AFTER all the foreign blood and money spent on trying to turn a poor, wrecked country into a unified state and a functioning democracy, much has been riding on the drawn-out presidential election. Yet this week the prospect loomed of Afghanistan unravelling, as the apparent runner-up in the election, Abdullah Abdullah, cried foul over the preliminary results of a June run-off released on July 7th.
Dr Abdullah says that the victory of Ashraf Ghani, a technocrat who has the support of the outgoing president, Hamid Karzai, is the result of ballot-stuffing. His spokesman decried it as a “coup”. Dr Abdullah threatened to declare a parallel government. As The Economist went to press, Dr Abdullah, a former foreign minister who was the victim of electoral fraud in 2009, had not exercised that option, which would tip the country into chaos. But concern in America is palpable. Its president, Barack Obama, telephoned Dr Abdullah and urged him against any rash declaration. Its secretary of state, John Kerry, is hurrying to Kabul, the capital.
The preliminary results of the second-round, run-off vote give 56% to Mr Ghani and 44% to Dr Abdullah. Yet for weeks Dr Abdullah has been accusing Mr Ghani of large-scale fraud, in cahoots with the Independent (though chiefly in name only) Election Commission. In the first round in early April, which several presidential candidates contested, Mr Ghani got 31.6% of the vote versus Dr Abdullah’s 45%—five percentage points short of outright victory.
That Mr Ghani could overtake Dr Abdullah in the second round is plausible, as supporters of defeated candidates threw their weight behind him. Mr Ghani, a Pushtun, has the clear support of Pushtuns, who reside mainly in the south and east and who are Afghanistan’s biggest ethnic group. What is suspicious, however, is that far more Afghans appear to have voted in the second round than in the first—8.1m versus 6.6m. In one south-eastern province Mr Ghani’s vote leapt tenfold. He attributes success to better campaigning in his strongholds—and persuading Pushtun leaders to let women vote.
Though Dr Abdullah is of mixed Tajik and Pushtun descent, many Tajiks, who are numerous in the north and west of the country, view him as one of their own. His chief backer is his vice-presidential candidate. Atta Mohammad Noor, a former warlord, is the immensely wealthy satrap of Balkh province in the north. He has not only money but arms and has been calling loudest on Dr Abdullah to set up his own government. He is motivated in part by a desire to keep Mr Ghani’s vice-presidential nominee, Abdul Rashid Dostum, another (and even more thuggish) northern former warlord, from accruing more power. Yet for Dr Abdullah to make a move would split the country along both ethnic and geographical lines.
In the end, the threats from his camp may serve mainly to gain Dr Abdullah more influence in a Ghani administration. Both the election commission and Mr Ghani have agreed to an audit of the voting. The question is how far it should go. Meanwhile, Mr Kerry is likely to make it very clear to Dr Abdullah that Americans would view any early move by him as an illegal power-grab. Should the West withhold promised aid as NATO troops withdraw by the end of the year, the country would not have enough money to buy the Afghan army’s shoe laces, let alone fight the Taliban and other insurgents. Dr Abdullah surely knows that. Whether he can march his maddened supporters down the hill again is another matter.
IF BEIJING’S hosting of the 2008 Olympics was a sporting success, it was a cultural disaster. It provided the excuse for a years-long orgy of greed, vanity and opaque decision-making that tore into the fabric of an extraordinary city and threw up in its place bombastic creations by star architects lacking in context or human scale. Surely Tokyo, capital of a peaceable democracy and the most civil city on earth, could not commit such crimes?
Perhaps it could. Think back to Tokyo’s last Olympics, in 1964. Then, Nihonbashi, the bridge once at the heart of the city’s merchant and cultural life, had an eight-lane expressway thrown over it, while the area’s many canals were all filled in.
Many who hate what happened to Nihonbashi (even an official report called it the country’s greatest eyesore) are up in arms about the new Zaha Hadid-designed stadium planned for the 2020 Olympic games. On July 5th hundreds marched in Tokyo against another round of outsized Olympic vandalism.
The arena designed by the Iraqi-British starchitect is a vast carapace: twice the size of any previous Olympic Stadium and three times as big as the much-loved 1964 stadium, about to meet the wrecking balls. Its construction means evicting many elderly from their homes, and it eats into a rare area of parkland near the Meiji shrine. The ostentation of the design, says Jeff Kingston of Temple University in Tokyo, is redolent of bubble-era Japan. Like so much thrown up in the 1980s, the stadium will be a white elephant once the games are over. Several of Japan’s finest architects, among them Kengo Kuma, are up in arms against it.
