By William S. Cole

William S. Cole is The Asia Foundation’s Senior Director for Governance, Law, and Civil Society. He can be reached at bcole@asiafound.org.

The Afghanistan Presidential election being held this week, with a possible October run-off, will have a winner. But, whoever that winner is and whatever policy redirection may be in store, dramatic changes on the ground are unlikely.

Despite the political rhetoric inherent in all democratic electioneering, the next President – whether Hamid Karzai, Abdullah Abdullah, Ashraf Ghani, or any of three dozen other candidates – will take the reins of a nation with few if any game-changing opportunities ahead. The problem is that real policy options, the ones faced every day on the ground in Afghanistan, have never been as many or a varied as they have appeared from a distance. Despite over-inflated expectations, the outcomes in terms of peace and reconstruction were always going to be slower and more mixed than initially hoped. That’s not to say that mistakes, big ones, were not made on all sides, domestic and international. No question, the people of Afghanistan deserve better government. But how much better could it have been and can it be, given that policy making in this country is always more messy, murky, and limited than it appears in hindsight. That fact will not change no matter who is sitting in the Presidential Palace after September.
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By Edward Reed

Edward Reed is The Asia Foundation’s Country Representative in Korea. He can be reached at ereed@asiafound.org.

It seems to me that there are two names that have indelibly influenced modern Korean history and the amazing accomplishments that the Korean people have achieved. One is Park Chung-hee, who force-marched Koreans down the road of economic growth, laying the foundations for the prosperity that we see today. The other is Kim Dae-jung, who passed away Tuesday, a towering icon of his country’s strides in democracy, human rights and inter-Korean reconciliation. I had the privilege to be living in Korea to witness, first, the collision of the two when it appeared that Park had won the day, and in more recent years, the flowering of a robust political culture deeply influenced by the ideals that Kim fought for all his life.
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By Daniel Widome

Daniel Widome is a Junior Associate at The Asia Foundation. He can be reached at dwidome@asiafound.org.

As Japan nears its August 30 election, a mixture of political weariness and anticipation fills the air. The ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), under the leadership of Prime Minister Taro Aso, is deeply unpopular and trails badly in pre-election polls; its nearly-uninterrupted 54-year reign seems to be in its final days. The opposition Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ), led by Yukio Hatoyama, stands poised to win a plurality in the lower house of Japan’s Diet, giving it license to form a new government. A combination of bleak economic conditions and even bleaker political mismanagement has led to this seemingly foregone conclusion. But change doesn’t come easily in Japan. Even if the LDP is ousted on August 30, the political structures and culture that have sustained its lengthy reign will not disappear overnight.
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By Steven Rood

Steven Rood is The Asia Foundation’s Country Representative for the Philippines and Pacific Island Nations. He can be reached at srood@asiafound.org.

After a year of increased violence in central Mindanao, signs of hope have appeared. In August 2008, the government of the Philippines was on the verge of signing a agreement on ancestral domain with the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF), only to have the Philippine Supreme Court issue a last-minute temporary restraining order against the signing and later rule the proposed Memorandum of Agreement on Ancestral Domain (MOA-AD) unconstitutional. In the aftermath of that debacle, elements of the MILF attacked Christian areas of Mindanao, and the government launched operations against those elements. While it was often said that only three MILF commanders were the target of the operations and that the cessation of hostilities between the government and the MILF continued to be in force, the facts of the matter included hundreds of thousands of internally displaced persons, the withdrawal of the International Monitoring Teams that had reinforced the cessation of hostilities, and the complete suspension of peace talks.
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By Reynald S. Ocampo

Reynald S. Ocampo is The Asia Foundation’s Assistant Program Officer for the Foundation’s Books for Asia program in the Philippines. He can be reached at rocampo@asiafound.org.

This week, on August 16, The Asia Foundation’s Books for Asia program donated 35,000 new books to schools in the Mindanao province of Lanao Del Sur. After a simple distribution ceremony attended by two dozen officials from the provincial government and 740 public schools from across the province, the team from The Asia Foundation visited Datu Saber Elementary School.

Students at Datu Saber Elementary School await the arrival of the new books donated by The Asia Foundation.

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By Kim N. B. Ninh

Kim N. B. Ninh is The Asia Foundation’s Country Representative in Vietnam. She can be reached at kninh@asiafound.org.

