoshida and Masato Nakamura, and their Dreams Come True band. The band toured extensively in Japan this past summer, playing before over 400,000 fans at more than ten live concerts, while sales of the band’s records continue at a brisk pace. Dreams Come True has sold more than 55 million records worldwide since its inception in 1989.  The band continues its reign as one of the most acclaimed Japanese music groups of all time.

This past fall, for the first time in almost a decade, the band toured the United States, playing five concerts at four venues on the east and west coasts. The venues were sold out months in advance of the scheduled performances. Fans packed each concert hall, and audiences gave enthusiatic support to the band during each performance. At the Highline Ballroom in New York, crowds waited outside the venue to get in for up to two hours, and many fans waited after the concert in the hopes of personally meeting Yoshida and Nakamura. 

Reviewers of the U.S. tour lauded the band’s performances. One critic of the first of two shows at New York City’s Highline Ballroom noted that Yoshida was “radiantly beautiful” and “full of aerobic energy” and that her “voice was flawless in pitch, dynamics and emotional expressiveness.” The reviewer also remarked on Nakamura’s “keen sense of harmonic arrangement” and said that Nakamura’s “smooth handling and control of the six-string put him in the leading ranks of rock bass guitarists.”

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Clearly, all these years later, Yoshida, Nakamura and their Dreams Come True band persist with their “golden voice.”  They continue to delight their listeners and to produce music which is appreciated across Japan and around the world.

With their enduring success and popularity, one might consider whether Dreams Come True might be able to achieve a crossover into the American music scene. Unlike some Latin international stars such as Gloria Estafan, Marc Anthony and Shakira, Japanese music stars have never been able to break into the American market in a significant way. No doubt, the presence of many Americans of Hispanic heritage has contributed to the ability of certain Latin music stars to acquire a presence in the American music market. Unfortunately, Japanese language singers do not enjoy the same advantage.

There is little question as to the superstar status of Yoshida, Nakamura and the DCT band. The band’s 1992 record, “The Swinging Star,” was the first Japanese album to sell more than three million copies. In 1996, Yoshida was featured on the cover of Time Magazine Asia and was described as one of the world’s leading “divas of pop.” The band has continued to produce hit after hit and to give sold out concert tours. The band remains one of the all time leading creators and sellers of music in Japan.  This year again, the band played before large crowds in Japan, with often up to 50,000 or more in attendance at the band’s concerts.

So the question arises: Given their enormous long term popularity, can the DCT band yet become the first Japanese music group to attain significant recognition in the United States?  

Actually, Dreams Come True has been there before. More than a decade ago, the band made a limited effort to break into the American music market. In 1993, the band recorded the acclaimed “Winter Song,” the opening theme song for the film “Sleepless in Seattle.” The following year, the group performed the song “Eternity” for the animated film “The Swan Princess.” In 1998, the band released its first English album, “Sing or Die -Worldwide Version-.”  The band later followed with two more albums sung in English. While these efforts provided a greater degree of recognition in the United States, the band did not persist in its efforts to achieve a breakthrough in the United States.

During the last Dreams Come True tour in the U.S. in 2002, the band performed almost entirely in English. In 2011, the band performed almost exclusively in Japanese.  The 2011 tour generated great enthusiasm among the strong following which Dreams Come True has in the United States Japanese community. 

The remarkable long term tenure and celebrity status of Yoshida, Nakamura and the Dreams Come True band, suggests that a significant appeal to the American music public might yet be well received.  The performances by the group in their all too short 2011 tour provides a reminder of the band’s superlative performance ability and strong audience appeal.

While the U.S. has its share of domestic music stars, the American public has been willing to accept and appreciate foreign-based artists as well. Certainly, if any band in Japan can achieve the elusive “crossover” to the American market, the longstanding, highly prominent and popular artists Miwa Yoshida and Masato Nakamura can make that dream come true. 

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China: New Leaders, Old Policy

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Spike Nowak
November 2, 2012

Headquarters of the Chinese Communist Party. (Photo: Patrick Wang, Shutterstock)

On Nov. 8, 270 delegates of the Chinese Communist Party will gather in Beijing for the 18th Party Congress, where the next generation of China’s leaders will take office. The whole process will be concealed from domestic and international observers, and in all likelihood the most difficult decisions will have been made behind closed doors months earlier. In fact, the incoming president, Xi Jinping, and premier, Li Keqiang, were probably chosen years ago.

This opaque process and the heavily censored personal histories of the new leaders have left China watchers and other governments wondering what foreign policies China’s next generation of leaders will pursue. They should look for answers in China’s past practice.

China adopted a more pragmatic foreign policy after beginning its reform and opening policies in 1978. No longer would ideology play the determining role; instead, multilateral relations would be driven by recognition of the complexity of the international system, and would seek to create a stable environment for China to develop its domestic economy.

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For China’s leaders, building the domestic economy and ensuring an international environment favorable to this goal are essential elements in guaranteeing the Party’s primary objective—regime survival. Chinese leadership decisions on foreign policy since 1978 must be viewed from this perspective.

The next generation of Chinese leaders will continue to be more concerned with domestic stability and economic development than with foreign policy. The importance that they do place on foreign policy will mainly be a reflection of the extent to which those policies promote domestic priorities.