There is Olympics-related philistinism elsewhere in the city. Tsukiji, the world’s greatest fish market and last chief link to Tokyo’s merchant past, is to be demolished in preparation for the games. The latest architectural crime is the plan to demolish the country’s most admired hotel, Hotel Okura (a place beloved of the current finance minister, Taro Aso, for late-night drinks). It, too, opened for the 1964 games, as part of the country’s emergence from the ruins of war. It is a masterpiece of Japanese traditional design and cool 1960s modernism. Its lobby and bars, as well as the hotel’s impeccable service, are preserved in Bond-era aspic (the hotel starred in “You Only Live Twice”). Yet it is to go in favour of a bland, 38-storey glass tower unless its short-sighted guardians can be reminded of what is being lost. In contrast to Beijing, you are unlikely to be arrested for protesting at mindless destruction.
IT IS impossible to defeat an insurgency, an American commander of NATO’s forces in Afghanistan once said between clenched teeth, when the insurgents enjoy an inviolable sanctuary in a neighbouring country. The problem has plagued the 13-year military effort in Afghanistan. Foreign and Afghan forces have been unable to deal a knockout blow to the Taliban when so much of their infrastructure remains intact just across the border, in the badlands of north-western Pakistan.
Now, it is Pakistan’s turn to feel the frustration. Its army is in the thick of long-awaited operations to clear Pakistani militants from North Waziristan, one of the tribal agencies bordering Afghanistan. This week it appears to have regained control of the remote region’s capital, Miranshah. But the government in Islamabad is crying foul over the presence of militant safe havens on Afghan soil. The Pakistani army has renewed calls for Afghanistan to catch Mullah Fazlullah, leader of the Tehreek-e-Taliban (TTP). Known also as the Pakistani Taliban, the TTP is an umbrella grouping of violent Islamists and is Pakistan’s gravest threat (it is reckoned to have few formal links to its Afghan namesake). Mr Fazlullah could be hiding in Kunar or Nuristan, two of Afghanistan’s eastern provinces.
Many Afghans regard the call as exceptional cheek from a country that for years has done little to clear its vast swathe of north-western territory of workshops making bombs destined for Afghanistan and radical madrassas indoctrinating Afghan fighters. The senior leadership of the Afghan Taliban, the Quetta Shura, is even named after the Pakistani city in which most of its members live.
Indeed, many in the Pakistani establishment have actively assisted a movement regarded as useful in Pakistan’s obsessive struggle to lessen Indian influence in Afghanistan. Pakistan has other reasons to resent Afghanistan, which voted against Pakistan’s membership of the UN in 1947. It thinks Afghanistan vies for the affections of ethnic Pashtuns living in Pakistan. Many of them live in a part of Pakistan that Afghanistan claims the British Raj took unfairly. For all these reasons, since the mid-1970s Pakistan has backed Islamist militants as proxies in Afghanistan.
Many Pakistanis think Afghanistan is now getting its own back. In cahoots with India, they say, Afghanistan is both helping the TTP and stoking rebellion in the restive Pakistani province of Balochistan. Western diplomats say this view is overblown. In both instances Afghan assistance is marginal at best. It is also unclear what Afghanistan’s hard-pressed security forces could do about Nuristan, a place so tough that NATO abandoned it in 2010 after failing to subdue it.
But perhaps Afghanistan has tried playing its own double game. In late 2013 American soldiers arrested a senior TTP commander after he was tracked to a secret meeting with Afghan intelligence officers. A diplomat likens the situation to a devilish game-theory puzzle. Mutual co-operation would produce the best outcome for all. But players seem unable to resist striking each other.
An optimistic view is that Pakistan’s decision to launch Operation Zarb-e-Azb (loosely translated: “strike of the Prophet’s sword”) on June 15th in a bid to clear North Waziristan of militants suggests it has at last understood that a shocking increase in domestic terrorism far outweighs any possible advantages from the long-standing policy of backing militants. And though army officers have been notably reluctant to identify Afghan insurgent groups by name—and the deadly Haqqani network in particular—they insist the operation will make no distinction between foreign and domestic terrorists. Many analysts remain sceptical, however. After all, Afghan insurgents in North Waziristan seem to have had ample time to make themselves scarce before the operation began.