Vietnam’s citizens have a great passion for reading, and public libraries in Vietnam are free for users, open for long hours, and have relatively well-qualified personnel to support patrons. The country’s public library system is extensive: the National Library of Vietnam in Hanoi functions as a repository for all Vietnamese publications. The network includes 64 provincial/city libraries, 623 district libraries, and 8,677 libraries and reading rooms at the commune and village level. To supplement the public library system, the government provides 10,000 legal book collections throughout the country to ensure that people can access the most basic legal information. They have also opened more than 8,000 Cultural Post Offices (CPOs) at the commune/ward level.
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Taiwan suffered its deadliest storm in half a century as Typhoon Morakot lashed the island for days in early August, killing hundreds and creating thousands of evacuees.

In response, Give2Asia, The Asia Foundation’s affiliate, has established a relief fund and is working with its network on the ground in Taiwan to help those affected by the storms. Give2Asia will bring together contributions to support these local groups, which will be providing immediate assistance and helping with long-term recovery. Some funds will provide for food, shelter and other emergency services; others will support longer-term rebuilding efforts.

Read more about the Taiwan Typhoon Relief Fund.

By V.S. Srikantha

V.S. Srikantha is The Asia Foundation’s Program Manager in Sri Lanka. He can be reached at vssrikantha@asiafound.org.

The end of Sri Lanka’s long 25-year civil war, declared in May, has brought renewed attention to infrastructure and social services essential for accelerating development especially in regions of the country hard hit by the conflict, such as the Eastern Province. Businesses and communities here are eager to rebuild and spark economic growth.

In an effort to strengthen the capacity of local governments in the East to facilitate better services and respond to citizens’ needs, The Asia Foundation, through its Local Economic Governance Project, conducted a study tour in June for over 40 Municipal Council (MC) members and business leaders from two Eastern towns – Batticaloa and Kalmunai. The participants spent two weeks visiting and learning from their counterparts in the Central Province who are practicing good local governance.
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By Scott Snyder

Scott Snyder directs The Asia Foundation’s Center for U.S.-Korea Policy. He was quoted on former President Bill Clinton’s  trip to North Korea to negotiate the release of two American journalists in The Los Angeles Times, NPR, and Slate. Today, Snyder blogged on Global Security about the implications of this visit. He can be reached at ssnyder@asiafound-dc.org.

Bill Clinton’s dramatic mission to secure the release of two American journalists Laura Ling and Euna Lee following North Korea’s harsh verdict regarding their unauthorized entry into North Korea has succeeded on multiple fronts, based on criteria for success I offered yesterday: 1) the visit secured the release of the two journalists, 2) the visit has provided a first-hand opportunity for a direct assessment of Kim Jong Il’s health and the leadership’s decision-making capacity, 3) the visit provided an opportunity to convey directly to Kim Jong Il an American view of North Korea’s situation and the unacceptability of North Korea’s continued nuclear weapons pursuits. We do not know yet whether Kim Jong Il has been able to use the opportunity to make a new start in relations with the Obama administration.
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By Steven Rood

Steven Rood is The Asia Foundation’s Country Representative for the Philippines and Pacific Island Nations. Before joining the Foundation, from 1981 until becoming Representative in 1999, he was Professor of Political Science at the University of the Philippines in Baguio, a mountain city 250 kilometers north of Manila. He can be reached at srood@asiafound.org.

The passing of former Philippine President Corazon Cojuangco Aquino has evoked strong emotions. Many – Filipino and foreigner alike – have written their thoughts and assessments since she died last weekend, some with mixed feelings one has when powerful memories have been stirred.

Like most Filipinos, I never met “Cory” but came to know her first by her voice over the radio (yes, radio, as television coverage of the opposition to the Marcos government was decidedly scarce) while I was a professor at the University of the Philippines. One night in February 1986, while tuning in to the Catholic station, Radio Veritas, to hear her nightly announcement of protest actions against the fraudulent presidential election that had been rigged by Ferdinand Marcos, to our astonishment we heard Defense Secretary (now Senator) Juan Ponce Enrile and Constabulary Chief (now former President) Fidel V. Ramos discussing their actions in rising up against President Marcos. Thus followed days of anxiety, hope, excitement, and, finally, joy, as a bloodless ouster of a long-time dictator was accomplished. “People Power” had triumphed.
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