Extraordinary day for the America

This is an extraordinary day for the America.

Whatever we are upset with the America over its arrogance, unilateralism, today, we have to admire that the America has made a giant step closer to its ideal and its promise.

Half a century ago, there was still segregation. Today, we see an African American becoming the Democrat's Presidential Nominee with a very good chance of winning the election.

It was today 45 years ago that Martin Luther King spoke of "I have a dream" and that dream is much closer today. Barack Obama is judged much more by his content and less by his color (at least by most of the Democrats and how the rest see it. There is no question substantial "prideful bigotry" remains in America).

As I am watching live the Obama's acceptance speech, the more I am in awe of the American system. Despite all it faults - big money, special interest group, skewed and sensationist media and the list goes on, the American system doesn't decay, it renews itself by heralding new era (some says new face) of politics.

At the international sphere, Fareed Zakaria speaks of the rise of the rest in the Post-American World, the fact remains that the America will remain the only super power for the decades to come.

What the America does not have at the moment is respect - under the Bush administration. If Barack reshape the American's foreign policy to engage in diplomacy, practise multilateralism and less hypocricy, most of the rest are happy to accept the America's super power status

Tripple Tripple to Usain Bolt

The Jamaican's 4 x 100 meter man relay team broke a 16 years old world record previously held by Carl Lewis and his fellow American team mates.

The new world record made at the Bird Nest Stadium at Beijing Olympic yesterday on August 22 was 37.1 second slashing the previous record by a hefty 0.3 second.

The victory is even more special to Usain Bolt who ran the third leg, it is a tripple-tripple to him. ( see the earlier post).

Jamaica's 6 gold from the track events with just 2.8 million population makes this small island country really extraordinary.

Is it simply fortuitous to have all the very best athletes in a generation? The answer is perhaps not as simple.

It is perhaps a combination of gene, sporting science and determination (whether inspired by central planning or market forces)

Bolt bolted with a double-double

Usain Bolt, both literally and figuratively, bolted with with two world records at the Beijing Olympic Game - a 9.69 sec for 100 meter on August 16 and 19.3 for 200 meter yesterday, on August 20.

This is what I call a double-double victory if Carl Lewis's victory in the same two events at the 1984 Los Angeles game is called a double victory

Judging from Bolt's world record breaking 100 meter run, it won't be long for him to set another new world record in this track event.

The sports has been tarnished by doping scandals especially after the infamous Ben Johnson's saga at the 1988 Seoul Olympic.

It is therefore most remarkable that Usain Bolt's whose sensational victories are apparently clean. Bolt cleared 4 doping test in the last one month.

It maybe early but not wrong to predict that the world at large will remember Beijing Olympic fondly of Usain Bolt's prowess in the track, in additional to Michael's Phelp's 8 golds in the swimming event and the overall China's dominance in the medal tally.

Malaysia - a Religiously Illiberal Democracy

Everyone will agree that Malaysia has become more democratic following the 2008 GE.

The problem that still plague Malaysia is that the society remains illiberal when it comes to the touchy issue of religion and race.

Beginning the Islamization process that took place since early 1980s, Malaysia society has become more divided as a result of a more domineering form of Islam, condoned and encouraged by the government who exercise the democratic majority.

The problem becomes more accute when the constitutional liberalism that supposed to act as a check on the democratic majority was weakened and subdued by the Mahathir admnistration.

It was therefore no surprise that the recent legal forum on Islam conversion hosted by the Bar Council suffered a premature death.

After a small band of angry muslim protesting against and storming into the forum, the organizer, had no choice but to follow the police advice, to close the forum after barely an hour.

The sign was all there for premature death when the government ministers including the Deputy Premier and the Home Minister, had earlier asked the Bar Council to host the forum behind closed door.

This is disturbing.

If the forum can be held behind closed door, this is a tacit admission by the government that the forum is not illegal. Further, among the forum attendees are several most intellectual muslim law professors and lawyers in the country.

As with any forum, the topic will always be touchy to a small group of peoples.

The government, instead of protecting the freedom of expression, chose to give in to the small band of liberty violator.

If public or open deliberation on a fully legitimate religiously related topic is not allowed under seemingly constitutional pretext or state security concern for fear of religious incitement, there will never be a mature civic society in Malaysia that practice and respect liberty.

It is politically expedience for the government to see this as Islam versus others, the problem is much larger and serious.

The government's inaibility and unwillingness to intervene to protect freedom of speech, it gives signal to condone and encourage more and greater forms of agressive and intolerant form of Islam which breed extremism and violence.

To this the government stands indicted for not doing enough to foster the Constitution and the liberty.

As everyone already knows, the only way is put it right is to remove the ruling party via democracy.

Let's hope democracy can restore liberty in Malaysia.

House of Scholars - A Confucian Parliament

Daniel Bell's East Meets West proposed a bicameral legislature to China with an upper house called House of Scholars where the members are selected through a competitive examination, inspired by the Confucian tradition of respect for a ruling intellectial elite and the belief that democracy and confucianism can co-exist in China just like how capitalism and communism co-exist to give China a socialist system with Chinese characteristic.