THE prime minister of Japan, Shinzo Abe, flew to the Australian outback’s red desert on July 9th to inspect the commodity that once defined his country’s relations with Australia: iron ore. He left behind policy wonks in Canberra, the capital, digesting his blunt call a day earlier for a “truly new base” for the relationship between the two countries. After acknowledging the second world war, in which Australia and Japan were mortal enemies, Mr Abe told Parliament that Australia and Japan must now “join up in a scrum, just like in rugby” to nurture regional peace. Many Australians read his remarks as recruiting Australia as an ally in Japan’s disputes with China, creating a growing dilemma for some in the host country.
Mr Abe had arrived from New Zealand, where John Key, the prime minister, opposed any attempt by Japan to resume whaling in the Antarctic Ocean following the International Court of Justice’s ruling against Japan’s “scientific” whale hunts in April. In Canberra, however, Mr Abe’s sights were fixed more on the Pacific and Indian Oceans. Mr Abe’s speech made no mention of China, yet it was all about that country, its growing military posturing and its challenges to neighbours’ maritime claims. Mr Abe called on Australia to join Japan in keeping the Asia-Pacific region’s “vast seas” and its skies “open and free”.
Mr Abe played on historical resonance in a visit that could go down as a key moment in the two countries’ relations. In 1957 Mr Abe’s grandfather, Nobusuke Kishi, became Japan’s first post-war prime minister to visit Australia, signing a commerce treaty. Yet Japan’s attacks in 1942 on northern Australia and Sydney, and the brutal treatment of Australian prisoners-of-war in New Guinea, Borneo and elsewhere, overshadowed relations for decades.
As the first Japanese prime minister to address Parliament, Kishi’s grandson “humbly” offered his “most sincere condolences” to those who lost their lives. Mr Abe’s reference to the “evils and horrors of history” was the most expansive such acknowledgment by a Japanese leader on Australian soil. The speech was intended to sound frank and open-minded—though not for the first time in the history of Japanese apologetics, it amounted neither to full-blown acceptance of Japanese war guilt nor a clear apology.
But Tony Abbott, Australia’s prime minister, was not going to let that get in the way. He approved heartily when Mr Abe pronounced that the two countries had cast off “one old layer” to form a new “special relationship”. The two leaders signed a free-trade agreement, and another pact to share defence equipment and technology. Australia needs to replace ageing submarines, and Japan has world-beating engine technology.
More closely than anyone, China is watching this cosying up between two of America’s key Pacific allies, and it does not approve. That unsettles a number of Australians who worry about the growing dilemma of relying on China for prosperity and the United States for security. Ever since China displaced Japan as Australia’s biggest trading partner seven years ago, debate in Australia has focused on how the country should balance its relations with China, America and Japan. Mr Abbott unsettled some last October when he (accurately) called Japan Australia’s “best friend in Asia”. He supports Japan’s decision earlier this month to ditch a ban on coming to the military aid of allies if Japan itself is also under threat. Mr Abbott welcomes Japan’s becoming a “more capable strategic partner in our region”.
Mr Abbott claims that “ours is not a partnership against anyone”. But that is precisely where doubts remain in the wake of the Abe visit. China’s bullying of neighbours over maritime claims is behind much anxiety in Asia, and a chief reason why Japan wants to bolster its own security and recruit friends. Yet Japan’s poor relations with neighbours, mainly over wartime history, allows China to tout the myth that Japanese militarism is on the prowl once more. Australians care more than most when China chooses to be angry.
In the nearly six decades since Mr Kishi’s visit, Australia’s relations with Japan have spun peaceably around strong trade ties and a mutual alliance with America. China’s rise has complicated that. Hugh White at the Australian National University argues that Australia has never had to face a country in its region that is positioning itself as a strategic rival to both Japan and America. For Australia to assume that its interests can be comfortably yoked to Japan’s, he says, would be a “very big risk”. The problem is, to yoke Australia’s interests with China’s would be an even bigger one.
IN LATE June the two candidates in Indonesia’s presidential race both held rallies in Jakarta, the capital. Supporters of Joko Widodo, known to all as Jokowi (pictured right), walked and cycled through the central business district. From a stage set up at a roundabout, Jokowi thanked his supporters in a brief, rather flat speech.
Prabowo Subianto (pictured left) held his rally at Bung Karno stadium, which seats more than 80,000. Trumpeters and drummers heralded his arrival in a white convertible. He was flanked by his running mate, Hatta Rajasa, and by leaders of the parties in his coalition—all wearing identical white shirts. The rally did not quite reach the theatrical heights of an event back in March, where he arrived by helicopter and pranced astride a bay charger. But he delivered a fiery speech, and was carried off on the shoulders of cheering supporters.
