The focus of last week’s editorials and op-eds in the mainstream media around the region has veered slightly away from the crisis in Myanmar’s Rakhine state and the fate of the Rohingya. Yet, Frontier Myanmar weekly news magazine features an interesting perspective by going to the other side of the border to Bangladesh and looking at the problem from that neighboring country. Indeed, the two countries have now agreed to form a ‘working group’ to actually sit down together and discuss prospects for peace, stability and security in their area. This is a good beginning although it will definitely take time to heal the deep wounds caused by the fundamental religious and ethnic divide between the Muslim Rohingyas and the majority Buddhist Burmans. Conflicts involving extremism and its tragic socio-political consequences are evident in the two op-eds selected in our Spotlight section and our own analysis of similar conflicts in other nations in the region, such as Indonesia and Thailand.
A common thread among other commentaries, not surprisingly, touch on basic economic issues, such as the question of why expatriate workers get far higher salaries and benefits than their local counterparts in Vietnam doing equivalent jobs. Meanwhile, improving economies with larger numbers of middle-class with spare money to invest in financial schemes and businesses, have now become more aware of fraudsters, most notably with the increased use of the internet. From media in Japan and India, we get a glimpse of people’s assessment of their leaders’ economic acumen, from the op-ed ‘Modi may be the last hope for the Indian economy to achieve greatness’ on the confidence of Indians toward Narendra Modi, their prime minister. A more questioning essay is whether Japan is ready for the possibility of ‘Koikenomics’, a reference to newly-elected Tokyo governor, Ms. Yuriko Koike, whom many see as a viable rival to Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and his ‘Abenomics’. A more basic question is whether conservative Japan would be ready for its first female head of government.
What is worrying is the glaring absence of any editorials or critiques of how surreptitiously, the hard-fought (in some countries) and treasured tenet of free speech, is slowly being eroded in many countries in the region, e.g. Indonesia (recent forcible stoppage of a public seminar reviewing the bloody and cathartic events of 1965, which eventually led to the military holding the reins of power), Thailand (continued practice of lese majeste banning the criticizing of the royal family), Cambodia (the imprisonment of an opposition party leader and the closure of a prominent daily newspaper) and Vietnam, where a netizen was arrested and imprisoned for criticizing government policies. This does not bode well for a regional community which has been frequently lauded for its smooth transition to democracy.
We should learn from the past, or we will be condemned to repeat it, goes an old but oft-used adage.
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