To Bell, the infusion of Confucianism into Chinese political system gives the democracy the Chinese characteristic.

The key argument put forward is premised upon the dillema of having vulgar democrat on one side versus the reflective meritocrats on the other. This give birth to the idea of having the House of Scholars to restrain the democratic majorities who maybe too occupied with the next election and heavily influenced by the commercial interest to favor short term economic growth regardless of the long term ecological consequences.

Bell tried to balance the elitist view of good governance based on the need for capable and far-sighted rulers in modern societies and political legitimacy by conceding that the House of Scholars is nonetheless constitutionally subordinated to the lower democratic house to resolve the gridlock issue.

In the American context, Bell proposed to impose term limit for the American's House Representative and Senator to water down the lobbyist and donor's influence by retiring them to a proposed third chamber of Congress, the House of Counselors whose members are experienced and disinterested to act for common good.

The major weaknesses of the House of Scholars is one of political legitimacy and perceived independence.

Competitive examination together with the traditional Confucianist respect for elite in itself do not confer political legitimacy per se.

The UK's House of Lords and closer to home, the CPPCC (often regarded as the upper house but actually do not possess constitutional power), both unelected bodies face the problem of legitimacy.

The British govornment under the Labor Party has instituted reform by removing all the hereditary peers and resorted to political appointment based on supposedly meritocracy. CPPCC's delegated are selected along similar line with appointment goes to many retired senior politicians, officers and academics.

Functional constituency in Hong Kong's unicameral legislature is arguably more superior to using a competitive examination. Nevertheless, its limited electoral mandate drawn from professional or industrial bodies is widely regarded as antithesis to "real democracy".

In additional to the issue of political legitimacy, there are too many intrinsic problems with a competitive examination - what kind of scholars in term of talent and virtue are desired? what are their content? how can they be objectively appraised? how often they are to be conducted? how many are to be selected? how are they made accountable? These were not adequately and satisfactorily addressed by Bell.

A competitive examination is accepted to select the qualified to be officers serving the peoples. To be representative of the peoples, the qualified must however goes through the political baptism to obtain the legitimacy. This applies to all the aspiring politician from among the graduate of Ecole Nationale d'Administration of France, Harvard or Yale of USA, Oxbridge of UK, or even NUS of Singapore.

On ensuring independence of the House of Scholars from corruption, Bell went on to suggest a number of familiar mechanism, including free press, high pay and harsh penalty. What I find rather amusing is that Bell suggested family-based punishment as potentially a last resort to curb the rampant corruption in China. I supposed Bell didn't intend it as a serious scholarly argument.

Bell's generally favorably argument for elite rule, rooted in Confucianism, appears to me anarchronistic in conception and unrealistic in practice.

The Future of Freedom - a book review

In The Future of Freedom, Fareed Zakaria studied the tension between liberty and democracy and call for restoration of balance between the two.

He argued favorably with facts why constitutional liberalism and up to a point, the capitalist system provides more condusive and stable conditions for democracy rather than the other way around. Constitutional liberalism is a reliable restraint to the democratic majority.

Zakaria's book is very penetrating in that he highlighted the problem faced with democracy in its various forms whether illiberal or unregulated.

In Chapter 2, Fareed called it the twisted path of democracy when the democracy without constitutional liberalism went awry. Nazist German was the classic example.

In Chapter 3, he cited Russia and Venezuela among many other in Balkan, Central Asia and other parts as example of illiberal democracy. India, with its increasingly Hindu fundamentalism advocated by BJP is in danger of heading to the same direction.

Fareed's observation that without constitutional liberalism, the introduction of democracy in divided societies has frequently formented nationalism, ethnic conflict and war. Suharto's Indonesia or the former Yugoslavia maybe autocratic, yet the order and stability they provided were much preferred to the state of ethnic cleansing and war following their demise.

In Chapter 4, the Islamic Exception, he noted that the Arab world is trapped between an autoritarian state and an illiberal society. As the state becomes more repressive, the opposition within the society grows more pernicious, goading the stateinto further repression. It is a vicious circle.

Only with political liberalism allowing the Arab intellectual and the peoples the freedom and the economic reform to allow for improvement to peoples lives, will religious extremism and violence be arrested. The road to democracy in the Middle East is not distinctively different.

One particular point that Zakaria made regarding Islam is worth noting. Contrary to the popularly held view that Islam is about devotion to authority as suggested by Islam as meaning submission in Arab, Islam has actually an anti-authoritarian streak. It orginates from some hadiths - that says, obediance to the ruler is incumbent upon the rulers observing the God's law (simialat to Mencious' right to rebel against a ruler who lost the heavenly mandate). With Sunni Islam without a religious establishment, the decision to oppose the stae on the ground that it is unislamis and insufficiently islamis belongs to anyone who wishes to exercise it.

