It is difficult to say just what made Hong Kong, of all places, fall absolutely in love with the Dutch artist Florentijn Hofman’s giant yellow rubber ducky, which was towed into Victoria Harbor three weeks ago. But fallen in love it has.

Indeed there was a palpable sense of loss when the 16.5 meter creation went flat a week ago, a victim not of disaster but routine maintenance. The deflated duck left children crying and even a few adults pushing back tears. It was a sad time around the harbor.

Ducky's back. Pic: AP.

But there was relief on Tuesday. Hundreds of people cheered when the duck returned to its place of honor on the Tsim Sha Tsui waterfront. The walkway off the Star Ferry was so crowded with ducky devotees that it was difficult to walk in the area. The duck, strange as it seems, somehow makes the city a better place.

The duck arrived in Hong Kong on May 2, following visits to Osaka, Sydney, Sao Paolo and other parts of the world. And even after three weeks as an adopted fowl of Hong Kong, it is still almost impossible to get close to it because of the thousands of people who line the dock, gazing at a big bobbing duck that after all does nothing more than its regular-size counterpart does in a child’s bathtub. At 9 am Thursday, a businessman who got off the Star Ferry to walk to work in a nearby office building said he was stunned by the number of people who were just standing there, looking at the duck.

“What are they doing? Are they a bunch of hillbillies?” he asked, apparently too busy to get the whole duckgeist.

Despite one suit’s sour mood, Hofman appears to have been right to have created the duck. He said he came up with the inflatable creature “to amplify the healing power of the classic bath buddy. Its playful presence revives the happiness of life’s simple pleasures, beyond the usual barriers of language and culture.” It seems to work. A duck craze has taken over, the latest of many periodic fads to inundate Hong Kong –but it is different. It is gratuitously nice, and fun, for no discernible reason, a near miracle in this city.

Little yellow ducks have sold out across the city. Restaurants (“Have a quack bite”) have made up duck recipes. Ducky cookies are selling at Al Molo and BLT Steak in Harbor City. Strawberry Forever is selling ducky-shaped ice cream. People are wearing yellow duck accessories. Thousands of miles away, an Australian shop that sells baby accessories online has reported a Hong Kong-fueled boom in rubber duck orders, with people buying them by the dozens.

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Indonesia is indicating increased concern for its territorial integrity and international image in the wake of public pressure over deteriorating situations for minorities in the country.

Internal calls for West Papuan independence are making headlines outside Indonesia, spurring transnational human rights groups and NGOs to pressure Indonesia and encouraging the international community to take notice. Religious and ethnic intolerance are also producing conflicts that refuse to go away, resulting in rights violations that undermine Indonesia’s economic and democratic successes.

Papuans display "Morning Star" separatist flags during a protest commemorating the 50th year since Indonesia took over West Papua from Dutch colonial rule in 1963, in Yogyakarta, Indonesia earlier this month. Pic: AP.

The country has been forced to defend itself against domestic opponents and transnational rights networks over both its sovereignty and its human rights record. These networks are increasingly bypassing dead-end domestic routes and searching for international allies to create outside pressure, as illustrated by the establishment of a “Free West Papua Campaign” office in the UK.

Rather than making concessions or instrumental adaptions to such pressures, Indonesia has refused to render its practices subject to international jurisdiction, denying criticisms, even calling a damning Human Rights Watch report “naive”.

Yet on the issue of territorial integrity, Indonesia is considerably more forthright in reinstating its sovereign position and in asking other states to reinforce theirs. The official response to the opening of the “Free West Papua Campaign” office in the UK, was to demand answers from the British ambassador, who restated the UK’s commitment to respecting Indonesia’s territorial sovereignty.

During the ensuing diplomatic commotion, only one Indonesian lawmaker, Golkar Deputy Speaker Hajriyanto Thohari, publicly stated the underlying distrust around international respect for Indonesia’s sovereignty.

“We often hear that officially, international leaders, including from the big Western governments, say they’re supportive, that Papua is a part of Indonesia,” he said as quoted in the Jakarta Globe.

“But look at the case of the exit of East Timor from Indonesia in the old days. How much the Western nations said they supported our sovereignty. But along the way, due to the interference of foreign nations, the province was lost,” Hajriyanto said. “The West is always like that, you can’t trust them completely.”

Meanwhile the unofficial response based on these fears is a strategic operation to strengthen regional solidarities with a focus on mutual respect for and protection of territorial integrity. Via the proposal of an Asian treaty that would ban the use of force in settling disputes in South East Asia, Indonesia’s current foreign policy preoccupations stipulate an acknowledgement of its sovereign boundaries.

Last Thursday during his visit to Washington, Foreign Minister Marty Natalegawa proposed an “Indo-Pacific-Wide Treaty of Friendship and Cooperation“. He said nations should not “attempt to create new realities on the ground or at sea” and that states should be upfront about frictions in the Asia-Pacific region.

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Never before have Malaysians ventured into such unchartered waters. The outcome of the May 5 general elections has revealed just how split and intensely divided the electorate in the country currently is, and it has set in motion a political and social scenario that is tantamount to having to confront new realities in this nation of some 27 million people.

The fact that the two main political coalitions Barisan Nasional (BN) and Pakatan Rakyat (PR) – spearheaded by Najib Abdul Razak for the former and Anwar Ibrahim for the latter – were tangled in an intense campaign leading up to the elections was emblematic of the fact that Malaysians found themselves divided between two distinctly divergent paths. Recognizing the lack of widespread enthusiasm for the several BN aligned parties, campaign strategists for BN made a distinct choice during the campaign to play up Najib’s relatively favorable public rating as a way to galvanize support. By contrast, Anwar’s popularity and his dynamic public presence set the stage for the campaign to be one about a popularity contest between Najib and Anwar.

Malaysian opposition leader Anwar Ibrahim speaks during a rally at a stadium in Petaling Jaya, near Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, Wednesday, May 8. Pic: AP.

Yet, it was apparent from early on in the buildup to the elections, and since then, that the Malaysian divide is much more than one about two prominent political figures, it is indeed substantive and deep. The fact that Najib had to stem the political bleeding for the ruling coalition that first became most transparent after the 2008 general elections seemed obvious enough. The loss of their two-thirds control of parliament and several key states including Selangor, Penang and Kedah in 2008 was a significant enough blow to BN’s seemingly invincible political machinery. Indeed, one of the main goals of BN this time around was not just to reassert their domination in parliament, but also to recapture the aforementioned state governments from the PR coalitions.