China’s current five-year economic plan heavily emphasizes transforming its export-oriented economy into an economy led by domestic consumption with a high degree of indigenous innovation. This shift will require the concerted efforts of China’s leaders and will keep them focused on domestic matters in the near and medium term.

Another force in Chinese politics that will keep Beijing’s foreign policy on its intended trajectory is the outgoing fourth generation of leaders. When Chinese leaders retire, their political influence persists. After Xi and Li take office, they will not fully be in control of Chinese domestic and foreign policy. Instead, we can expect China’s former leaders to use their influence to make sure the policies they followed are not undone, just as Deng Xiaoping and Jiang Zemin did when they left office. Chinese leaders typically are unable to fully implement their own policy goals until years after they take office.

Due to this stabilizing historical momentum and a strong focus on the domestic economy, the probability of major shifts in Chinese foreign policy is low, at least until Xi’s first term ends in 2017.

For India this means a certain degree of ongoing tension in strategic relations with China, though economic linkages will continue to increase. At a tactical level both countries will continue to press for advantageous positions along the line of actual control on the Sino-Indian border, but at a strategic level Beijing will cooperate with Delhi to ensure peace in Asia. China’s new leaders will keep on emphasizing the strengthening of economic relations with India because Beijing’s foreign policy will continue to be an extension of what best serves its domestic policy priorities—economic development.

The main catalyst for a change in Sino-U.S. relations will not come from Beijing; it will stem from Washington’s “pivot” towards Asia. Although Beijing has been focused on creating stable international relations, the fact remains that China is a rising power that wants its security concerns to be respected by other major international players. If the United States is seen as interfering in China’s security affairs, especially in the South China Sea, Washington should expect a response that reflects China’s growing economic and military might and regional influence. Until then, it is important to remember that Beijing, and not the military, is directing policy, and Beijing is likely to pursue the existing policy of cautious restraint.

Even if China’s foreign policy is unlikely to change much in the first few years after Xi, Li and the other fifth-generation leaders take office, to the extent that changes might occur, what should be expected?

Political scandals and difficulties have plagued the Chinese leadership this year. Bo Xilai, a Politburo member and party secretary of Chongqing, was thrown out of the Communist Party after his wife was found guilty of murdering a British businessman; the chief aide of Hu Jintao, Ling Jihua, was recently demoted after the failed cover-up of a fatal Ferrari crash involving his son and two female passengers; and at the Party’s summer retreat in Beidaihe in August, members were unable to come to a consensus on many important appointments for the next generation of leaders, indicating strong divisions within the Party.

Behind these difficulties are the machinations of Beijing’s two political factions, the Communist Youth League, associated with Hu Jintao, and the Shanghai Clique, or Princelings, associated with Hu’s predecessor, Jiang Zemin, and soon-to-be General Secretary of the Communist Party Xi Jinping. A less unified Party leadership could translate into a more fragmented voice in Chinese foreign policy, with different ministries and interest groups pursuing different objectives, leading to a less predictable and possibly more volatile foreign policy.

The other potential cause for a change in Chinese foreign policy is escalating Chinese nationalism. In early September, nationalist protests over the Diaoyu Islands—called the Senkaku Islands in Japan—erupted across China, causing Japanese-owned businesses to close in major cities. A Chinese man was nearly beaten to death for driving a Japanese car in the city of Xi’an.

Displays of Chinese nationalism are not new, but a divided leadership may not be able to control the increasingly frequent nationalist protests, and might find it hard to resist nationalist demands for a tougher stance on foreign policy issues, especially issues of territorial integrity.

Adding fuel to the flames of this nationalism are the Internet and new social media outlets that Beijing can no longer fully control. Many of China’s netizens are criticizing authoritarian domestic policies as well as calling for Beijing to take a harder and more militaristic line on territorial disputes with countries like Japan and Vietnam. As a worst-case scenario this would translate into a Beijing less willing to negotiate with its neighbors over territorial disputes and more willing to flex its military might.

If China’s current five-year economic plan ending in 2015 is successful, its leaders may have the confidence and ability to enact major foreign policy changes. But until that happens, China’s new leaders are likely to continue a policy of non-confrontational economic development.

This article was originally published by Gateway House: Indian Council on Global Relations in Mumbai: http://www.gatewayhouse.in/. Spike Nowak is a research intern at Gateway House.

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Phivolcs: Magnitude-5.5 quake hits Quezon province; aftershocks possible

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A magnitude-5.5 quake jolted Quezon province shortly after noon Wednesday, with state seismologists warning of possible aftershocks.

The Philippine Institute of Volcanology and Seismology said the quake was recorded at 1:38 p.m., and was tectonic in origin.

In its initial bulletin, Phivolcs said the quake’s epicenter was traced to 76 km northeast of Jomalig town in Quezon.

Phivolcs did not initially cite specific areas where the quake was felt, however.

It also said that while no damage was expected, aftershocks were possible.

The United States Geological Survey, meanwhile, measured the quake at magnitude 5.3.

It estimated the epicenter at:

140 km northwest of Pandan, Catanduanes
147 km north of Naga
151 km northeast of San Pedro, Laguna
251 km east of Manila
— LBG, GMA News

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