Re:Jacques eye on Asia (1 viewing) (1) Guest
Favoured: 0
|
|
|
TOPIC: Re:Jacques eye on Asia
|
Jacques (Moderator)
Moderator
Posts: 1769
|
|
Re:Jacques de Goldfiem eye on Asia 4 Months, 3 Weeks ago
|
Karma: 25
|
To see my last paper, go down at the bottom of this page
23 MAY 2008
Two days ago, it was the tenth anniversary of the fall on Indonesia dictator General Suharto, whose regime was nicknamed KKN for Corruption, Collusion and Nepotism.
Since this May 21, 1998, what have been the great changes in Indonesia ? This country had four presidents : Habibie, Guz Dur, Megawatri and the current one Yudoyono. Habibie was an honest man, but because he agreed a referendum in East Timor on independence, he was ousted from the country political life. Guz Dur (Abdurraman Wahid) was bizarre, Sukarnoputri did nothing against corruption. Only the current president tried to fight corruption but very timidly.
How to fight corruption in a country where the juges are the most corrupted in the world ?
Here is an article where the Jakarta Post warns on another May tragedy possible http://www.asianewsnet.net/columnist.php?aid=16964
|
|
|
|
 Logged
|
|
|
The administrator has disabled public write access.
|
Jacques (Moderator)
Moderator
Posts: 1769
|
|
Re:Jacques de Goldfiem eye on Asia 1 Month, 4 Weeks ago
|
Karma: 25
|
13 AUGUST 2008
What act of cruelty ! On August 8, during the Olympic Games opening ceremony, a wondeful small girl (right)sings a nice song, but in fact she is miming. The voice is from another small girl with a golden voice(left). But it was decided that she was not cute enough to sing directly
.
. 
|
|
|
|
Logged
|
|
|
The administrator has disabled public write access.
|
Jacques (Moderator)
Moderator
Posts: 1769
|
|
Re:Jacques de Goldfiem eye on Asia 1 Month, 3 Weeks ago
|
Karma: 25
|
|
19 August 2008
Tribute to General Musharraf
So, Finely, General Pervez Musharraf has resigned as Pakistan’s president. While news agencies show people celebrating this event, I should like to remind some points
I was moved that he quited in dignity saying :
“I did nothing wrong and the charges against me cannot be proven but I am resigning in the larger interest of the nation. I want to save Pakistan from destabilization…“For me it is always Pakistan first”, but it not the main reason
I am not in favor of military coups, but when he throwned out PM Sharif, I was happy. Pakistan was in a period where Sharif and Benazir Bhutto had been twice dismissed for corruption. He was a moderate Muslim in a country with so many extremists
For him, the big problem was how to deal the Afghan problem after September 11. He had no choice. If he had continued to support the Taliban, the USA would has shift their regional ally to India. In this case, there are clear indications that elements within the Pakistani Intelligence Services (the ISI) support the resurgent Taliban. We have not to forget that the Taliban have been raised and trained by General Babar, under Benazir Buttho rule, and that Sharif tried to get the support of Islamist at the end of his tenure
Musharraf also succeded in slowing down tensions with India on Kashmir without giving up the sacred cause for Pakistanis
He is accused of two bad things : to have removed the Chief Justice, Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry and 60 others judges and to order the storming of the Red Mosque
I agree on the first point. For the Red Mosque, in what country a government can accept that people, with weapons challenge its authority?
Sure Musharraf has failed, but now we are coming back nine years ago. Corrupted people leading the country and, for the ones who think that Musharraf was a puppet of USA, where Pakistan will look for aid if it wants to survive?
|
|
|
|
Logged
|
|
|
The administrator has disabled public write access.
|
Jacques (Moderator)
Moderator
Posts: 1769
|
|
Re:Jacques de Goldfiem eye on Asia 1 Month ago
|
Karma: 25
|
|
6 September 2008
A corrupted president for Pakistan
So, an assembly of national and provincial legislators has chosen Asif Ali Zardari, the widower of former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto, whose murder put him on the front line, as Pakistan's new president.
This man, labelled "Mr 10%", spent several years in jail on charges of corruption
In 1990, two years after his wife became Prime Minisister, he was arrested on charges of blackmail, based on allegations that he attached a bomb to a Pakistani businessman, Murtaza Bukhari, and forced him to withdraw money from his bank account. However, the charges were dropped when he was released from prison in 1993 when his wife's Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) took power and forced the charges out
In 1996, he was again arrested under the Maintenance of Public Order Ordinance. He found himself charged with the murder of Mir Murtaza Bhutto, his wife's brother.