Although BN managed to wrest Kedah from PR’s control, the much coveted states of Selangor and Penang once again remained out of the former’s grasp. Indeed, as is well-known by now, aside from suffering greater losses in these two significant states, Najib’s coalition ceded more ground to the opposition since 2008 as its majority in parliament dropped from 140 to 133 seats while it also lost the popular vote (52 to 48 percent). Yet, having garnered enough seats in a gerrymandered, first-past-the post electoral system, BN has managed to continue its historic streak of uninterrupted control of the federal government.

Most of the postmortems of this highly contentious and charged election have revealed some consistent findings. Of all the kernels of facts about the elections, we know that along with rural voters, a higher proportion of females also leaned heavily towards BN. On the other hand, the younger voters (particularly in those in their 20s and early 30s), for a significant number of whom this would have been their first foray into the electoral rolls, and non-rural voters were more enthusiastic and energized about the opposition.

The significance of this mobilization of younger and more agitated voters is being played out in so-called ‘Black 505′ rallies in various parts of the country in the days since the elections. Notwithstanding the fact that these rallies are far from spontaneous and have come to represent PR’s way of keeping the spotlight on their claims that BN’s parliamentary wins are attributable to gross electoral fraud, the response of PR’s supporters in coming out to these rallies is a telling barometer of the depth and intensity of the political divide.

Thus far, relatively large rallies – in the tens of thousands – not only in PR strongholds such as in Kuala Lumpur and Penang, but also in BN controlled states such as Johor and Negeri Sembilan – suggest that the opposition remains focused and agitated about making sure the issue of electoral fraud does not become a mere footnote.

While these rallies seem unlikely to result in any kind of process that might lead to a reconsideration of the validity of the results in various constituencies as singled out by PR for suspicious voting patterns and tainted ballots, let alone a reversal of the overall outcome as it currently stands, the rallies continue to symbolically undermine the BN government’s legitimacy. Just as critically, they reinforce the fact that the line demarcating the political divide between the two sides of the political divide has never been more tangible and profound.

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As the smoke clears after the Malaysian election battle it has become clear that under the current electoral system defeat of the ruling Barisan Nasional (BN) was never quite on the cards, even without the electoral roll and election day cheating and vote buying claimed by the opposition.

Indeed all other factors being equal it would probably take another 4 percent swing against the BN for the opposition Pakatan Rakyat (PR) coalition to win the majority of seats.

Malaysia opposition leader Anwar Ibrahim, left, and his wife Wan Azizah speak during a press conference after the Malaysian election earlier this month. Pic: AP.

As it was this was a remarkable victory for the PR which won 51.7 percent of the popular vote and 53 percent in under-represented peninsula Malaysia. Yet it took only 89 seats compared to the BN’s 133 seats. Those numbers tell the tale of just how rigged the system has become.

Each BN seat cost an average of 39,400 votes while each PR one cost 63,200. Those figures show the success of years of outrageous BN gerrymandering which has made nonsense of democratic, one-man one-vote principles. The extent of this has gone almost unnoticed by the foreign media – and foreign government reaction, treating the result as though it were the outcome of a relatively normal democratic process. Gerrymandering on Malaysia’s epic scale is just as undemocratic as the ballot-counting frauds which President Ferdinand Marcos used to turn defeat into claimed victory during his years as president of the Philippines.

Given the BN’s control of most media and the machinery of government, the result was a remarkable victory for the PR. So although there is much disappointment and some youthful anger among the ranks of the PR that is because expectations of what could be achieved were naturally over-optimistic. Assuming the PR holds together till the next general elections it will probably need to begin to reverse the gerrymander – or break the Barisan – if it is to break UMNO’s stranglehold on power.

More immediately the opposition and its component, Anwar Ibrahim’s Parti Keadilan Rakyat in particular, is focused on the cheating alleged to have taken place in a significant number of constituencies whether through giving ballots to non-nationals, voting more than once, manipulating the electoral roll or simply offering cash to those who prove they voted for the BN. The PKR says that as 27 seats were won by the BN with a majority of less than 5 percent of the vote, cheating could have made a critical difference. Certainly in some of the more closely fought contests, the arithmetic somehow seemed to favor the BN. Thus it was declared the winner in no less than 11 of the 15 seats where the margin was less than 1,000 votes and in 25 of the 35 seats where the margin was under 2,000 votes. This may or not have been chance.

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The voters Monday delivered Philippine President Benigno S. Aquino III a resounding mandate along with nine of the 12 Senate seats his slate of candidates were contesting. In the process, voters ignored a last-ditch campaign by the Catholic Church to defeat candidates who had voted for the Reproductive Health Act passed last December.

Philippines President Benigno Aquino III. Pic: AP.

Only about 70 percent of votes had been counted by Wednesday evening. However, given the trend the vote against the church was historic, demonstrating both the waning power of the Catholic Bishops Conference of the Philippines, which had kept the birth control bill bottled up for 14 years until it was signed into law last December, and the rising clout of the president, Aquino finished the first three years of his term with a 72 percent approval rating, the highest in the country’s history at this juncture. The church had vowed to defeat by name candidates who voted for the reproductive health measure.

Despite the fact that 86 percent of Filipinos call themselves Catholics, 75 percent prior to Monday’s vote approved the reproductive health act’s passage. Now it remains to be seen if the government will try to push through a law liberalizing divorce. The Philippines is the only country in the world that does not allow divorce, although laws are widely flouted and expensive, time-consuming church annulments are available.

(READ MORE: Philippines elections: An empire crumbles in General Santos)

Archbishop Ramon Arguelles, who had publicly endorsed senatorial bets against Aquino’s slate, conceded defeat Tuesday, saying in a text message to the Philippine Daily Inquirer that he was “resigned that the country is not yet ready for better things.”

Besides 12 of the 24 Senate seats, all 229 seats in the House of Representatives and 18,000 gubernatorial, mayoral and other seats on the country’s 2,000 inhabited islands were up for grabs.

