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Papua New Guinea: Desperate fling (Feb 2)

They went quietly in the end A BUNGLED mutiny in Papua New Guinea was brought to an end on January 30th when 30 soldiers surrendered their weapons in exchange for an amnesty. Days earlier a larger group of rebels had seized control of barracks in the capital, Port Moresby, and briefly held the Commander of the PNG Defence Force, Brigadier-General Francis Agwi, under house arrest. They then retreated after failing to obtain broader support from senior officers. The rebels’ leader, Colonel Yaura Sasa, was arrested on January 28th, vehemently denying that he was responsible for a failed coup. He claimed instead to have been following government orders. He has since been released on bail.The question is who the government is. A Supreme Court ruling in December declared the government of the incumbent prime minister, Peter O’Neill, to be illegal and ordered the restoration of his predecessor, a 75-year-old veteran, Sir Michael Somare. The judges opined that Sir Michael’s...

Banyan: The devil in the deep blue detail (Feb 2)

THE South China Sea and its myriad disputes have spawned academic analysis on an industrial scale. But as an attention-grabbing international issue, the wrangling has an image problem: so many contested, arcane technicalities; so many conferences and research papers—in sum, so much talk; but so few shots fired in anger. That may be why commentators tend to paint the disputes in an almost apocalyptic light: “The South China Sea is the Future of Conflict” shrieked an article last September in Foreign Policy, an American journal. The author, Robert Kaplan, forecast that “just as German soil constituted the military front line of the cold war, the waters of the South China Sea may constitute the military front line of the coming decades.”He may well be right. The disputes over the sea are no nearer a resolution than ever. But they have persisted for decades without threatening global peace and need not inevitably become the main focus of tension between China and Ameri...

Politics in India: UP, down, sideways (Feb 2)

Rahul in fly-blown corner THE famous speaker draws a hefty crowd, but little enthusiasm. Farmers and residents of Gorakhpur, a scruffy, fast-growing market town in eastern Uttar Pradesh (UP), have waited for hours in a wintry wind to hear him, weather-beaten old men huddling for warmth at the front. “I have no expectation,” says one of these. “I’ve only come to see.”Rahul Gandhi’s stump speech (brief and earnest) earns few cheers. The heir both to the Gandhi-Nehru dynasty and the ruling Congress Party pledges a state government for UP of all castes and tribes. Rolling up his sleeves and jabbing a finger in the air, he talks of fighting corruption. He gets a single chuckle by telling of an elephant that chomps government money meant for the poor—a blunt reference to Mayawati, the charismatic teacher-turned-chief minister, whose wealth has attracted as-yet unproven accusations of massive graft.It is hard-going for any politician in this fly-blown corner notorious for ...

America in Afghanistan: Outta here (Feb 2)

SPEAKING on February 1st shortly before a meeting of NATO ministers in Brussels, Leon Panetta, America’s defence secretary, dropped a bombshell. He said that he now hoped American troops in Afghanistan would be able to withdraw from a combat to an “enabling” role soon after the middle of next year—ie, about 18 months earlier than an existing plan agreed on in late 2010 at a NATO summit in Lisbon. The timing of Mr Panetta’s remarks about accelerating the pace of the transition to Afghan national security forces (ANSF) owes more to the Obama administration’s electoral calculations than to the situation in Afghanistan. There, everything argues against a rush for the exit.Although Mr Panetta paid lip service to Lisbon, stressing that his proposal did not mean early withdrawal and adding “we’ve got to stick to the Lisbon strategy”, he was, in fact, carefully undermining what had previously been agreed on. Mid-to-late 2013 rather than end-2014 will almost certainly now b...

Myanmar and Singapore: Among friends (Feb 2)

Thein Sein off the reservation MEMBERS of Myanmar’s elite are frequent visitors to Singapore for all sorts of reasons. They come to shop, to pay anxious visits to their bank deposits and their doctors, to put their children into school, to gamble at the world’s biggest casino and to ogle a vision of globalised prosperity. Thein Sein, the president, came this week with a big delegation, for the signing of and agreement on co-operation in areas from tourism to the law and to thank Singapore for its loyal support over the years. But he came mainly to take a bow.Like a prize-winning schoolboy who vindicates his maligned teachers, he makes everybody feel good. A former general, he is Myanmar’s first civilian president for half a century. He has led a startling liberalisation. Most notably, the political system is now open to Aung San Suu Kyi, the leader of the opposition, and her party. She is to contest a by-election in early April and, soon afterwards, Thein Sein impli...

