Lessons from Australia’s election
By Wei Seng
A concern for Australia's voters
I tend to follow elections in major Western countries closely, if not because of my usual interest in the politics of these countries, then because the publications that I read such as The Economist and (to a lesser extent) The Straits Times have rather heavy coverage of the election, before, during and after. My platoon mate gets very excited about such elections and will often keep reminding me about the election day. But there are several factors that make the Australian election (that took place yesterday) so special this time round and also worth covering here on Erpz.net.
Firstly, the nature of which the current Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard attained power was rather unique. According to John McTernan in the Financial Times, the current ruling party Labour decided to "depose" ex-PM Kevin Rudd because of dips in popularity that were perceived as threatening to the party's cling onto power, a lesson learnt from Britain's Labour Party which held on to Gordon Brown despite his record-low popularity and ended up suffering in defeat during the elections. Gillard wanted a mandate for herself to rule, in view of the seemingly undemocractic circumstances in which she came to power, as well as her popularity just after she was selected as the new PM.
Her popularity dipped with time, however, as she stumbled and flip-flopped over the initiatives she wanted to push forward and her stand on various issues plaguing the country. Now that the election results are partially out, the initial lead over her rival Liberal party has whittled to the extent that the two parties have split the vote, with Liberal having one more seat than Labour but none with any majority significant enough to form a government. So ironically, the lesson that they learnt from Britain's Labour party appeared to be a wrong lesson. Maybe it was not time to depose Kevin Rudd yet.
The main harbinger of this Australian election for future Western elections is the hot topics that were thrown up during the election. Presiding over economic growth in a period where the world experienced a bad recession did not seem to benefit Labour at all. What was on the voters' radars, as McTernan suggested, were the environment, immigration and Australia's position on the global arena, topics which could highly likely be of significant influence in future elections in the West.
The most important topic was on the environment, and the importance of this will undeniably increase with time as the effects of climate change are unleashed upon the world. Rudd's popularity was supposedly a result of his green stance, from the signing of the Kyoto Protocol to his proposal for an Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS) for Australia. His popularity was thought to have declined when he climbed down on climate change initiatives such as the ETS. When Rudd was deposed, he was the probably the first leader in the West to be unseated because of environmental issues, which seemed to indicate the growing importance of environmental issues amongst the populace.
What strikes me as weird, however, is how Tony Abbott, the climate change skeptic and leader of the Liberal coalition, actually fared better in the election despite his stand on the environment. This would seem to contradict the lesson learnt that the environment is becoming an issue politicians cannot neglect. This would very much be perhaps a failure on Gillard's part, as she has also been waffling with regard to environmental issues. McKernan claims that Abbott "mined middle Australia’s often conflicted feelings" about the environment, which resulted in his better showing at the polls. This certainly would be quite a terrible lesson to take home though, if politicians were to see being climate change skeptics as vote-grabbing.
Then there's migration and the concept of Big Australia. Voters were uncomfortable with Rudd's plans to expand Australia's population, as much as migration generally has been beneficial for Australia and Australia is very much a country made up of migrants. Australians are generally satisfied with their standard of living and they worry about whether Australia can cope with an increased population, especially one that is a result of immigration. This could also be seen as environment-related, since after all sustainable development needs to be built upon sustainable population growth and certainly an expanding population would place greater stress on the environment. The issue regarding migration that many Australians are most unhappy about, however, is the inflow of refugees to the country. Migration and refugees are issues that would become more significant with time as globalisation opens up access for more and more countries in the developing world to developed countries, and as climate change unleashes its wrath on impoverished populations that would flock to other countries for shelter and a living.
Lastly, the concern about what Australia is to the world. Australians seemed uncomfortable about taking the lead in the region or in the world. Rudd championed several initiatives Pacific-wide that would put Australia at or near the heart of policy and decision making, which made some countries and organisations in the Asia-Pacific uncomfortable at attempts to take away its influence (mainly ASEAN and countries in the region). The country's realignment closer to Asia and further away from its friends in the West (especially America and Britain) seemed to make some Australians uncomfortable as well, especially as rising power China taps into Australia's mineral wealth and has attempted takeover attempts of several Australian mining giants in the process.
