INDONESIA A NEWS

An extraordinary letter apparently written last week by Muhammad Nazaruddin, the former fugitive and onetime treasurer of Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono’s Democratic Party, is shaking the country’s politics to the core ahead of 2014 national elections.  The increasingly murky Nazaruddin affair does not augur well for international investors who may have hoped that the country’s rising economic prowess would result in an equally rational political and governmental environment. The letter was made public by OC Kaligis, Nazaruddin’s lawyer, saying in effect that Nazaruddin would shut up about crimes committed by the Democrats if Yudhoyono would guarantee his family’s safety, leading to the obvious if unproven conclusion that the party’s leaders are culpable in as-yet-undisclosed offenses.  Analysts say it smacks of a cover-up that could wreck the part y. Founded in 2001, the Democrat Party came into power in the 2004 national elections, almost solely on Yudhoyono’...

Is the Arab Spring turning into a gloomy autumn? With brutal krackdowns in Syria, a bloody civil war in Libya, and Yemen teetering on the brink of chaos, the number of sceptics is growing.  Although Egypt and Tunisia's pro-democracy movements achieved rapid regime change, uncertainties remain in those countries, too. After a brief period of hope, many observers now wonder whether the region is capable of producing viable, and economically vibrant, democracies.Revolutions and their aftermaths, of course, are always fluid and fickletimes, and the outcome is often perched on a knife's edge. Bridging thevast gap between high expectations and the reality of limited budgets and capabilities is a test in itself. Redressing past injustice and building an economy that offers opportunity to all are major challenges as well, fraught with volatility, uncertainty, and the dangers of political opportunism.But transitions are also times of great opportunity. In the 1990s, I wasamong those In...