The case of ex-President Suharto, as he slowly succumbed to death, has raised an important issue for Indonesians as well as many other societies around the world. It comes only a couple of months after four high-ranking officials of the genocidal Khmer Rouge regime of Cambodia next door were arrested to face charges of crimes against humanity. In so many countries aspiring toward the difficult goal of democratic and just governance, be they called transitional or revolutionary or post-communist, there is one shared puzzle: what to do about their undemocratic and unjust pasts.
Criminal procedures pursued to enact retroactive justice – that is, justice over past crimes – can easily appear to be so many acts of revenge. Erich Honecker of former East Germany, in famous trials during the 1990’s for the injustices committed by his regime, called the whole process ‘the victor’s justice’, and many former subjects of his dictatorship found such depiction compelling. Vengeance, to be sure, is not a good springboard for starting a law-abiding, just society.
The grand criminals may be humbled, and their surviving victims tempered, by recalling that in most cases the magnitude of committed crimes far outweigh the realistic extent of punishment that might be carried out. The 1.7 million persons’ lives could not be proportionally ‘revenged’ even by electrocuting Pol Pot. At the end of the day, there is a risk to end up with a shallow memory that would say: “He killed lots and lots and lots of people. Then he was killed himself”.
Retroactive justice, therefore, is better done by aiming at monumental moral lessons from such crimes, rather than criminal reprisals. There is a stronger substantive, longer-lasting, and future-pertinent potential in the former. The regimes such as Suharto’s, Pinochet’s, Ceausescu’s, and many others, are unequalled monumental lessons to be learned by Indonesians, Chileans, Romanians, and any other society aspiring toward democracy, freedom and justice.
Certainly, not all former undemocratic regimes stand on equal footing with Pol Pot’s Khmer Rouge. Many authoritarian ex-leaders may be culpable on accounts of corruption and embezzlement, nepotism and environmental disasters, and other less monumental wrongdoings. Nonetheless, to the extent that they led to millions of lives in unnecessary poverty, stolen chances, burdens of insurmountable debts and environmental disasters, and other such tolls, the consequences of such regimes are monumental.
The numerous projects of building democracies during the so-called Third Wave of democratization have focused primarily on institutional and constitutional designs, on the here-and-now technicalities of democratic government, and promotion of oftentimes alien and abstract freedoms and rights. The apparent failures of most of the Third Wave cases are to be attributed to this formalism and detached-ness in no small part.
Alternatively, a stronger, more robust democratic project would be one that is based on lessons learnt from its own past. In that case, a given society would know it is headed toward a just, free, prosperous life, with institutions of multiple parties, checks and balances, and elections, most of which they never saw in their lives. However, they would know even better what they cannot return to, what they are moving away from, all the injustices, oppression, poverty, and so on, all of which they have known in the most immediate manner.
With Suharto departed from life, his legacy of three decades’ rule over Indonesia remains. The issue is whether that legacy will be learned, studied, and brought home, or whether it will remain in the raw, cast into oblivion, gradually forgotten, only to come back at some distant future in robes of glory – and possibly under a new Suharto.
Thursday, January 31, 2008
Saturday, January 26, 2008
The Beauty of Tennis
I have been watching the final rounds of the Australian Open with pleasure. What a beautiful great sport! Well, any sport and any tournament is likely to be beautiful and pleasant. It's just that every time you watch a particular game, and marvel at its particular beauty and outcomes, you appreciate it with renewed passion.
I was somewhat behind in tennis news in recent months. So, here I discovered Ana Ivanovic for myself; she was #4 in the world, and has now become #2 as a result of her plays in Australian Open. I had not known her at all. Anyway, what amazed me was her strength to persever and to come back. She horribly lost her first set to Daniela Hantuchova, and started with losses in the second set... and then, she turned the tide around. Against Ana's charming, naive-looking, almost child-like face, you would immediately notice Daniela's demeanor - aggressive, somewhat bitter, tense, almost angry. A couple of times she did show her impatience with Ana's squeaking shoes... And as Daniela started to lose, her bitterness got bitterer and less pleasant. Ana, on the other hand, was totally amazing. What a great game it was.