So what lessons are there to learn, really? I quote this huge chunk which captures nicely how this election could be a harbinger for future Western elections: "The desire to enjoy growth while defending our lifestyles against outsiders, accepting climate change intellectually while rejecting its implications for our behaviour, and a nagging concern about the rise of China – all are issues which will quickly move up the agenda in Europe and North America".
Origins of America’s White Anxiety
By Wei Seng
Cooperate, not fight!
I covered something in relation to America's white anxiety crisis a few months back, reviewed from a Time magazine article, but it seems like now there appears to be a source of which America's white anxiety originates.
Ross Douthat in The New York Times discusses an origin of America's white anxiety: the positive discrimination that America's elite schools practice, in the process excluding many white Christians, which then creates a gap between the liberal, multiracial elite and the conservative and white Christians middle-class. It is quite an interesting observation, that while quite a bitter pill to swallow for liberals and those who believe in multiracialism and affirmative action after decades of racism, it is necessary for governments to be careful with affirmative action because any form of discrimination, positive or otherwise, would create resentment as it is happening in America today.
The chasm between the liberals (quite a significant proportion of the elite, of which many come from the top American universities such as Harvard) and the conservatives (significantly white Christian and male) appears to remain as insurmountable as ever, or even widening, with the Obama administration in the White House. Key figures in the conservative sphere have complained that the liberal administration today is practicing "racism" (preference for the coloured) and its policies a form of "reparations" (for all the past misdeeds against the coloured). Most liberals (and as a self-proclaimed liberal) I find their arguments quite silly as many of the conservatives seem to be practicing their own form of racism (against the coloured) so who started what? But it appears as if there is a source of all this discontent against the elite: the practices of elite universities in America.
According to two Princeton sociologists, a study of the admissions process and affirmative action of "eight highly selective colleges and universities" shows that the admissions procedure "seemed to favour black and Hispanic applicants, while whites and Asians needed higher grades and SAT scores to get in". I do not quite understand why Asians would need better grades, as this seems to be a form of racism as well, but I guess it is meant to be a barrier to entry for hopeful students in Asia. But it seems as if affirmative action is well at work here when black and Hispanic applicants are favoured, given that historically these people were the disadvantaged and discriminated against. But now those most disadvantaged by this process are the (racial majority) white: especially the lower-income, "rural and working-class". It is possible that universities are trying to make their racial profile look multiethnic and reserve financial aid for these students.
"Cultural biases" seem to be at work as well: "most extra-curricular activities " would "increase your odds of admission" but apparently participation in activities like Reserve Officers' Training Corps (ROTC), 4-H and Future Farmers of America would actually "jeopardise" your chances. Unknowingly or otherwise, these elite institutions seem to be "incline against candidates who seem too stereotypically rural or right-wing or Red America".
This creates an "underrepresentation" of working-class whites (particularly white Christians) in these universities and eventually in the "ranks these campuses feed into: in law and philanthropy, finance and academia, the media and the arts". According to Douthat this can breed "paranoia, among elite and non-elites alike", which is already evident from the "racially tinged conspiracy theories" against President Obama that conservatives are keen to perpetuate and exploit. Meanwhile the "highly educated and liberal", with minimal contact with "rural, working-class America" and especially with the rise of the Tea Party movement, imagine the Red American heartland to be full of evangelical theocrats and Ku Klux Klansmen.
When affirmative action backfires, are there alternatives? Singapore's practice of meritocracy might be an alternative. Even meritocracy has its own flaws, such as perpetuating inequality amongst the races (the black are, after all, still in general largely disadvantaged - poorer, less educated, more likely to be unemployed) and it would be quite impossible to be fully meritocratic (granted, these elite universities have been practicing quite a fair bit of meritocracy too). It is a tough balancing act for these elite schools, but arent these elite schools, with the cream of the crop, supposed to be able to find solutions to the problems in society? We need to challenge these schools to come out with a fair way that will allow affirmative action and yet ensure that it does not squeeze out the deserving majority.