Among the mainly cases against him (In Great Britain, Switzerland..), the most lucrative deal involved the effort by Dassault Aviation, a French military contractor. French authorities indicated in 1998 that Zardari offered exclusive rights to Dassault to replace the air force's fighter jets in exchange for a five percent commission to be paid to a corporation in Switzerland controlled by him.
My today purpose is not to enumerate all the corruption cases against Zardari, but to express my deep concern for Pakistan. During the last twenty years, the Pakistan’s presidents were the ones who dismissed the corrupted PM, Bhutto or Sharif. Who could now dismiss the president ? In any case, not the weak PM Yusuf Raza Gilani. So Zardari is in position to improve his position with no threat from “Mister 10 %” to “Mister 20 %”… Poor Pakistan!!! and good luck to the USA with their new ally
|
|
|
|
Logged
|
|
|
The administrator has disabled public write access.
|
Jacques (Moderator)
Moderator
Posts: 1769
|
|
Re:Jacques de Goldfiem eye on Asia 4 Weeks, 1 Day ago
|
Karma: 25
|
12 September 2008
To see my last paper, go down at the bottom of this page
Lucian Pye died on September 5. He has been, after Jacques Guillermaz, one of my masters when I was a young sinologist
“As a Sinologist, Pye advised the U.S. State Department and the National Security Council and was considered a peer of the great China experts of his generation. Pye was a leader of the National Committee on United States-China Relations when it laid the groundwork for the U.S. table tennis team to visit China in 1971, and he later served as acting chairman.
He advised Democratic presidential candidates, including John F. Kennedy, urging a muscular foreign policy.
But Pye was first and foremost an intellectual who wrote or edited 25 books and led his profession as president of the American Political Science Association in 1988-89. He was among the pioneers in the 1950s and '60s in developing theories about how poor nations develop politically. In contrast to political scientists who seek universal, overarching explanations, he delved into the vagaries of cultures, countries and peoples in search of more individualized interpretations”
See the full obituary published in the International Herald Tribunehttp://www.iht.com/articles/2008/09/12/america/obits.php
|
|
|
|
Logged
|
|
|
The administrator has disabled public write access.
|
Jacques (Moderator)
Moderator
Posts: 1769
|
|
Re:Jacques de Goldfiem eye on Asia 3 Weeks, 1 Day ago
|
Karma: 25
|
|
18 September 2008
Who is Thailand’s new helmsman ? Thaksin or Somchai ?
Today, Thai King Bhumibol Adulyadej officially endorsed the premiership of Somchai Wongsawat. Somchai is the fourth prime minister in two years, and, given the country's continuing instability, some analysts expect his tenure to be short.
The ruling People's Power Party and its governing coalition hold 306 of the lower house's 480 seats and Somchai won 298 votes, while opposition leader Abhisit Vejjajiva took 163 votes.
The new prime minister, 61, has long experience as a judge and senior bureaucrat, but he has a big handicap : his marriage to Thaksin's younger sister, Yaowapa Wongsawasdi, which is likely to ensure that protests by anti-government activists who have occupied the prime minister's compound for more than three weeks will continue.
The anti-government People's Alliance for Democracy (PAD) – a pressure group of royalists, businessmen and union activists – had opposed Samak's leadership, accusing him of being a Thaksin puppet. So to see his brother-in-law succeeding Samak is like a provocation. "He might have a gentlemanly nature, a soft-spoken style, and he might have a better reputation than anyone else," said a spokesman for the protesters, Somsak Kosaisuk, referring to other members of the governing party. "But blood is thicker than water."
Worse, Somchai's wife is politically close to her brother; she was one of 111 Thaksin-linked politicians banned from politics for five years in 2007 on grounds of electoral fraud by Thaksin's party, which was shut down.
But what is now the power of Thaksin from his London exile ? "I think that his impact and influence within the PPP are still considerable," said Thitinan Pongsudhirak, a leading political analyst with Chulalongkorn University, "but nowhere near what they used to be." Others say that passing time and shifting alliances may weaken Thaksin's political influence. His funds are shrinking, with $2 billion in assets frozen by the courts, and the corruption cases he faces could put him in jail if he returns. In anyway, a lot of the PPP members of parliament have made their choice after telephone call with Thaksin.
Despite his close connections to Thaksin, Somchai is deemed a compromiser who is best suited among the PPP candidates to smooth over Thailand's political crisis. So… wait and see
|
|
|
|
Logged
|
|
|
The administrator has disabled public write access.
|
|
|
|
|
Forums 