Vulgar showmanship, no doubt. But Mr Prabowo has run a devastating campaign against Jokowi, clawing his way back in opinion polls from a 39-point deficit. The election, which will be held on July 9th, is too close to call. On June 30th Jokowi was polling at 46% of the votes and Mr Prabowo at 42.6%.
Jokowi is an unusual politician. A mediocre orator, his appeal rests on his humble roots as a furniture seller, his can-do pragmatism and a reputation unsullied by corruption. He has no great fortune, and, unlike many of those born into political influence, was not educated abroad.
With a cupboard free of skeletons, he built a name for effective governance, first as mayor of the mid-sized Javanese city of Solo and then as governor of Jakarta. He was good at the unsexy problems of dredging canals, collecting rubbish and providing health care—life-improving things that ordinary people notice. He made a point of walking through neighbourhoods and listening to constituents—a rarity in Indonesia. He is often compared to Barack Obama for the way he energised voters—even before he officially launched his campaign.
The difference is that Mr Obama was a near-perfect campaigner. Jokowi has been disappointing. He never grasped that running for president is a different game from running for smaller offices. Promises of good governance are not enough. Someone close to his team says two failings stand out. First, Jokowi has lacked a ruthlessly professional campaign. His handlers have not swatted down the smears that could never be traced back to Mr Prabowo’s people: that Jokowi was secretly a Chinese, a Christian or a Communist, or that he was the puppet of Megawati Sukarnoputri, a former president and the head of the party on whose ticket Jokowi is running. Second, in a country as large, diverse and complex as Indonesia, Jokowi needed to tell a broader story: here is what is wrong with Indonesia, and here is how I intend to fix it. Jokowi never developed these storytelling skills.
Yet the campaign is not merely about one candidate’s missed chances. It is also about how Mr Prabowo seized the initiative. While Jokowi started campaigning only in March, Mr Prabowo has in effect been doing so for a decade, having sought the presidency twice before. Both his ex-wife, Siti Hediati Hariyadi, daughter of the late dictator, Suharto, and his fabulously wealthy brother, Hashim Djojohadikusumo, have campaigned on his behalf. He also has the backing of two television tycoons—Aburizal Bakrie, who heads the Golkar party, and Hary Tanoesoedibjo. Between them they have five of Indonesia’s 12 terrestrial television networks.
One’s to lose, the other’s to win
Douglas Ramage of BowerGroupAsia, a business consultancy, credits Mr Prabowo with giving Indonesians “a message they want to hear: an assertive, muscular Indonesia that has lost control of its natural resources and had too much of its wealth taken by foreigners.” Mr Prabowo’s nationalist fulminations sound rather paranoid, and it is not clear that he believes them. But they seem to be working.
There is a darker side however. Mr Prabowo has long been dogged by talk of human-rights abuses: for instance, that in the late 1990s as an army general he ordered the abduction and torture of pro-democracy activists and helped stir up anti-Chinese riots in which many died. When Jokowi’s running-mate, Jusuf Kalla, raised the allegations during a debate, Mr Prabowo deflected them by saying he was simply a former soldier who did his duty. Military bluffness is part of his political persona.
Mr Prabowo has also expressed reservations about democracy. He has repeatedly expressed a desire for Indonesia to return to its original constitution, which placed great power in the hands of the president and provided for the holder of that office to be elected by the legislature rather than by popular vote. On June 28th he called direct elections “not appropriate for us”, and said that “much of our current political and economic systems go against our nation’s fundamental philosophy, laws and traditions…They do not suit our culture.”
Though Mr Prabowo later backtracked, many worry that he would see victory as a mandate to roll back direct elections. He could do considerable political damage just by trying. Marcus Mietzner, a specialist in Indonesian politics at Australian National University, believes that Mr Prabowo’s anti-democratic statements have turned Jokowi, the apparent agent of change, into “the candidate of the status quo. Under his presidency, democracy, with all of its flaws and deficiencies, would continue.”
As for their economic policies, both candidates have espoused protectionism. Jokowi’s appears milder. Foreign investors certainly prefer him: Deutsche Bank reports that if Mr Prabowo wins, 56% of investors surveyed would sell their Indonesian assets and just 13% would buy, while a Jokowi win would cause 74% to buy and just 6% to sell.
In truth their platforms are not radically different. Both want more roads and power; both want to keep in place a ban on exports of unprocessed mineral ore; and both say they worry about rising inequality and environmental degradation. Both, too, will have to manage fractious parliamentary coalitions. The two differ markedly, however, in both their personalities and their pasts. On July 9th Indonesians will decide how much that matters.
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Tieng Anh Vui