Maria Sharapova won the championship. She was great throughout the tournament in her game. The little bit of antidote to amazement was her somewhat unsporting demeanor, too, like Daniela. (I was amazed those two looked alike, too!). Her father's stupid gesture exacerbated it, none of her fault of cause. And then, at her prize receiving speech, she said something about Serbian fans being louder than Russian fans... Come on, you are in Australia, and playing an individual sport, not national teams sport. The fact that cheers for Ana's were louder is simply about the crowd's liking of Ana - a charming, personable, and strong young lady... Oh well, 20 year-olds, young.
And in the men's final, we have a complete surprise game with Djokovich and Tsonga. Wow, I await a very interesting game, and I don't care who of the two wins. They both are just amazing. A grand slam without Federer and/or Nadal, that's something new. Any sport is so much more interesting when it is indeed competitive, not dominated and predictable. I love tennis.
Viva Tennis!
I was somewhat behind in tennis news in recent months. So, here I discovered Ana Ivanovic for myself; she was #4 in the world, and has now become #2 as a result of her plays in Australian Open. I had not known her at all. Anyway, what amazed me was her strength to persever and to come back. She horribly lost her first set to Daniela Hantuchova, and started with losses in the second set... and then, she turned the tide around. Against Ana's charming, naive-looking, almost child-like face, you would immediately notice Daniela's demeanor - aggressive, somewhat bitter, tense, almost angry. A couple of times she did show her impatience with Ana's squeaking shoes... And as Daniela started to lose, her bitterness got bitterer and less pleasant. Ana, on the other hand, was totally amazing. What a great game it was.
Maria Sharapova won the championship. She was great throughout the tournament in her game. The little bit of antidote to amazement was her somewhat unsporting demeanor, too, like Daniela. (I was amazed those two looked alike, too!). Her father's stupid gesture exacerbated it, none of her fault of cause. And then, at her prize receiving speech, she said something about Serbian fans being louder than Russian fans... Come on, you are in Australia, and playing an individual sport, not national teams sport. The fact that cheers for Ana's were louder is simply about the crowd's liking of Ana - a charming, personable, and strong young lady... Oh well, 20 year-olds, young.
And in the men's final, we have a complete surprise game with Djokovich and Tsonga. Wow, I await a very interesting game, and I don't care who of the two wins. They both are just amazing. A grand slam without Federer and/or Nadal, that's something new. Any sport is so much more interesting when it is indeed competitive, not dominated and predictable. I love tennis.
Viva Tennis!
Thursday, January 17, 2008
Kenya, Kyrgyzstan, The Broken Sword...
Kenya appears to be going down the wrong track in earnest. Known for a long time as one of the better-doing African states, relatively well developing, stable, relatively free country... It took one fraudulent election (and whatever built up to it) to scrap all those decades' blessings. Took one very old politician (who himself is to be thanked for a lot of achievements) who did not want to leave, and who stirred both emotions and ballot counts to that end, to throw away the cap from Pandora's Box. It is very sad. It is also very disheartening for other, younger, shakier "democracies", less-prized societies to see Kenya in this state.
I am reading Tologon Kassymbekov's The Broken Sword these days. Enjoying it very much. If I read any extract of it at school, I must have just glossed over it. Now, reading it closely, I would want everyone interested in Kyrgyz, Ferghana Valley, Central Asian society and politics to read this great novel. It is not a smooth and fast reading (I don't know how it reads in Russian or in English (there's apparently an English translation, too)), but the Kyrgyz version is not easy. The style is a demanding style, definitely not the kind where you'd say "you won't notice how you finished it". It is about identity and dignity, about political betrayal and fluidity, about parochialism and spiritedness. But very vividly, it is about the style of government and politics, about the political culture of the Kyrgyz, of Central Asians more broadly. Such an eye-opening novel.