Mineral deposits in Afghanistan: treasure or trouble?
By Wei Seng
What a curse!
This article that I read in The Straits Times last week, which comes from the The New York Times, is a news article that highlights the discovery by American government geologists of US$1 trillion worth of "untapped mineral deposits", which promises to "fundamentally alter the Afghan economy and perhaps the Afghan war itself". The mineral deposits found include huge amounts of lithium ("a key raw material in the manufacturing of batteries for laptops") as well as copper, iron, cobalt and gold. While it is heartening to read about optimistic news from Afghanistan, I am not exactly very optimistic about the promises of reaping these reserves. My reason for pessimism? This theory known as the resource curse.
Put simply by Wikipedia, it is "the paradox that countries and regions with an abundance of natural resources... tend to have less economic growth and worse development outcomes than countries with fewer natural resources". According to a write-up on the Global Policy Forum adapted from the Foreign Service Journal, such countries "score lower on the UN Human Development Index, exhibit greater corruption, have a greater probability of conflict in any five-year period, have larger shares of their population in poverty, devote a greater share of government spending to military spending, and are more authoritarian than those with more diverse sources of wealth".
It is suggested that this happens because "the income from these resources is often misappropriated by corrupt leaders and officials instead of being used to support growth and development. Moreover, such wealth often fuels internal grievances that cause conflict and civil war". In the case of Afghanistan in particular, I am very pessimistic that it will be able to break out of this natural resource curse like Norway has done, because of the corruption as well as the high likelihood that rogue groupings will instead gain access to these minerals for malign uses. As I conducted research about the natural resource curse and the news piece, it seems like I'm not the only one with eyebrows raised about the mineral deposits.
In Foreign Policy, Blake Hounshell voices his reservations about the reserves. He writes about the instability of the current Afghan government led by President Hamid Karzai as well as its susceptibility to corruption and extremist Islamist influences. There is additional skepticism over the timing of this article when the Afghan war is going on badly, as well as the estimates of reserves and its worth. In addition, given the huge amount of capital investment needed to dig out those resources and considering Afghanistan's current situation, chances are those resources will remain trapped under the ground. And I shudder to think of the environmental consequences of unearthing all those resources, as much as they might benefit the people of Afghanistan.
Meanwhile in The Christian Science Monitor, Donald Marron elaborates about how the resource curse can afflict Afghanistan. He referenced a lengthy article in The Financial Times that narrates Norway's discovery of oil and how it coped well with the discovery, instead of succumbing to all the "trappings" of the natural resource curse. If Aghanistan can really act like Norway did it how it dealt with the new-found wealth, it would be able to grow healthy and wealthy... otherwise it could just worsen the quagmire Afghanistan is stuck in.
Israel’s Siege Mentality
By Wei Seng
So is Israel or Palestine under siege?
Recently, much has been said and written about Israel's violent interception of a flotilla, carrying humanitarian aid, attempting to bypass Israel's blockade of Gaza. For those not too sure about what exactly happened, CNN has a brief FAQ regarding the incident. Of all the pieces written about this incident, I like in particular The Economist's analyses of Israel's actions - in essence, Israel's perceptions that the world is against Israel, and its heavy-handed approach to everything about Palestine, is going to make the country more of a pariah than ever.
The first article in this week's The Economist, appearing in the Leader section, asserts that Israel's "macho attitude" - read: tendency to use violence first - is making Israel weaker: it "is accelerating a slide towards its own isolation". Israel is stuck in a vicous cycle: the more the hawks in government think the world hates Israel, "the more it tends to shoot opponents first and ask questions later, and the more it finds that the world is indeed full of enemies".
The second article discusses how Israel's blockade has become counterproductive, instead playing into the hands of Hamas in Gaza and allowing them to "tighten (their) grip on virtually everything in the strip". The violent interception of the aid flotilla has also become counter-productive, forming a new enemy out of ex-ally Turkey as several Turkish on board the flotilla were killed in the capture of the flotilla.