Aquino’s Senate slate triumphed over one advocated by his vice president, Jejomar Binay, which managed to win three seats, including one by Binay’s own daughter, Nancy, a housewife who appeared to have landed on the list purely by the strength of the Binay name. Binay, the former Makati mayor, is expected to be a front-running candidate for the presidency when Aquino finishes in 2016 and is expected to take on Aquino’s close ally, Manual Roxas II, whom he defeated for the vice presidency in the 2010 race.

Binay did have better luck with the Manila mayoral race, where Joseph “Erap” Estrada, in a resuscitation of sorts, triumphed over the incumbent Alfredo “Dirty Harry” Lim, Aquino’s candidate. Estrada was driven from the presidency in 2001 by popular protest over corruption charges but recovered to finish second to Aquino in the 2010 presidential sweepstakes.

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Muhammad Chatib Basri, the current head of Indonesia’s investment promotion agency and an ally of former finance minister Sri Mulyani Indrawati, is expected to take over the job she was pushed out of to go to the World Bank in 2010, Coordinating Minister for the Economy Hatta Rajasa said Monday.

If Chatib is appointed, it would be welcomed by the international investing community, which has been beset by rising economic nationalism in recent years.

Muhammad Chatib Basri. Pic: YouTube.com.

One reason Chatib is generally well liked by both local and foreign businessmen is that he is relatively blunt and realistic about the challenges the economy faces. “I say openly to investors that you’re going to see problems in Indonesia,” he told the American Chamber of Commerce in Indonesia during a recent interview. “I don’t deny the problems, they are legitimate and real.”

Despite a long run of good economic news in recent years, the prospects for significant structural reform in the face of relentless political pressures have not recovered since Sri Mulyani, a free trade disciple and tough reformer, was basically driven from her position under pressure largely orchestrated by allies of tycoon Aburizal Bakrie, whose mining empire was a target of her tax reform attempts.

Since her departure, the drumbeat of economic nationalism also has been steadily rising.

Sri Mulyani was replaced by Agus Martowardojo, the chief executive officer of Bank Mandiri, who was recently named governor of Bank Indonesia, the country’s central bank.

Agus, also a tough-minded reformer with few political ties to the administration, was abruptly removed in circumstances that have yet to be fully explained. His departure, with just a year and a half to go in President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono’s second and last term, puzzled and worried some investors at a time when regulatory issues have been erratic in a number of sectors.

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Probably the most effective way to revolutionize Asian agriculture is to send more people to the cities. There is precedent in what happened in the European Union in the 1960s, although it didn’t come easily.

In 1968, Sicco Manshold, the EU agriculture minister, sent a memorandum to the Council of Ministers of the European Community that would kick off a storm in the agriculture sector.

A Thai farmer cuts grass at her rice field in Fang district, Chiang Mai province, northern Thailand. Pic: AP.

Mansholt’s plan was called the “Agricultural 1980″ program but became more popularly eponymously known as the “Mansholt Plan.” It noted that, despite costly policies of price and market support — that would lead to unsustainable production of surpluses and despite increases in production, the standard of living of farmers was still way behind that of other sectors of society.

At that time, the average European farm size was 11 hectares and two-thirds of the farms were less than 10 ha in size, though it was noted that “with modern techniques, one man can cultivate 30 to 40 hectares of crop land.” Labor had steadily been migrating out of agriculture and “half of the persons who run a farm are more than 57 years of age,” Mansholt wrote.

Even gender issues were reported and the plight of women recognized: “It must be evident how difficult life is for a woman on such a farm. Elsewhere, every effort has been made…to liberate women from the more onerous and unpleasant forms of work…yet the farmer’s wife finds more and more that she has to do a man’s full-time job!”

There was a lot of concern whether young people would still be willing to keep farming. In response to these challenges, Mansholt suggested that production methods should be reformed and modernized and that small farms should be increased in size. That latter part was the cornerstone of his plan: “The new structure envisaged rests, essentially, on enterprises of adequate size.”

Continue reading at Asia Sentinel.

The eight-storey building that collapsed on April 24 in Bangladesh, killing at least 930, housed five garment factories that employed at least 3,000 workers and placed weight on the floors almost six times greater than the building was intended to bear, according to a still unpublished early damage assessment by the Asian Disaster Preparedness Center.

The study, conducted on the day of the collapse, revealed how a building intended for retail merchants was being used for industrial purposes. Support columns were erected haphazardly. Four huge electrical generators were on the third and fourth floors, possibly contributing to the vibrations that brought the building down. Building materials and methods were below par.

Pic: AP.

Authorities forced 18 factories to shut down to comply with safety standards although six somehow got up and running again. The Office of the US Trade Representative, Department of State, and Department of Labor, meanwhile, convened a conference call with 70 retailers and manufacturers that do business in Bangladesh to discuss coordinating efforts to improve working conditions. None of the companies said they planned to scale production.

“This is a wake-up call for us because a lot of construction is going on in Dhaka and other cities, so we are definitely trying to find out the solution,” said Abdus Salam, a senior research engineer in the government’s Housing and Building Research Institute.

Experts say the building was but one example of a broken system for authorizing, carrying out and monitoring construction. Tens of thousands more buildings – and millions of people inside them – could face the same fate, said Anisur Rahman, an urban planner with ADPC’s office in Bangladesh.

Continue reading at Asia Sentinel.

On May 13, Filipino voters will go to the polls to select 12 Senators and 229 members of the House of Representatives as well as hundreds of provincial governors, mayors and a host of other positions.

The election, a midterm test halfway through the six-year presidential term of Benigno S. Aquino, is expected to be pivotal for several reasons. The most important is that it is a major test of the power of the Catholic Church against the popularity of Aquino over the historic Reproductive Health Act signed into law in January after being stalled for 14 years by church opposition.

Philippines President Benigno Aquino III. Pic: AP.

For decades, no politicians have challenged the church for fear of offending the Catholic Bishops Conference of the Philippines and losing their support. Their demise as a perceived center of political power, should it come, could have major consequences, finally revealing that few are listening to them.

Conversely, if the church holds sway and drives lawmakers from office, other legislation proposed by Aquino, including land reform and the regulation of the mining industry, which are also subject to church suspicion, could be affected negatively.