The political climate with which we enter 2008 resembles some periods in Kokand khanate at one or another time (for 'times' shifted constantly). President Bakiev is in full charge of all formal political structure. That is all you need. He asks the Parliament to consider removing the Chairman of the Supreme Court, who still had some 6 years to go, according to the Constitution, unless he does some major mistake. No such mistake is cited. Parliament dutifully removes him. A draft of a law is given for Parliament's approval, about the administrative-territorial arrangements; largely an impractical, non-innovative, and economically unjustified (not justified anyhow, really) law. Deputies pretended to discuss it, with some critical remarks (such as, "let a village be called a village it it has 250 inhabitants in it"), and of course, it is approves in the first hearing.
All this may not be that bad. If one views politics in Kyrgyzstan with the hindsight of many decades in the past, including Soviet and pre-Soviet, it appears that representative democracy never really functioned, and whenever tried - mal-functioned notably. But on the other hand, it appears there is a tradition (now vivid, now somewhat hidden) of holding leaders accountable. President Bakiev is taking all the burden of responsibility. "All roads lead to Rome", as it were; all traces of responsibility end up in his office - and that is what he chose knowingly. What remains for him to succeed in living up to his onerous responsibility is for the people to see this, to know that he is the person calling all the shots and hence, answerable for all his shots. The opposition, free from Parliamentary or Government duties, might find a job for itself in helping the people to see this map of responsibility more clearly.
I am reading Tologon Kassymbekov's The Broken Sword these days. Enjoying it very much. If I read any extract of it at school, I must have just glossed over it. Now, reading it closely, I would want everyone interested in Kyrgyz, Ferghana Valley, Central Asian society and politics to read this great novel. It is not a smooth and fast reading (I don't know how it reads in Russian or in English (there's apparently an English translation, too)), but the Kyrgyz version is not easy. The style is a demanding style, definitely not the kind where you'd say "you won't notice how you finished it". It is about identity and dignity, about political betrayal and fluidity, about parochialism and spiritedness. But very vividly, it is about the style of government and politics, about the political culture of the Kyrgyz, of Central Asians more broadly. Such an eye-opening novel.
The political climate with which we enter 2008 resembles some periods in Kokand khanate at one or another time (for 'times' shifted constantly). President Bakiev is in full charge of all formal political structure. That is all you need. He asks the Parliament to consider removing the Chairman of the Supreme Court, who still had some 6 years to go, according to the Constitution, unless he does some major mistake. No such mistake is cited. Parliament dutifully removes him. A draft of a law is given for Parliament's approval, about the administrative-territorial arrangements; largely an impractical, non-innovative, and economically unjustified (not justified anyhow, really) law. Deputies pretended to discuss it, with some critical remarks (such as, "let a village be called a village it it has 250 inhabitants in it"), and of course, it is approves in the first hearing.
All this may not be that bad. If one views politics in Kyrgyzstan with the hindsight of many decades in the past, including Soviet and pre-Soviet, it appears that representative democracy never really functioned, and whenever tried - mal-functioned notably. But on the other hand, it appears there is a tradition (now vivid, now somewhat hidden) of holding leaders accountable. President Bakiev is taking all the burden of responsibility. "All roads lead to Rome", as it were; all traces of responsibility end up in his office - and that is what he chose knowingly. What remains for him to succeed in living up to his onerous responsibility is for the people to see this, to know that he is the person calling all the shots and hence, answerable for all his shots. The opposition, free from Parliamentary or Government duties, might find a job for itself in helping the people to see this map of responsibility more clearly.
Monday, January 14, 2008
Assembly-line democracy of US presidential primaries
The American democracy that Alexis de Tocqueville famously observed in the middle of nineteenth century was best practiced in local town hall-style politics, where citizens directly deliberated and decided their common affairs. Today, if a foreigner came to America to learn democracy, there is likely to be quite some disappointment. In the heat of primary campaigns for party nominations – a supposedly quintessential democratic process – the quality of America’s glorious tradition is in peril of an ‘assembly-line democracy’.
