In Asia: Weekly Insight and Features from Asia

As 4.4 million Jakartans went to the polls to vote for the governor of Indonesia’s capital city on July 11, I needed only to step out my front door to experience the pervasive influence money has on politics here. The first campaigner I spoke to on election day told me about the envelopes of cash he had distributed to voters the night before. His concern was not of corrupting the process, but rather that another campaign was paying three times as much. Gubernatorial elections in Indonesia’s vast capital are a big deal, involving 7 million registered voters and 15,000 voting booths across the city.

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The Jakarta gubernatorial election on July 11 was arguably Indonesia’s single most important ballot before the 2014 presidential polls. With high stakes for the parties jockeying for a win, the race saw political heavyweights vying for the attention of the city’s 7 million voters.

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Nearly 19 years after the establishment of the ASEAN Regional Forum (ARF) at the 26th ASEAN Ministerial Meeting in Singapore in July 1993, the ARF just embarked on its first concrete elections mission, to observe the July 7 parliamentary elections in Timor-Leste.

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On the heels of Timor-Leste’s decade of independence and presidential and parliamentary elections, a new paper examines the nation’s development progress, national security, the significance of the 2012 elections and implications for the country and its role in Southeast Asia. The paper was published by the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies (RSIS) Studies in [...]

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On Saturday, July 7, Timor-Leste’s parliamentary elections took place in a peaceful political environment. The provisional results from the State Technical Body for Administration of the Elections show only four of the 21 political parties on the ballot are going to go through to parliament.

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Throughout Pakistan’s history, the issue of local government – and whether it is elected or bureaucratic – has been used by various regimes to advance their own agendas. The 18th Amendment of the Constitution passed by the National Assembly of Pakistan on April 8, 2010, requires…

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Although Bangladesh’s national elections in 2008 were generally regarded as among the freest and fairest in the nation’s history, four years later, in 2012, concerns are being raised about the fairness of the upcoming 2013 elections, says Tim Meisburger, The Asia Foundation’s director for Elections and Political Processes, in the just-released report “Strengthening Democracy in [...]

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Around midnight on May 27, when most Nepalis were waiting for the new constitution to be unveiled, Prime Minister Baburam Bhattarai announced a fresh election for Nov. 22, 2012, from a hurriedly put-together press conference at his residence.

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Last week, Nepal’s Constituent Assembly (CA) members drafted citizenship provisions in the country’s long-awaited constitution, causing much consternation and almost guaranteeing that approximately 2.1 million persons out of an estimated population of nearly 30 million will remain stateless. The specific draft provision that is deeply problematic and regressive refers to how a child may obtain citizenship by descent in the new Nepal: a child would be granted Nepali citizenship if both mother and father prove they are Nepali citizens.

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At the end of a sabbatical team-teaching one course and blogging weekly, I am eager to get back to my work on the ground in the Philippines. At the end of this “Representative Professor” series, it’s interesting to look back at both what I’ve written and some of what has transpired in the past four months.

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