“We find it deplorable that the Catholic Church would seek to punish political leaders who supported the RH bill,” said Carlos Conde, researcher for Human Rights Watch in Manila. “This objective does not advance politics in this country. On contrary, it sets our democracy back, when an entity as influential as the church would be so vindictive against those who take contrary positions that are proven to benefit the poor.

“It should be clear now that reproductive health is crucial to lift the Philippines out of poverty and, more importantly, empower families to make informed decisions about their health and welfare. The church’s actions are a throwback to the dark ages and a threat to democracy and good governance.”

The church before has delivered pastoral letters advising parishioners to vote for broad general principles supported by the Conference of Bishops. But this time the bishops have issued guidelines advising them to take on candidates who supported the reproductive rights bill, which allows for teaching sex education to children from grade five through high school, making contraceptives readily available, providing mobile health units for all constituencies to provide birth control information, and other provisions.

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It is extremely difficult to find any real winners in the results which dripped out from Malaysia’s Electoral Commission late Sunday night and early Monday morning – although, somewhat surprisingly, one could be Prime Minister Najib Tun Razak, who ran ahead of his party and who managed to preserve majorities in Negeri Sembilan, Terengganu and Pahang against an opposition onslaught, and to win back Kedah through the clever tactic of sending Mukhriz Mahathir, the son of the long-serving Prime Minister into the fray as a candidate for the chief ministership.

Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak faces stiff challenges ahead. Pic: AP.

The United Malays National Organization (UMNO), the biggest ethnic* party in the Barisan, needs reform and there is no one in sight who can drive it. Failing to reform will lead UMNO to inevitable extinction within two general elections. The biggest problem is that the party may not want to reform itself. It is evident that Najib over the last few years hasn’t been able to firmly steer UMNO into the directions he wanted to go, and his agenda has been hijacked by the likes of the Malay nationalist NGO Perkasa, doing great damage. For these reasons perhaps he should not take total blame.

(READ MORE: Anwar and Bersih refuse to recognise BN poll victory)

In this light, Najib could be saved from a sudden political death, as there is really nobody within close range to the current leadership who has the necessary charisma, innovation and goodwill to make the necessary reforms. Going against all pundits, Najib may survive. Toppling him now for his deputy, Muhyiddin Yassin, could lead to very costly rifts in UMNO, which the party may not be able to afford. Any change in the current leadership would most probably signal that UMNO will steer to the conservative right, counterintuitive to what the electorate might be saying. It was UMNO moderates such as Khairy Jamaluddin and Shahrir Samad who profited in the election.

Federally, the opposition gained a net seven seats, with the new Parliament comprising 133 Barisan Nasional to 89 Pakatan Rakyat seats. However at the same time Pakatan lost ground, losing federal seats in the northern state of Kedah, as well as the state government.

Notably Parti Islam se-Malaysia Vice President Mohamad Sabu, considered to be a modernizer for PAS, lost the Pendatang parliamentary seat in Kedah. Pakatan Rakyat also failed to make any gains in neighboring Perlis, even though it believed it had a chance of doing so. The opposition coalition narrowly failed to regain the Perak state government which it lost through defections in 2009, with the Barisan winning 31 to Pakatan 28 seats. In addition the opposition just failed to win the state government in Terengganu where many commentators believed that Pakatan would have to win if it had any chance of winning the Federal government. Pakatan Rakyat also failed to wrest Negri Sembilan from the BN, with PAS losing all of the 10 seats it contested.

(READ MORE: US recognizes Malaysia vote despite concerns)

The Barisan had a number of casualties. DAP veteran Lim Kit Siang trounced Johor Chief Minister Abdul Ghani Othman in Johor, and the Melaka Chief Minister Mohd Ali Rustam, trying to move to the federal parliament was defeated. Federal Territories Minister Raja Nong Chik Zainal Abidin failed in his bid to win the urban seat of Lembah Pantai in Kuala Lumpur from the PKR incumbent Nurual Izzah Anwar. A cabinet minister in Sabah Bernard Dompok, and VK Liew in Sandakan both lost. Yong Koon Seng in Sarawak also lost his seat of Stampin. This has given Pakatan Rakyata a new front in East Malaysia where they now hold three parliamentary seats and 11 state seats in Sabah, and picked up six parliamentary seats in Sarawak.

The Malaysian Chinese Association (MCA) went from 15 seats to 6 federally, and to only 10 state seats, although they contested 37 parliamentary and 90 state seats. Gerakan now only has one seat in the parliament. The Malaysian Indian Congress (MIC) won only four out the nine seats it contested. The Barisan is effectively a bumiputera government with little Chinese or Indian representation.

The two ultra Malay Perkasa candidates, Ibrahim Ali in Pasir Mas Kelantan and Zulkifli Noordin in Shah Alam, Selangor both lost to Pakatan Rakyat candidates, indicating that the electorate is not in favor of extreme politics.

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Ever since the landmark April 2012 United Nations session convened by Bhutan on “Happiness and Well-being: Defining a New Economic Paradigm” attracted 600 participants including presidents, heads of state, economists, Nobel laureates, scholars, NGOs and spiritual leaders to consider Gross National Happiness (GNH) as a holistic extension to Gross National Product (GNP) indicators, Western economists and academics have lost no time clambering aboard the new bandwagon of hope.

Bhutan. The happiest country in the world? Pic: AP.

Bhutan has captured the world’s imagination as the last surviving Shangri-La on planet Earth. A cottage industry of happiness conferences is sprouting from Canada to the US and from Denmark to Germany. Bhutan, which few can place on a map, has overnight become the Mecca for happiness-economics researchers and frayed academics spinning a new career.

On the day the high-level UN meeting was being addressed by the Prime Minister Jigme Thinley, the Bhutan Observer wryly noted: “The Western media, as usual, has started calling Bhutan ‘the happiest country in the world’. As a nation, to be described in such wholesome light is always elevating…but on deeper thought it makes us cringe. For all the positive developments, we are a country, like any other, with our own share of problems.”

It all started with the Fourth Druk Gyalpo (Dragon King)
Jigme Singye Wangchuk was 17 when his father died abroad in 1972. He was formally crowned the Fourth King of Bhutan at 19?in 1974. The young heir traversed the country on horseback, talking to and experiencing life among the farmers, village headmen and civil servants scattered through Bhutan’s harsh, mountainous terrain. He took stock of the kingdom first hand while sharing his ideas for inclusive growth and well-being of society.

