February 2025

LETTERS – FEB 2025

Opportunism: the new world order

Dear Sir

In light of much criticism of democracy in recent times, and the need to appreciate that it is not the system of choice or pragmatism for all the world’s nations, I found the tone and message of your JanuaryEditorial very interesting (‘Flaws exposed in autocratic vision’).  With Syria a stark example of how the West’s ‘mission to embed democracy in swathes of alien cultures’ has failed, as the writer notes, and autocracies having learned their own lessons about their limitations when it comes to invoking a new world order, it may indeed be time for both to begin ‘bending their own rules’ and aiming to profit from opportunities that may not always accord with ideologies.

Lawrence T. Beck

Birmingham, UK

Dream or nightmare?

Dear Sirs

Once again, Asian Affairs has shone a spotlight on the ‘calm’ after the storm, as previously examined in analyses on Sri Lanka and Iran in the wake of uprisings in those countries, wherevarying degrees of hope for change have followed.

This time it was the turn of Bangladesh, in Amit Agnihotri’s perceptive article ‘Dhaka’s democracy dream’ (Jan. 2025 edition), which charted the fall of Sheikh Hasina and the installing of DrMuhammad Yunus as head of a new interim government, with his ‘promise of ushering in political and economic reforms’.

Yet,as Mr Agnihotri points out, already the new administration is showing worrying signs in itsfailure to protect Bangladesh’s ethnic and religious minorities, and he cites (from a report by Transparency International Bangladesh) over 2,000 incidents of ethnic violence that occurred between August 5 and 20 – after Sheikh Hasina had already fled to India.

Moreover, I have read journalistic reports that, even as public forums are now being allowed for open debate and expression of opinion, there is still surveillance by intelligence agencies, which surely defeats the object of these platforms.

Sheikh Hasina came to power after a free and fair election in 2008, then slowly turned that democratic mandate on its head. A large part of what enabled this was the vast machinery of surveillance. If true reform is to happen under Dr Yunus, as the people of Bangladesh most definitely want, this machinery must be dismantled.

Name and address provided

 

 Back from the brink

So sad to see South Korea currently mired in such a political mess, as reported by Yvonne Gill in your January issue (‘Democracy in peril’). This country had been a real poster child for democracy, development and technological innovation in Asia, and even the controversial (now suspended) President Yoon Suk Yeol did some good in his efforts to end the longstanding friction with Japan.But his convictionof former presidents Park Geun-hye and Lee Myung-bak for abuse of power now comes across as a glaring irony, while his promotion of close (unqualified) associates to high office and his ‘anti-feminist’ stance make him seem unfit to govern this forward-looking nation. Let us hope South Korea can soon step back from the brink.

Daniel Rogers

Boston, MA

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