The relatively small populations of Iowa and New Hampshire were so bombarded by the intense campaigns for state nominations in recent weeks that one should feel sorry for them. While the remarkably high turnouts in both states may indicate that their citizens did not resent such onslaught, the chances were that democratic deliberation and possibility of making intelligent choices would be compromised greatly, leaving most of it to the account of soundbites.
There were some parts that were more genuinely deliberative and geared to understanding, such as the question-answer sessions, especially well done by Senator John McCain, and the debates between contenders in both parties. Those were the off-the-cuff unrehearsed, live discussions of the candidates’ positions on important issues at stake. However, they have been the lesser part of the process. Most of it has been more like a sporting race, or better yet, an accelerating assembly line putting together the so-called winning strategies.
Take a few examples. Even the commendable, brawl-defying campaign by John McCain has ridden on a resounding but opportunist slogan of danger. “My friends, we live in dangerous times” says he, as he drives home his credentials as a war veteran, an experienced foreign policy leader, and notably a maverick anti-withdrawal voice in the Iraq war. If the majority of Americans gave in to the ‘dangerous world’ view deeply enough, Senator McCain should do well. There is at least the question of ethical responsibility here as the candidate tries to blow the wave of danger and to ride that wave, too.
There is a more flagrant problem in the danger compartment: the speeches of Governor Huckabee, the Republican winner in Iowa, and of Mayor Giuliani, the former leader in the Republican field in national polls, are replete with mentions of Islamic danger. In a nation witnessing more Columbines and Virginia Techs every year, no one dares to raise gun ownership as a danger – Huckabee defends it as a sacred freedom. All danger is from Them, not within Us, be it Islamic whatnots, illegal immigrants, or Middle Eastern oil producers (never mind the Amocos and Texacos).
But even beyond such substantive issues, of which the above are just a few, there are procedural ways in which the democratic process is blunted. In the height of emotional arousal of stump speech rallies, people are easily led to thinking that experience does not really matter, and somehow change and experience become opposites. Daily polls are followed and discussed like a heart patient’s pulse, even though no major poll predicted either the loss in Iowa or the victory in New Hampshire by Senator Clinton. The prize, however, would probably go to Fox News, when they had a focus group press ‘up’ or ‘down’ buttons on a gadget every second to measure approval of what a candidate was saying during the Republican Forum organized by them.
The general rhetoric of the process is both revealing and disheartening. Change and experience have become juxtaposed in a curious twist, and it has become risky for, say, McCain and Clinton to identify themselves with both of them. Nearly every day, we hear things like re-focusing the campaign, changing the strategy, revising the tactics. Having virtually won an evangelical ticket in Iowa, Huckabee barely mentions God in New Hampshire. Clinton’s alleged ‘moment of softness’, after dominating that day’s news, was then invoked to explain her ‘surprise’ victory. Frontlines are made of endorsements, be they from political honoraries, culinary union leaders or former karate champions. All of this reminds of Wall Street auction sales rather than a democratic process.
Five days after the dramatic Iowa results, New Hampshire gave no less dramatic victories to Iowa’s third-place runner-up of the Democrats and fourth-place runner-up of the Republicans, and the whirlwind blew off to Nevada and Michigan, respectively. That is, the whirlwind of assembly-line manufacturing of support in what is deemed to be democracy at work but feels much like a deeply problematic perversion of once-glorious American tradition.
The relatively small populations of Iowa and New Hampshire were so bombarded by the intense campaigns for state nominations in recent weeks that one should feel sorry for them. While the remarkably high turnouts in both states may indicate that their citizens did not resent such onslaught, the chances were that democratic deliberation and possibility of making intelligent choices would be compromised greatly, leaving most of it to the account of soundbites.