The King’s message was that the overall happiness of all the people was more important than profligate production and consumption which was the standard GDP track of economic progress. That telling insight evolved three decades later into Bhutan’s elaborate GNH index of development formally implemented in 2005. He defied entrenched economic orthodoxy for the good of Bhutan as he saw it.

GNH coined off-the-cuff
Gross national happiness got its name by chance in 1979 at Bombay airport, on the King’s transit from a Non-Aligned Meeting in Havana. Responding to a reporter who asked about Bhutan’s gross national product, the King said “We do not believe in gross national product because gross national happiness is more important.”

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If the Barisan Nasional coalition loses the national elections on Sunday and has to relinquish its 57-year stranglehold on Malaysian politics, the seeds of the defeat were sown well before the last polls in 2008, when a rag-tag opposition of three disparate parties with no real affinity for each other did better than anybody thought they would.

The opposition has grown stronger since then and at stake this time around is the future of Malaysia. The country could – could – be moving from being a virtual one-party state in which the ruling elite controls government, the media and business to finally joining the ranks of Asia’s more open democracies. If it happens, the United Malays National Organization, the biggest ethnic party in the coalition, has only itself to blame.

Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak on the campaign trail in Penang on Wednesday. Pic: AP.

In 2008, UMNO’s old bulls blamed then-Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi for the debacle at the polls and drove him from power. Pushed by the increasingly splenetic former Premier Mahathir Mohamad, they installed one of their own, Najib Tun Razak, in his place. He can now be expected to extend his neck for political execution, win or lose.

The power brokers thought that Badawi had veered too far from the old ways of doing things. But the truth was that he hadn’t veered far enough. He set out to close some of the white elephant projects Mahathir had put in place and which cost the country tens of billions of dollars. He tried to implement rational and transparent contracting procedures and to appoint a relatively independent judiciary. And when he began to seriously threaten some of Mahathir’s misguided industrialization schemes, the party elite came down on Badawi and he backed away.

The general public saw what was happening and wanted reform. The opposition, made up of the ethnic Chinese Democratic Action Party, the rural-based, Islamist Parti Islam se-Malaysia and Anwar Ibrahim’s urban-based Parti Keadilan Rakyat, almost won the popular vote despite a lack of cohesiveness. They ran what candidates they could, some of whom had left UMNO not out of principle but because they were jealous at being left out of the trough. Many of them departed after the 2008 election because they found there was no golden goose to pluck.

This time around, the opposition candidates are better, the coalition more cohesive. And the Barisan didn’t learn its lesson after losing its crucial two-thirds parliamentary majority in 2008. The Cattlegate scandal, in which the family of UMNO women’s wing leader Shahrizat Abdul Jalil misused millions of ringgit from a soft loan designated to establish a cattle feeding program, is a good example. But there are others. Asia Sentinel received a long email from a Chinese businessman who wanted to establish an operation to sell pork to merchants. He figured he could do it cheaper and more efficiently than the existing suppliers. But he was frozen out because a cartel run by the Malaysian Chinese Association had its favored rent-seeking pork suppliers. There are dozens of these small cartels.

 Continue reading at Asia Sentinel

Recent incidents of anti-Muslim religious nationalism in Sri Lanka and Burma, ostensibly in defense of the Theravada Buddhist faith held by the majority, have opened fresh cultural and political wounds.

Growing violence appears in danger of spinning completely out of control in Burma, most lately in the town of Okkan on the outskirts of Yangon, where a Buddhist mob burned as many as a dozen homes and ransacked a shop shouting “Let’s destroy the property of Muslims.” Two mosques were desecrated and Qurans were torn to pieces.

Monks of Sri Lanka€'s hardline Buddhist group Bodhu Bala Sena pray during a protest rally urging boycott of consumer goods with Halal certification in Maharagama on the outskirts of Colombo, Sri Lanka earlier this year. Pic: AP.

Some of these are violent events with alleged government or Buddhist monastic (sangha) backing. Others appear spontaneous, beyond the control of state and Buddhist hierarchy. Either way, they are destructive and troubling. Buddhism is revered as a faith of healing and mercy, but like all religions, it can promote contradictory elements of triumphalism and intolerance.

Both countries are newly emerged from recent politically traumatic experiences – release from a decades-long military autocracy (Burma) and the ravages of a civil war (Lanka). Both are spectacularly ill-served by this latest outburst of jingoism in the name of a faith that in both instances appears to be manipulated to meet political ends.

(READ MORE: Photos emerge of anti-Muslim witch hunt in Burma)

Turning first to Burma, the state has a long record of relations between the majority Buddhists (90 percent) and minority religions, notably Muslims (5 percent) and Hindus (3 percent). Muslims from a variety of Middle Eastern and Central Asian ethnic backgrounds were at one time a welcome part of historical Burmese kingdoms, traders for the most part, but even serving in the infantry of the great king Mindon Min in the mid-19th century.

Others, particularly the Rohingya in Arakan State bordering on present-day Bangladesh, filtered across porous borders over decades. More controversial were thousands of Indian Muslims brought in by British colonial officials for their commercial skills and hard work.

Anti-Muslim outbreaks associated with Burmese Buddhist economic resentment occurred periodically prior to independence. But Muslim fortunes in Burma were virtually ruined by the 1962 military take-over of the state. The Rohingya in particular were held back by the 1982 Citizenship Law, which required proof of ancestry in Burma for three generations.

Continue reading at Asia Sentinel

Over the last month the media has led the world to believe that North Korea, the United States and South Korea are standing eyeball to eyeball on the brink of war.

Secretary Kerry’s comments after meeting with his Chinese opposites State Councilor Yang Jiechi, and Foreign Minister Yang Yi, and later President Xi Jinping, and Premier Li Keqiang were guarded. However, upon arrival in Tokyo Kerry reiterated his call to North Korea to denounce nuclear weapons before six party talks could be resumed. It looked like Secretary Kerry had fired the last shot in anger.

South Korean army soldiers on a military truck move during an exercise against possible attacks by North Korea in Pocheon, South Korea. Pic: AP.

Then for a few days with the Boston Marathon bombing, not a story could be found about this tense situation, as if it had just gone away. Since the Boston saga, the US Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Martin Dempsey declared that the Foal Eagle joint military exercises with South Korea will continue indefinitely. The extension of these exercises gives North Korea ‘little room to move.

