The defeat of a candidate from the Malaysian opposition in the Teluk Intan by-election over the weekend came as a shock to the Pakatan Rakyat alliance, not least because the low turnout suggested many young people did not bother returning home to vote.Their absence was a key factor contributing to the opposition Democratic Action Party’s defeat in the Perak parliamentary seat which it had won by 7,300 votes in the 2013 general election.Last Saturday, only 66.7 percent of the 60,300 voters cast t

Thailand is too busy with domestic affairs to play mediator between ASEAN and Beijing in the South China Sea, where territorial disputes have escalated recently with clashes between China and Vietnam. But Myanmar, currently chairing ASEAN, has no excuse to sit still.Beijing and Hanoi repeatedly insist they want to solve their dispute by peaceful means, but neither has backed down from provocative moves at sea and so far they’ve shown no readiness to talk.The international community has voiced gr

Grace, tolerance, mercy: these words seem to have disappeared from the lexicon of Pakistani polity. Instead, vengeance, violence, slander and murder seem to have gained currency in a state-sponsored narrative of denial and fear.While institutions have sanctity, those at the helm must be accountable and willing to face healthy criticism. This is the essence of democracy, unless we as a nation are just content with paying lip service to the constitutionally guaranteed right “to enjoy the protectio

First, the good news. President Barack Obama’s proposed rules on coal-fired power plants aren’t a last-ditch, desperate measure. They’re designed to keep a good trend going ― the U.S. is already decreasing its carbon emissions, thanks to cheap natural gas and to the fact that Americans are driving less.The drop in emissions has stalled in the last couple of years, due to the economic recovery and a recent spike in the price of natural gas. So the idea of Obama’s new rules is to resume the shift

Having just returned from Ukraine, I found it hard to recognize the world U.S. President Barack Obama described in his West Point foreign policy speech last week. The facts on the ground ― in Russia, Ukraine, Syria and Afghanistan ― contradict the key points he was making. That disconnect makes friends and enemies worldwide question his ability to lead.Obama rightly says the odds of a direct attack from any foreign nation are minimal. But in a rapidly changing world, with China rising, Russia in

We are in the midst of a shift in political thinking about constitutional amendments. Nancy Pelosi, the House minority leader, is among many progressive thinkers now promoting constitutional change ― in her case, to allow Congress to restrict corporate spending on political campaigns. Former Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens, in a new book, calls for no fewer than six constitutional amendments, involving not only campaign finance but also gun control, capital punishment, political gerryman

U.S. Trade Representative Michael Froman is reaching the end of negotiations over the Trans-Pacific Partnership, a free-trade agreement almost five years in the making. The accord would wrap the U.S., Japan and 10 other Pacific Rim countries into a humongous free-trade zone with almost 800 million consumers and 40 percent of global output. It could increase U.S. exports by $78 billion a year and create hundreds of thousands of jobs over the next decade.A deal would provide a welcome boost to a d

Europe has a new source of economic growth. In the next few months all European Union countries that do not already include drugs, prostitution, and other illegal and gray-market businesses in their gross domestic product calculations will have to do so.The 2010 version of the European System of Accounts becomes obligatory for GDP reporting by EU member states in September. It states unequivocally that “illegal economic actions shall be considered as transactions when all units involved enter th

The event was no place for people like me. At least that’s what I’d read on the Internet.It was the inaugural program of an upstart association called the Authors Alliance, held in the former San Francisco church that now houses the Internet Archive. Founded by four University of California Berkeley professors, the alliance seeks to represent “authors who write to be read.”The implicit contrast is with authors who write to be paid.At least that’s how the rival Authors Guild, which dates back to