There were some parts that were more genuinely deliberative and geared to understanding, such as the question-answer sessions, especially well done by Senator John McCain, and the debates between contenders in both parties. Those were the off-the-cuff unrehearsed, live discussions of the candidates’ positions on important issues at stake. However, they have been the lesser part of the process. Most of it has been more like a sporting race, or better yet, an accelerating assembly line putting together the so-called winning strategies.
Take a few examples. Even the commendable, brawl-defying campaign by John McCain has ridden on a resounding but opportunist slogan of danger. “My friends, we live in dangerous times” says he, as he drives home his credentials as a war veteran, an experienced foreign policy leader, and notably a maverick anti-withdrawal voice in the Iraq war. If the majority of Americans gave in to the ‘dangerous world’ view deeply enough, Senator McCain should do well. There is at least the question of ethical responsibility here as the candidate tries to blow the wave of danger and to ride that wave, too.
There is a more flagrant problem in the danger compartment: the speeches of Governor Huckabee, the Republican winner in Iowa, and of Mayor Giuliani, the former leader in the Republican field in national polls, are replete with mentions of Islamic danger. In a nation witnessing more Columbines and Virginia Techs every year, no one dares to raise gun ownership as a danger – Huckabee defends it as a sacred freedom. All danger is from Them, not within Us, be it Islamic whatnots, illegal immigrants, or Middle Eastern oil producers (never mind the Amocos and Texacos).
But even beyond such substantive issues, of which the above are just a few, there are procedural ways in which the democratic process is blunted. In the height of emotional arousal of stump speech rallies, people are easily led to thinking that experience does not really matter, and somehow change and experience become opposites. Daily polls are followed and discussed like a heart patient’s pulse, even though no major poll predicted either the loss in Iowa or the victory in New Hampshire by Senator Clinton. The prize, however, would probably go to Fox News, when they had a focus group press ‘up’ or ‘down’ buttons on a gadget every second to measure approval of what a candidate was saying during the Republican Forum organized by them.
The general rhetoric of the process is both revealing and disheartening. Change and experience have become juxtaposed in a curious twist, and it has become risky for, say, McCain and Clinton to identify themselves with both of them. Nearly every day, we hear things like re-focusing the campaign, changing the strategy, revising the tactics. Having virtually won an evangelical ticket in Iowa, Huckabee barely mentions God in New Hampshire. Clinton’s alleged ‘moment of softness’, after dominating that day’s news, was then invoked to explain her ‘surprise’ victory. Frontlines are made of endorsements, be they from political honoraries, culinary union leaders or former karate champions. All of this reminds of Wall Street auction sales rather than a democratic process.
Five days after the dramatic Iowa results, New Hampshire gave no less dramatic victories to Iowa’s third-place runner-up of the Democrats and fourth-place runner-up of the Republicans, and the whirlwind blew off to Nevada and Michigan, respectively. That is, the whirlwind of assembly-line manufacturing of support in what is deemed to be democracy at work but feels much like a deeply problematic perversion of once-glorious American tradition.
Wednesday, January 2, 2008
Happy New Year (depending on the old year)
Happy New Year! Every year, at midnight from December 31 to January 1, we all symbolically break with the past and step into the new. We make all kinds of "New Year resolutions", new wishes of happiness and success, and in various other ways go through an imaginary mental catharsis. Imaginary it is.
New Year can only be as happy as the past year(s)' records allow. There is a continuity in our lives that does not work by the chronometer or calendar. It may change or partially break according to the strength of our will, but generally and for the most part, it is a continuity. Our self-delusion that somehow all the troubles and problems of the past year should stay in that year, and the new year should begin as a tabula rasa with all the goodies that we wish for ourselves, comes back at us very quickly in its upsetting truth.
The past stays with us. It cannot be cut off with curtains or scissors - it can only be faced, encountered consciously, and accounted for. Only after taking that accounting to its conclusion can the past allow for a genuine new beginning, for a new change, to take place. Importantly, this is not to say that the past is a constant Damocles' Sword suspended over our necks, keeping us in a constant threat of coming loose. Or rather, it need not be so. There is a positive, empowering element to 'accounting' for our past.