Politics in Malaysia: Najib at bay (Feb 2)
WHEN the leader of the Malaysian opposition, Anwar Ibrahim, was acquitted by a high court judge last month on controversial charges of sodomy, supporters in the government of the reforming prime minister, Najib Razak, were able to claim it as something of a victory. It was proof, they said, that ministers no longer meddled in judicial decisions, as in the bad old days. They even claimed it as evidence of Mr Najib’s wider programme to bring the country into a modern, liberal age.And so the attorney-general’s decision barely two weeks later to appeal against Mr Anwar’s acquittal hardly looks good. Mr Anwar has always maintained that the sodomy charge was a smear that had been orchestrated by people from within Mr Najib’s ruling party, the United Malays National Organisation (UMNO). The case had run for two years, which for many Malaysians was quite long enough. Mr Anwar’s lawyer quickly derided the appeal as “a desperate act”.The attorney-general’s decision renews suspicions that noth...

Political visions in Japan: Generational warfare (Jan 26)

IT IS rare in Japan to find one bold political leader, and even rarer to find two. Yet since the start of the year, two men with wildly different personalities, political styles and power bases have launched daring projects that they hope will help shake Japan out of its long economic funk. They may end up colliding with each other.The first is the prime minister, Yoshihiko Noda. At the opening of the Diet, or parliament, on January 24th, he said he would present a bill by the end of March that aims to double the consumption tax, to 10%. For well over a decade, the political establishment has acknowledged the need for an increase, but its nerve has failed it time and again, despite a ballooning government debt and rising social-security costs for an ageing population. Mr Noda is now gambling his political life on such a tax rise. He also wants to slash the number of Diet members from 480 in the lower house to 395, cut the salaries of civil servants by 8%, and reduc...

Gaming and politics in Australia: Ms Gillard’s gamble (Jan 26)

Dennis’s mum plays the pokies too IN AUSTRALIAN politics, “pokies” loom large. These gambling machines (poker machines, or pokies in Oz-speak) crowd the country’s pubs and clubs. Australians lose more than A$19 billion ($20 billion) a year gambling, about two-thirds of it on pokies. Julia Gillard, the prime minister, put together a minority Labor government 16 months ago partly on the strength of a deal to attack perceived problem gambling. On January 21st, after a campaign by Australia’s clubs industry, she ditched the deal. In doing so, she has further complicated her government’s chances of survival at the election due next year.Ms Gillard struck the pokies deal with Andrew Wilkie, a Tasmanian independent elected to parliament in 2010. Mr Wilkie was alarmed by gambling addiction and its baneful effect on addicts’ families in his constituency. About 600,000 Australians (4% of adults) play pokies at least once a week. On average they pour an astonishing A$8,000 eac...

Censorship in India: Unfunny gags (Jan 26)

Waiting for Salman EVEN a magical realist would struggle with the unlikely tale that unfolded this week at the Jaipur literary festival. Salman Rushdie, an author whom Islamists revile, stayed away, warned by police that two assassins had been dispatched by a Mumbai mafioso to prowl among the literati and murder him.When it turned out that the police story was more inventive than most novels, Mr Rushdie offered to speak by video link. Yet the plug was pulled on that, amid talk of baying mobs of Muslims. The festival organisers, prodded by the authorities, also sent other writers packing from Jaipur for daring to read out extracts from his book “The Satanic Verses”, banned in India.Mr Rushdie managed at least to appear on television, where he blamed politicians for scuppering his appearance. They were, he said, increasingly “in bed” with religious extremists. The Congress party (in power both in Rajasthan and nationally) does look craven, fearful of offending Muslim ...

Politics in Bangladesh: Turbulent house (Jan 26)

And fine cellar confiscated IT WAS, says Gowher Rizvi, a close adviser to Bangladesh’s prime minister, “very quickly nipped in the bud”. He was talking of a coup plot foiled by the army. The schemers—16 were involved, and some are on the run—included disgruntled mid-ranking officers, retired officers, and others abroad. He claims investigators found a list of prominent people to be assassinated, and another list of generals expected to be “potential partners”.Bangladesh has faced dozens of coups, failed or not, in its 40 years. But for an army spokesman to give details of one, on January 19th, was unusual. He named the plotters and blamed them for inducing others to revolt (by passing on provocative e-mails and posting on Facebook). The conspirators, he said, shared extreme religious beliefs.The official view is that dogged opponents of Sheikh Hasina Wajed’s elected regime must now be rooted out, especially from the army. These include Islamists—many supposedly recr...