Just when Israel's relations with the US looked like they were about to be mended. These are indeed testy times for Israel, United States and the Middle East.
Opening Up
By Kevin
Deal!
The recent Lexington on The Economist gave a pitch on the merits of openness, to migration and trade; and then analysed how far US has come. His analysis on America emphasize the inclination towards isolation and warned how dangerous it could be while urging support for greater openness. Singapore's openness to migration appeared particularly alarming to locals in the recent years and prompted our government to take steps to distinguish the privileges between Permanent Residents and Citizens as well as take more social action to aid the needy citizens. Personally, I think the over-embrace of foreigners here is often disturbing for those who cling to Singapore as home; ironically, that's actually the people whose support the government really needs.
Nevertheless, the arguments for openness were great, I particularly like the anecdote used in the first paragraph.
A LONG time ago, the rising seas turned Tasmania into an island. A few thousand inhabitants were cut off from contact with the Australian mainland. Their technology regressed. They forgot how to make bone tools, catch fish and sew skins into clothes. It was not that they grew less intelligent. Their problem was that they no longer had many people to trade with. It took a lot of effort to learn how to carve needles out of bone. So long as there were plenty of people with whom to swap needles for food, it made sense to acquire such skills. But in a tiny, isolated society, there may have been room only for one or two needle-makers. If they both fell off cliffs, the technology died with them. When the first Europeans reached Tasmania, they found natives whose only shields against the winter chill were seal-fat smeared on their skin and wallaby pelts over their shoulders.
Lessons to learn from Norway
By Wei Seng
Paradise on Earth?
First published in The Guardian on Wednesday, then republished in The Straits Times, Timothy Garton Ash writes about Norway vis-a-vis the European Union, and some of the lessons that can be learnt from Norway and about Norway.
The writer refers to Norway as "close to a paradise on Earth" because of high living standards and social equality. This, he says, allows many people to use Norway as an example for many things. British MPs from the Eurosceptic Conservative party claim that Norway's being out of the EU and its resultant prosperity meant that Britain could leave the EU and probably do as well as Norway could. Researchers also cite Norway as an example of how greater equality could have spillover benefits in terms of education and crime amongst other social indicators. And for those "hydrocarbonists" who support the "drill, baby, drill" faction, Norway is the epitome of how oil drilling can create prosperity and equality, since Norway's economy (and hence social democracy model) is sustained by significant exports of oil and gas drilled in its waters. And there are some who allude Norway's success to its historical and cultural links to the Vikings and their traditions and characteristics.
But the writer would like to remind readers that it is easy to draw "too-simple lessons from the experiences of other countries, or of projecting on to them lessons you want to draw for your own". In short, only highlighting what serves your own purpose and neglecting the rest. One may also fall into a trap, the frequently-commited "fallacy of confusing correlation with cause". The lessons that should be learnt need to be the right ones as well: emulating the success stories of another country in your own, in a totally different context, can produce wildly different results.
And, well, even supposed-Paradise Norway is not immune to the "shockwaves of world politics", as the country struggles (like many other European nations) to integrate its growing Muslim populace and its exports have to be imported by its European neighbours for the country to earn any money at all.
So what can Singapore learn from Norway? Maybe tips on the social democracy model that Norway champions, given that Singapore tends to be averse to some of the ideas of social democracy such as pensions because of disincentives to work. Or perhaps how the country manages to create such an egalitarian society, important given that Singapore is becoming a more unequal society as the country continues to grow and develop.
What makes a state?
By Wei Seng
Taiwan: flag = country?
I have written in the past about geopolitics, in particular the nation-state quandary: what differentiates a state from a nation, and what do each definition encompass. This time, an article in The Economist in April questions what makes a state a state.
Is an independent state one that is recognised by nations? Is participation in global organisations an indication of statehood? Is there a minimum size (people, land, services) to it before it can qualify as an independent state? To illustrate, here are some comparisons of supposed states that are not universally recognised as states, or may not exactly be construed as states under different definitions.
