Taiwan’s Well-Informed Voters

Published on Nov 30, 2011 by Luke Hunt

FAR EAST CORRESPONDENT — Forget Christmas: if you’re a Taiwanese activist, the best time to open your presents is during a close presidential election race likely to be won on the margins. Ahead of January’s polls, nationalist Kuomintang incumbent Ma Ying-jeou and chief rival Democratic Progressive party chairwoman Tsai Ing-wen have ditched the traditional Taiwanese political playbook and gone for support from aboriginal, landowner, gay, women, animal and environmental rights groups. Cain Nunns writes for The Guardian Weekly. .

Arroyo’s Legal Battle

Published on Nov 30, 2011 by Luke Hunt

FAR EAST CORRESPONDENT — It might be an old fashioned family feud – the Aquinos versus the Arroyos – that’s worthy of a nation’s attention. But for former Philippine President Gloria Arroyo, the consequences of the row could well go beyond family and sovereign borders. Few would have been surprised by her arrest after authorities blocked her attempt to fly out of the country to seek medical attention for a bone ailment, seated in a wheelchair and sporting a rather elaborate head and neck brace. Read more in The Diplomat. .

Are Asian Savers Euro Saviours?

Published on Nov 29, 2011 by Luke Hunt

ASIAWATCH — As the Eurozone debt crisis spirals from one embattled bond market to the next, it is becoming clear we are likely heading into a double dip global recession. Whilst economic fundamentals of the United States may in fact be improving, investor pessimism is quickly spreading across the globe. The gloomy outlook has spread from Ireland and Portugal to Spain and Greece. Italy was the next to face the wrath of the bond markets, with Hungary the latest. The question has become – when will it be France? In this, the Asian Century, world leaders are turning to the emerging economies of the Far East as a potential saviour for the unfolding debt crises. Germany’s Chancellor Angela Merkel and....

Brahms & Vietnam

Published on Nov 28, 2011 by Luke Hunt

FAR EAST CORRESPONDENT — From his spartan farm house, Nguyen Huu Dua explains in Vietnamese of the time when received a midnight visit from the organisers of a concert at Hanoi’s famous opera house. He and his troupe of violinists were scheduled to perform there, and the event’s producers couldn’t believe that they were all several generations of humble farmers. Mr Dua later took to the stage in his traditional farmer’s pajamas, and remembers the event fondly. Helen Clark writes for The Economist. .

Three Old Men

Published on Nov 28, 2011 by Luke Hunt

ASIAWATCH — The current trial of surviving Khmer Rouge leaders in Phnom Penh is the judicial process that Stalin and Mao never faced. These tyrants died in their beds without ever answering for, in Stalin’s case, the famines and the bloody 1937 Moscow trials, and in the Chinese chairman’s, for the Great Leap Forward, and resulting mass hunger that claimed 30 million lives. James Pringle writes for Asian Sentinel. Now three elderly Cambodian men from 80 to 86 years old – those who made the Khmer Rouge policies – must answer, in a trial that opened in Phnom Penh this week, for at least 1.7 million deaths, and the destruction of one of Asia’s once most culturally splendid of countries,....