Then the Chinese Chief of Staff General Fang Fenghui warned Dempsey on his visit to Beijing on April 22 that there would be another North Korean nuclear test. The media reported the movement of short range missile launchers to where the North already has Musudan medium range missiles deployed on the East Coast, where some commentators hinted of a missile firing on April 25th to commemorate the anniversary of the formation of the armed forces – which didn’t come off.

All the rhetoric and movements of hardware is part of the continuing cycle of tension the Korean Peninsula has been used to over the last 60 years. To see how any possible endgame could occur, perhaps it would be a good idea to briefly examine each party’s views and interests in this situation.

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The world has serious concerns over fiscal crises, security crises and environmental crises including climate change.

And then there are vacations. Yes, vacations – the getaways when we can put aside lofty concerns and remember what living is all about: seeing friends, hosting family reunions, discovering a new artist at a provincial festival and running barefoot on the beach with salt air stinging our cheeks.

At least that was the definition of a vacation before globalization took off.

This picture taken on October 3, 2012 shows visitors gathered on the Great Wall of China outside Beijing. Pic: STR/AFP/Getty Images

Now vacations have joined the ranks of the biggest global industrial complexes. While few noticed, travel and tourism grew into a giant business sector and the world’s largest employer – beating out health care, education and retail. At least one out of every 11 people works in the industry, according to the World Travel and Tourism Council.

Tourism contributes at least US$6.5 trillion to the world economy every year. Since the 2008 recession, its growth rate has rebounded faster than manufacturing and financial services. And if frequent-flyer miles were a currency, they would be the most valuable in the world, even with all those blackout dates.

It turns out that tourism is the poster child for how to benefit from the global marketplace, for obvious reasons. Wholesale travel and tourism depends on open borders. With political developments and technology – new long-distance airliners that cross half of the globe in a single flight and the internet revolution – countries off the beaten path in South America, Africa and the Middle East are more accessible.

A chart of the rise of international tourist trips is a thumbnail history of globalization.

The modern era of “Europe on five dollars a day” began in 1960. That year 25 million trips were taken across foreign borders. Ten years later the figure rose to 250 million, a significant increase but not earth-shattering.

Then came globalization and the opening of borders. The end of the Cold War in the early 1990s accomplished just that – opening long closed borders in Eastern Europe and Asia, a wide swath of nations behind what used to be called the Iron Curtain and the Bamboo Curtain. This newly opened territory represented nearly one third of the planet, and by 1995, when most had opened up to tourism, there were 536 million trips.

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One day a month or two ago, work suddenly and mysteriously ceased on a crucial 3.4 km throughway linking congested Central Jakarta to equally congested Kampung Melayu in East Jakarta. In a city regularly listed as being among the world’s 10 worst cities for traffic, the elevated piece of road is supposed to make things a little easier.

The roadway has been under construction since late 2010, snarling traffic and creating various road delays in the process. The end – and relief –  seemed near. But it wasn’t until a newspaper reporter saw that work had stopped that anybody in the government bothered to tell the public what was going on. The company doing the job pulled back because it was no longer being paid by the city. But like many things here, it is not all that simple.

Workers build an elevated highway in Jakarta, Indonesia, Friday, Jan. 11, 2013. Pic: AP.

Jakarta Deputy Governor Basuki Tjahaja Purnama said the city administration stopped payment with the crucial road link 90 percent complete to order a government audit. Basuki wondered why the road, which was started under the previous administration that left office in 2012, wasn’t already finished. “I just want to check to see if the project has any indication of default,” he said.

The state-owned construction company doing the work, Istaka Karya, said the city made a mess by not disbursing additional funds; the city says funding for the Rp840 billion (US$86.4 million) project was supposed to end in December and that there is no budget for the road in 2013. City officials say additional funding can’t be released without an audit.

But yet another official, Sarwo Handayani, chief of the Jakarta Development Planning Agency, told a local newspaper that there is still funding to complete the road. “It is impossible that the continuation of the project was not budgeted in the City Budget. We certainly budgeted it. But let me check again,” she said.

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For at least 50 years, the world’s salesmen have been mesmerized – largely to no avail – with the idea of 1.3 billion Chinese consumers, a market so vast it is almost unimaginable. It has also mostly been a market too tough to crack.

Today, however, as the government actively pushes for a shift away from an export-led economy, China is expected to become the world’s second-biggest consumer market, with enough purchasing power to buy nearly a seventh of the world’s total products by 2015 – two years from now, finally providing vast opportunities for both global and domestic merchants.

A couple show off their newly purchased PlayStation Vita portable game in Shibuya shopping district in Tokyo Saturday, Dec. 17, 2011. Pic:AP

These new consumers are a unique class. Hundreds of millions of them have migrated from farm to city where they are working in assembly and other industries. They are also the “young emperors,” the fruits of the country’s one-child policy, put into place in 1979 by the Communist Party in an attempt to alleviate social and economic problems by slowing the growth of its enormous population.

That means almost everybody under the age of 40—the prime consumer purchasing years – coming into their own as the leading purchasers in Chinese society. And, while a staggering number of them are rich according to the Hurun Report – 1.02 million US dollar millionaires and 63,500 “super-rich” with assets US$16 million or more, the average Chinese per capita income by purchasing power parity was estimated at US$9,100, ranking the country 122nd in the world according to the CIA World Factbook.

These young consumers break down into three groups – adolescents between the age of 10 and 19, emerging adults aged 20-29 and full adults 30-39. Each cohort, according to a new study by researchers Qiu Jing and Lin Ruiming for the Seoul-based Samsung Economic Research Institute, grew up under different circumstances and each has different priorities. Unlike emerging adults and full adults, both of which conform to international patterns and have more females than males, the post-1990s generation has far more boys than girls as amniocentesis, abortion and other control methods came into play to fulfill the Chinese ambition to have sons instead of daughters.

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Online media, already a major factor in Malaysia’s 2008 general election, has exploded this time around with newer platforms like Twitter, YouTube, Facebook and others transforming electioneering for both the opposition and the government.

Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak, right, shares a light moment with opposition leader Anwar Ibrahim. Pic: AP.

