Rule by Hukum will be on leave for the next two weeks as I leave once more to visit Southeast Asia. First, I’ll be visiting Burma, primarily to visit my adorable niece, but also possibly for an exciting excursion. Then, I’ll be in Malaysia for the 24th Asia Pacific Roundtable. I’ll be pretty busy in both places, but fortunately the 20+ hour flight to Singapore should give me enough time to read some rule of law literature and post reviews on my return.
Two Economist articles about human rights
Here are two new Economist articles about human rights and the International Criminal Court. It raises some interesting issues, including the prospect of more competition amongst human rights NGOs and concerns over the international “crime” of aggression. The former could be particularly relevant to Southeast Asia if it means that in the future attention will tend to focus on “hot” human rights cases (such as Burma), but less on countries such as the Philippines.
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Wiki-Constitutions
Not Southeast Asia-related per se, but here’s an interesting article in The New Republic about how some Latin American constitutions have become extremely malleable and easy to amend. This situation is somewhat similar to Malaysia before the 2008 elections (when UMNO lost its supermajority). UMNO had rammed through frequent constitutional amendments (according to some estimates, over 42 packages totaling over 650 individual amendments). While flexibility is not totally undesirable (and might be linked to the endurance of constitutions
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Filed under constitutions, Malaysia
To prosecute, or not to prosecute?
Followers of Rule by Hukum may remember that Philippine president-elect Aquino promised to prosecute Arroyo for her misdeeds. According to a recent consultant report (unfortunately, not available for free but cited in an Asia Times article), Aquino’s promise might drain political capital that might otherwise have gone towards economic reform. It is particularly noteworthy that his party won just 45 seats in the House of Representatives, much less than the 107 controlled by Arroyo’s Lakas-KAMPI-CMD coalition. We’ll stay tuned on how aggressively Aquino’s administration actually pursues corruption charges. There is precedent for such an action – Arroyo’s prosecution of (and eventual amnesty for) former president Estrada.
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Warranting contentious politics
Adding fuel to the fire of the Red Shirt protests in Thailand, a Thai court has confirmed the arrest warrant for former prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra. (for background, I’ve added two links to books about Thaksin and recent political events in Thailand).
This is a good demonstration of how courts can serve to deflect attention on controversial decisions away from political elites. The government can simply point to the court’s “independent” and external validation of an otherwise controversial political act (notably, this BBC article doesn’t even mention Prime Minister Abhisit). Ideally, this will soften popular anger and allow political elites to distance themselves from the decision, if necessary (claiming that they’re only carrying out the law).
However, given the mistrust between Red Shirts and Yellow Shirts (see this interesting New Mandala blog for more on that), this strategy of judicial deflection probably won’t resolve much. Red Shirts view the courts as beholden to the political elite, meaning that they will probably view the decision as not much more than another attack on their patron. Ironically, this type of situation demonstrates some of the benefits of judicial independence – for without independence, courts cannot serve their validating role on behalf of political elites.
Dominic J. Nardi, Jr. 
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