Kosovo. It is recognised by 65 states as independent of Serbia since 2008, including USA and much of Western Europe, but not by Russia and much of Asia. The European Union and United Nations have not recognised the independence of Kosovo yet, though some countries in the EU and UN have recognised Kosovo, so is it considered a state?
Taiwan. It is recognised by only 23 countries, far cry from its heyday when communist People's Republic of China was shunned in favour of democractic Republic of China, based in Taiwan. It is not represented in the United Nations, but has observer status in many global bodies and is recognised to have a government and some form of de facto "sovereignty". Taiwan is rare amongst disputed "states" for having its own domain name (.tw) and phone prefix (+886).
Vatican City. The smallest state on Earth, at 44 hectares, located inside Rome. However the diplomats of Vatican City work for the pope (Holy See) and not the state itself, and the Holy See is represented in the UN and not Vatican City.
The article in The Economist gives more illustrations and possible definitions that complicate matters, but really, it seems like when asks "What makes a nation?" one should also ask "What makes a state?". Because conventional definitions of statehood with regard to fixed, internationally recognised borders is one that deserves some questioning.
The Bad Side?
By Kevin
Democracy Working
After all the 'hype' about the resilience of the emerging economies, The Economist seem to have featured some of our South East Asian countries is rather bad light in one of the recent issues. While talking about Philippines' recent elections, they hinted at the economy's untapped potential and the lack of political will to do something about it. And then they presented a skeptical tone towards the current Thailand government's ability to garner the support of the country.
Finally, the drama in Malaysia drew some criticism and sarcasm once again. In many sense, these articles have a 'When will they grow up?' attitude, suggesting that the events in each of the countries are all too familiar. Indeed, in some cases it is difficult to be hopeful that things would change. When it comes to politics, the region is still immature in the conduct of democracy and economic development may have increased but the fruits of prosperity not as well distributed as one would like.
Catching up on economic growth is an extremely important step towards altering the politics although it is not always a guarantee that this would occur. Yet we should not think of any particular political system as an ultimate destination. Our experience with evolution is that several models of existence would sustain; the changing circumstance will continue to push these models and systems to evolve.
Baby Boomers – The Grasshopper Generation?
By Wei Seng
Munch munch, until there is nothing left
Thomas Friedman, in his The New York Times column last week reproduced in Today on 10 May, bids goodbye to the Tooth Fairy, the representation of the baby boomers, and to the good old days of the baby boomers "who took their children's future".
He says that his parents, "The Greatest Generation", made "enormous sacrifices and investments to build (them) a world of abundance", while his generation, "The Baby Boomers", were like grasshoppers that ate "through all that abundance like hungry locusts". My / Our generation, "The Regeneration", would have to "raise incomes anew but in a way that is financially and ecologically sustainable".
He makes allusions to the Tooth Fairy, whom the baby boomers were taught to believe in, "whose magic would allow conservatives to cut taxes without cutting services and liberals to expand services without raising taxes". He claims that this could be done through "bogus accounting" and delusional thinking that "borrowing from China or Germany, or against our rising home values, or by creating exotic financial instruments to trade with each other, we were actually creating wealth". In other words, the baby boomers have been living beyond their means by borrowing from the future, and now have to suffer the consequences as they start to enter retirement age and hand over the reins of leadership to the next generation.
I cant help but keep quoting directly from Friedman, because he manages to capture succinctly the essence of his ideas in his writings.
Friedman captures the looming debacle facing us with three words: "root canal politics". While I dont quite understand how the Tooth Fairy can come to be associated with the baby boomers, I can certainly see the link between root canal (procedure) and our current situation: time to operate on and remove the rotting teeth in our mouths, a certainly painful and unenjoyable experience, but quite deserved given that we have been snacking on sugary foods (enjoyment - you could link it to the "abundance" the baby boomers enjoyed) for so long.
Little wonder that the Greeks are protesting on the streets as their government announces austerity measures in view of the debt crisis facing them. But it's time to pay back for all that has been borrowed from the future, to ensure that the future generation(s) (including ourselves) will have a (bright) future. And already many of these young Greek people have to pay for their parents' spendthrift habits.