Accountability, or better yet, responsibility, is our act of recognizing the immanence of our past record, and therefore resolving to squarely face that past and proceed into the future accordingly. Responsible act is an act that does not assume "tabula raza" anytime it fits the actor, because he understands that an act made with such an assumption can only risk to backfire or at least be wasted.
For Kyrgyzstan, the past year has left a number of important things as its legacy. Among them is the adoption of a new Constitution - in the specific way it was adopted, the specific law with all its advantages and problems. There is also the election of a new Parliament based on political parties, in all its uncompromising fraudulence. There is the metamorphosis of a number of political figures: Kulov, Eshimkanov, Karabekov, and so on - once again. What do these episodes bring to the new year? A lot, difficult to enumerate. Summarily, this all brings a truck-load of responsibility for all of us, together and individually, to bear. For those in power (and they indeed are unitarily one now, it is the responsibility to keep up the play of the last year, to own up to the Constitution they wrote and passed, to own up to the entirety of functions they assumed in the wake of parliamentary elections; it is the responsibility that is now crystal-clear to those who await it. For the opposition, it is the responsibility to understand why it failed, thither-blaming aside. For all citizens of Kyrgyzstan, it is the responsibility to remember what happened last year, lest the new year's problems come as "surprises".
In being responsible with the past, there is the positivity - the promise of us being in (partial) control of how we live and of realizability of all the good wishes we just made for the new year. Be it in politics, in the economy, in households and private lives, it takes this accountance-with-the-past to be able to look ahead to the future in good deed.
Happy New Year, if You Remember the Old!
New Year can only be as happy as the past year(s)' records allow. There is a continuity in our lives that does not work by the chronometer or calendar. It may change or partially break according to the strength of our will, but generally and for the most part, it is a continuity. Our self-delusion that somehow all the troubles and problems of the past year should stay in that year, and the new year should begin as a tabula rasa with all the goodies that we wish for ourselves, comes back at us very quickly in its upsetting truth.
The past stays with us. It cannot be cut off with curtains or scissors - it can only be faced, encountered consciously, and accounted for. Only after taking that accounting to its conclusion can the past allow for a genuine new beginning, for a new change, to take place. Importantly, this is not to say that the past is a constant Damocles' Sword suspended over our necks, keeping us in a constant threat of coming loose. Or rather, it need not be so. There is a positive, empowering element to 'accounting' for our past.
Accountability, or better yet, responsibility, is our act of recognizing the immanence of our past record, and therefore resolving to squarely face that past and proceed into the future accordingly. Responsible act is an act that does not assume "tabula raza" anytime it fits the actor, because he understands that an act made with such an assumption can only risk to backfire or at least be wasted.
For Kyrgyzstan, the past year has left a number of important things as its legacy. Among them is the adoption of a new Constitution - in the specific way it was adopted, the specific law with all its advantages and problems. There is also the election of a new Parliament based on political parties, in all its uncompromising fraudulence. There is the metamorphosis of a number of political figures: Kulov, Eshimkanov, Karabekov, and so on - once again. What do these episodes bring to the new year? A lot, difficult to enumerate. Summarily, this all brings a truck-load of responsibility for all of us, together and individually, to bear. For those in power (and they indeed are unitarily one now, it is the responsibility to keep up the play of the last year, to own up to the Constitution they wrote and passed, to own up to the entirety of functions they assumed in the wake of parliamentary elections; it is the responsibility that is now crystal-clear to those who await it. For the opposition, it is the responsibility to understand why it failed, thither-blaming aside. For all citizens of Kyrgyzstan, it is the responsibility to remember what happened last year, lest the new year's problems come as "surprises".
In being responsible with the past, there is the positivity - the promise of us being in (partial) control of how we live and of realizability of all the good wishes we just made for the new year. Be it in politics, in the economy, in households and private lives, it takes this accountance-with-the-past to be able to look ahead to the future in good deed.
Happy New Year, if You Remember the Old!
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