In a country where virtually all mainstream media outlets are owned by pro-government political parties, the rapid growth of social media outlets is not just a social phenomenon but also a key part of the political process.

(READ MORE: Election 2013: Testing times for Malaysia’s old media)

According to statistics, there are 2 million Twitter users in the country, compared with only 3,000 in 2008. Any large political event is amplified by millions of tweets and posts as dramatic pictures are passed around showing tens of thousands of supporters attending opposition rallies. Who cares about the front page of a newspaper? If violence threatens, as it often has, witnesses record the action, posting it immediately on Facebook, which has 13 million user accounts in Malaysia, and YouTube, where 67 percent of all online videos end up.

The online media is crucial to the opposition, which is nearly frozen out of traditional print and broadcast outlets. “Watching the Watchdog,” a study released this week by Malaysia’s Center for Independent Journalism in conjunction with the UK-based University of Nottingham, found just how biased the mainstream media can be. Drawing from data gathered the week of April 7-15, the chart below shows the ruling Barisan Nasional, or BN, getting 97.5 percent favorable or neutral coverage in the mainstream media, against less than 20 percent for the opposition Pakatan Rakyat coalition.

By contrast, news coverage on the Internet was far more even, with the volume of coverage slightly higher for the Barisan, at 49.42 percent against 47.14 percent for Pakatan Rakyat.

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As investors are far too painfully aware, Vietnam, which captured the affections of global investors when its growth reached 7.2 percent between 1990 and 2010, has begun to sink into despair.

Having lived on hubris for two decades, the Communist government is now trying to dig its way out by saying it would reform its bloated and inefficient state owned enterprise sector and invite in foreign investors. But it has tried that before and the results were minimal. Although political infighting has crippled both the president and prime minister, they can hardly be cast as reformers in any case.

A security guard cleans a door of Bac A bank in Hanoi, Vietnam. Once seen as an emerging Asian dynamo racing to catch up with its neighbors, Vietnam's economy is mired in malaise, dragged down by debt-hobbled banks, inefficient and corrupt state-owned enterprises and bouts of inflation. Pic: AP.

While other emerging Asian markets have recovered faster than the west in the wake of the global financial crisis, Vietnam’s recovery has been relatively slow and painful, with 2012 growth the lowest in 13 years at 5.0 percent, well below the once-basket case Philippines at 6.6 percent and the 6.2 percent achieved by Indonesia.

The problems for the economy are spelled out in a new, detailed report by Samsung Economic Research Institute which is available only by subscription. Beyond the SERI report, however, public discontent and protest have grown with almost-daily demonstrations of varying magnitude at Communist Party and government offices in Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City, often about farmland seizures with minimal compensation.

“The slowdown in the Vietnamese economy is not temporary, and is due to structural causes,” according to the SERI report. “Without sweeping reforms, it is unlikely that growth will resume its previous trajectory. This estimate is based mainly on predictions that the contribution from the labor force and capital formation, which drove the economic expansion in the 2000s, will decrease significantly.”

In September 2012, Moody’s downgraded Vietnam’s rating. Its stock market remains at only 40 percent of its pre-crisis value while shares in Indonesia, Thailand and the Philippines have risen to more than 160 percent of their peak.

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I caught up with a friend from China over the Easter holidays who, like many mainland tourists in Hong Kong, has a shopping list, including a pristine laptop. 

“But I want one with no parts made in China,” he insisted.

Great, I thought. I have two solutions: try the museums, where the computers of the 1980s are almost entirely made in the US. Or buy the one I am using to type this column, although more on that later.

This has relevance because the US Congress passed an appropriations bill into law in late March that restricts purchase by the government of Chinese computer equipment and technologies for fear of cyber-espionage risk.

“The provision requires the Department of Justice, Department of Commerce, NASA, and the NSF to perform a formal assessment of risk of cyber-espionage before purchasing computer systems and other IT equipment” and “the assessment must specifically analyze – with the assistance of the FBI – any “such system being produced, manufactured or assembled by one or more entities that are owned, directed or subsidized” by the People’s Republic of China,” according to online news portal The Verge.

In Washington, D.C. today, the White House was taken over by North Korean terrorists. With the help of a rogue Secret Service agent, the President and his senior advisors have been taken hostage. The terrorists’ leader, blaming the US for his parents’ death during the Korean War, intends to obtain the launch codes for America’s entire nuclear arsenal and detonate the weapons in their silos, obliterating the country.

Of course, this scenario is playing out not at the White House itself, but at the multiplex down the street from 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. Where movie villains once sported thick Russian accents or exaggerated Middle Eastern features, today’s entertainment antagonists reflect the world’s growing concern over the erratic and impenetrable “Hermit Kingdom” of Northeast Asia.

And if the plot of the movie Olympus Has Fallen seems provocative,

Xi Jinping. Pic: AP.

it’s hardly more provocative than North Korea’s actual actions of late-or more heartbreaking than the incidents of real terror witnessed this week on the streets of Boston.

In the past several months, North Korea’s young and untested new leader, Kim Jong-Un, has annulled the 1953 armistice agreement that ended the Korean War – at least the sixth time now in the past two decades that North Korea has formally rejected the armistice. North Korea appears likely to test its medium-range Musudan missiles amid competing intelligence reports that its scientists may have developed a nuclear warhead small enough to place on such a missile.

Continue reading at Asia Sentinel.

China is massively under-reporting the catch of its distant-waters fishing fleet, according to a little-noticed 2012 report to the European Parliament.

The catch was reported to the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization as averaging 368,000 tonnes of fish from distant-water fleets per year over the past decade. It was actually more than 12 times as big, at 4.6 million tonnes, according to the 102-page report, titled The Role of China in World Fisheries.

Chinese fishing boats. Pic: AP.

The study focuses on marine capture fisheries (excluding aquaculture and inland fisheries) and deals with mainland China. Hong Kong, Macau and Taiwan are excluded. It is based on a specifically assembled, large international database of reported occurrences of Chinese vessels in various parts of the world, and related information, the authors say.

It does note that China has “significantly improved its cooperation track record in recent years, particularly within the Regional Fisheries Management Organizations” although the country frequently opposes changes to regulatory rules.

“In any case, China’s fisheries agreements are characterized by lack of transparency and, quite often, controversial content.”