Quirks of first-past-the-post affecting Britain
By Wei Seng
Clegg, Brown or Cameron? Hmmm
Britain's elections, which just concluded voting yesterday and with almost all votes counted, would produce landmark results never before seen since 1970. To those who have been following the British elections, there must have been some doubts and qualms about the big deal that British politicians and journalists are making over the elections and the way the winner is determined.
Britain, like Singapore (our system is adapted from theirs, for obvious historical reasons), uses the first-past-the-post system, also known as winner-takes-all and plurality voting system. Simply, the winner of the elections is one who has the most number of votes cast for him, but not necessarily with an absolute majority. I had problems trying to understand what this actually meant, but perhaps an example would work well here (the example in the Wikipedia article is quite confusing).
Take the current election for Britain. In brief overview, the British do not directly elect their prime minister, but instead elect a representative in their district, with each party wishing to contest having a representative. The party with the most number of representatives elected would win the election, and then a prime minister would be installed from the party (or alliance, if a few parties came together) that won the most votes. Of the three main parties, the Conservatives have won the most number of seats and the most number of votes in Britain, and hence is the largest party represented in Parliament. This would technically mean that the Conservatives would produce the Prime Minister and lead the Parliament. However, they have not won an absolute majority of votes in the election, as the number of votes for the Labour and Liberal Democrat parties, if added together, would outnumber that of the Conservatives. The Telegraph has a detailed breakdown of the results: Conservatives 36.45%, Labour 29.01%, Liberal Democrats 23.03%. So while it might be fair for the Conservatives to claim to represent the most number of people, proportionately this is not true.
In another perverse twist, the Liberal Democrats, while having 23% of the vote, have far from 23% of the seats in Parliament. After some calculations based on the results on The Telegraph, the Conservatives have 36% of the votes but 47% of the seats (there are 650 seats in Parliament). Labour has 29% of the votes but 39% of the seats. The disadvantaged Liberal Democrats have 23% of the votes but only 8% of the seats. So the Liberal Democrats are highly underrepresented in Parliament while Labour and Conservatives are overrepresented by 10%. The whole purpose of such a system is to produce strong parliamentary majorities that will reduce the need for coalition government, which can be messy and fractious as witnessed in countries that practice the proportional representation system (e.g. Germany), but given the conditions Britain is facing, the elections have produced a nightmare that will probably exacerbate the problems. An article in the Christian Science Monitor elaborates more on the implications of such a system.
The conditions have created a hung parliament: where no party wins an outright majority. The government could be created through a coalition of parties to produce a majority, or a minority government could be created by the largest party in Parliament (i.e. the Conservatives). The problems of a hung parliament for Britain are immense, as Britain currently faces a huge budget / debt crisis, that in the face of Greece's debt crisis, is all the more important to tackle fast. Given that a hung Parliament would often be undecisive and wrought by bickering, "leading to paralysis", the people and investors would be spooked, with terrible consequences for Britain's economy and medium-term prospects.
With a hung parliament, first-past-the-post magnifies problems: whoever forms up the government has only so much mandate to govern, given that each party has only so much representation of the electorate, and the electorate has given slaps in the face of all 3 parties. Initially the Conservatives were tipped to win the elections easily with an absolute majority, but somehow as the elections drew nearer the margin between the leading Conservatives and Labour narrowed. Labour is lucky not to have lost as bad, but to have lost 100 seats is an obvious indication of great displeasure with the current Labour administration. The Liberal Democrats rose in popularity during the televised debates (which I covered recently) but somehow that did not translate into votes; they even lost several seats in Parliament. The electorate has spoken and expressed displeasure with the politicians, but unfortunately how this will help to solve problems is anyone's guess. I dont blame the people for having voted like that, because the parties have not been performing to their fullest potential in highlighting the problems the country faces and in providing the solutions to these problems.
I wait with bated breath as the three major parties slug it out in the race to install the new prime minister of Britain.