(READ MORE: 97 saved from Chinese ship fire off Antarctica)

The report comes at a time when marine scientists are expressing growing alarm about overfishing, which is denuding the world’s oceans. According to the FAO, 52 percent of global fish stocks are fully exploited, 20 percent are moderately exploited, 17 percent are depleted and 1 percent is recovering. That means a quarter of the world’s fish stocks are overexploited or depleted, with 52 percent fully exploited and in danger of being overexploited and collapsing.

For instance, the cod fishery off the eastern coast of North America, once the most abundant in the world, completely collapsed in 1992 and although commercial fishing has been banned, the stocks remain depleted. Some 40,000 people working in the industry lost their jobs.

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The largest electoral district in Malaysia has 144,369 registered voters, according to the latest electoral roll. The smallest has only 37,390. They are both in Selangor, meaning the state’s largest seat is four times its smallest. The Kapar district, the biggest, was won by the opposition Parti Keadilan Rakyat in the 2008 elections. The smallest, Sabak Bernam, was won by the Barisan Nasional.

Scenes from last year's Bersih rally in Kuala Lumpur. Pic: AP.

The disparity between these two districts fits with the practice of corralling the largest number of potential opposition voters into a single district – as opposed to keeping pro-government districts as small as possible to multiply the number of pro-government seats.

Critics are using such disparities as fuel to allege that the Barisan Nasional government is putting a wide range of other electoral misuses in place in the effort make sure the opposition Pakatan Rakyat doesn’t take power after May 5 elections.

Ong Kian Ming, the director of the Malaysian Electoral Roll Analysis Project and an official with the opposition Democratic Action Party, told a forum at a Kuala Lumpur suburban library Friday, reported by the website for the KL-based publication The Edge, that the government is also packing voter rolls in crucial pro-opposition districts with pro-Barisan Nasional voters. Voter numbers in Selangor, the country’s richest state, have increased by 660,000 since the 2008 elections.

The allegations by Merap, as the organization is known, and a wide variety of other sources cast doubt on whether Malaysia can really put on a fair election. Ong’s complaints are a small part of a long litany of objections by neutral and opposition observers of allegations of malapportionment, gerrymandering, falsified voter registration and intimidation of voters and political activists.

What that means is that if the opposition manages to win control of Parliament, it will have to do so by a landslide. One UMNO source confidently said that isn’t going to happen.

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Malaysia’s May 5 national elections are taking place against the backdrop of the most rancid ethnic and political atmosphere since 1969, when race riots shook the nation and led to the deaths of hundreds of ethnic Malays and Chinese.

Malaysian Prime Minister and other National Front party leaders wave national flags during the launch of the party's manifesto for the upcoming general elections in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. Pic: AP.

Campaigning, which technically is limited to the period after the election commission sets the date, has been going on for as much as two years as the ruling Barisan Nasional slugged it out with the Pakatan Rakyat. With 13 million voters registered, an estimated 25 percent of them are going to the polls for the first time, delivering what has been called a real wild card. While inflation, educational opportunity, corruption and crime are issues, they pale against the questions of power and race.

Two NGOs held a joint press conference Wednesday, asking the Australian and UK governments and the United Nations to put pressure on Malaysia to ensure that the elections will be fair and free. The government has refused to allow international observers and in February stopped Australian senator Nick Xenophon at the airport and expelled him when he tried to enter the country after producing an international fact-finding report that accused the election commission of gerrymandering districts in favor of the government.

The organizations are the international wings of Bersih, the election reform NGO, and Suaram, a human rights NGO. Supporters of the Barisan Nasional allege that the two organizations are closely aligned with opposition leader Anwar Ibrahim, which both vehemently deny, saying they are independent bodies seeking to clean up politics.

In the press conference, the two groups alleged that political violence, death threats and widespread electoral fraud are escalating, which is clearly true although seasoned political observers in Kuala Lumpur say things aren’t as bad as the two say, and that in fact those committing the ugly acts are a small minority who do not appear likely to infect the larger society.

“There’s truth to many of the things they said at the press conference,” said a longtime political observer. “But I think they are stretching it a little too much. At the end of it, Malaysians in general – across all religions and races – have shown they won’t be baited by these guys. I am hoping that the vast majority will remain this way despite the provocations. Still, there is an imminent threat that things may turn bad.”

Still, that observer said he and others with the means intend to vote early and leave the country in case of violence, staying away until they see how things shape up.

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For the first time ever, according to sources in Kuala Lumpur, the Royal Police have formulated two contingency plans for the night of Malaysia’s 13th general election, expected to be on April 27 or after.

Pic: AP.

The first, a source said, is “how to whisk the Prime Minister from the Putra World Trade Center where the Barisan Nasional is holding its election night celebration, back to Sri Perdana, the Prime Minister’s residence, safely in the event that the Barisan Nasional loses, or if there is trouble.” The second, the source said, is how to bring Opposition Leader Anwar Ibrahim from his home to the palace to be sworn in if the opposition were to win.

Implicit in both of those plans are questions whether there will be violence started by the losing side.

(READ MORE: Malaysia sets May 5 for long-awaited elections)

Both plans are unprecedented because there has never been a time in the 57-year history of the country when anybody thought the opposition might actually win. It still may not. But the fact that the plans are in place is an indication that even the police think the election is too close to call.

A call to ACP Ramli Mohamed Yoosuf, the assistant director of management for public relations at the national police headquarters at Bukit Aman in Kuala Lumpur, to ask about the plans went unanswered.

“How it will pan out is something else – whether Anwar is allowed to be sworn in if he wins, etc.” a source told Asia Sentinel. “But the fact that they have these contingency plans in place would suggest that despite the confidence shown by Najib and UMNO leaders, it is going to be a very close race.”

Other sources say that the mood inside the “war room,” or election headquarters at the United Malays National Organization is brimming with confidence. “I don’t know why,” an independent source said. “They must know something.”

Both the Barisan Nasional, or national ruling coalition, and Pakatan Rakyat, the three-party opposition coalition, have been campaigning feverishly for months. However, a number of factors are strongly in favor of the Barisan, particularly in the way the districts are laid out. The below chart of previous elections, prepared by Greg Lopez for the New Mandala website, based at the Australian National University’s College of Asia, shows that since the country became a nation, the Barisan’s popular vote has always run well below the number of seats it captured in Parliament.

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