In Chapter 5, Fareed calls it too much of a good things when he pointed out the problem of having too much democracy. With the politicians are frequently in the state of permanent campaign and the increased practice of referendim and initiatives, a lot of power is now highjacked by an ever growing class of professional consultants, lobbyist, pollster and activist.

In Chapter 6, the Death of Authority, Zakaria studied the decline of varios institutional authority in America. The best example given was the decline of the mainsteam churches - Episcopalian, Methodist and the rise of Evangelical Christianity.

The rise of Evangelical is attributed to its taking the more populist and democratic stance. The tactis employed is to mimic the mainstream culture and values and preaching what the peoples wants, which is a less religiously demanding and more warm and service oriented Christiantity.

In this chapter, one senses Zakaria's elitism. He lamented the suicide of American elite as part of the death of authority. He suggested that the increasing democratization has done away with the ruling elite class and released them from a string of responsibilities that comes with their privileges.

On this, Zakaria gave the story of the real Titanic history where one of the richest American on board, after fighting to put his wife on the rescue boat, refused to take a seat observing the convention of "women and children first". It is honorable that the elites observe an unwritten code even though it meant certain death, it is another to suggest non-elites are not as capable. Zakaria gave the statistic that 70% of the men in first class perished, 90% in the second class. He didn't go into giving the survival rate of men in the other lower classes.

Suffice it says that there were still 30% of men in the first class survived, 20% more than the second class. Who knows whether those perished in the first two classes are more altruistic than the third fourth and others.

This is not a good example and I find this segtion most disagreeable.

In the final chapter, Zakaria's precsription to America is less democracy as the way out. He argued that delegated democracy subject to democratic control is the right dose for good governance with legitimacy. Invoking Federal Reserve and the Supreme Court, that are both well functining and well regarded in opinion poll, as successful example for delegating specialised areas to specialists, Zakaria advocate further use of delegation.

In developing countries, he was highly positive of the successful liberal authoritarian regimes - Taiwan, South Korea, Singapore, Chile, Indonesia and even China (to my mind, China at best qualified as economically liberal authoritarian country). He seems to suggest that to make democratic system works, the pre-condition is the economic development and followed by a healthy dose of constitutionalism and delegation.

The problem in this final chapter is that Zakaria didn't disntinguish the difference between political and economic liberty in the developing countries, like in China

Also problematic is that Zakaria recognise only that liberty thrives with constitutionalism, least he knows is that constitutionalism can survive without liberty. Singapore comes to mind.

Overall, this is a deligthful book to read and I am looking to reading his next book - the Post-American World.

Constitutionalism and Chinese Party-State Polity

Since the end of the last imperial Qing Dynasty in 1911, its successors, ROC and PRC have had no less than 14 draft and promulgated Constitution.

ROC
1. The Provisional Constitution of March 12, 1912
2. Yuan Shikai's Provisional Constitution of May 1, 1914
3. The Draft Consitution of the Anfu Parliament of August 12 ,1919
4. The Cao Kun Constitution of October 10, 1923
5. The Draft Constitution of Duan Qirui's regime of December 12, 1926
6. The Provisional Constitution for the Political Tutelage Period of 1931 of KMT
7. The Draft Constitution by the Legislative Yuan on March 1, 1934
8. The revised draft by the KMT's Central Executive Committee on May 5, 1936
9. The ROC's Constitution of December 25, 1946
PRC
10. The 1949 Common Program
11. The 1954 PRC's Constitution
12. The 1975 PRC's Constitution
13. The 1978 PRC's Constitution
14. The 1982 PRC's Constituion with major revisions in 1988, 1993, 1999 and 2004

The only occassion of a Chinese Constitutional Convention happened in 1949 when the CCP convened the first China Peoples' Political Consultative Conference that approved the 1949 Common Program, the de facto PRC's Constitution betwen 1949-1954.

The first CPPCC was very much dominated by the CCP and its purported legitimacy was conferred by delegates from various parties friendly to the CCP. There was no equivalent of American Federalist Papers published or adequate discussion to draft an enduring constitutional charter. No wonder, the first one lasted a mere 5 years.

Obviously China is not lack of Constitution, what she lacks of is the Constitutionalism and its enforcement.

The central question is whether another constitutional convention is able to address all the issues so central to the constitional governance of the present day China besieged with wide ranging issues from electoral legitimacy to the party-state polity, from separatism to autonomy, from conceptual freedom to freedom in practice.

If one were to look at the section on the fundamental rights and duties of citizen in the 1982 Constitution, it may well be enshrined in that of a liberal democracy.

The problem is the acute absence of a sound constitutional framework and mechanism in promoting and safeguarding it. This requires a new understanding of separation of powers and check and balance.

Separatism is based on the notion of the right of self determination. This is not a difficult concept to understand, the right of self determination is akin to the right of an individual's right to marry and this right doesn't belong to the family.

From this perspective, it is not difficult to fault the Chinese's claim of soverignty over a sub political constituent like Tibet or a political constituent that have existed outside the polity for almost 60 years.

First, the autonomy given to the ethinic minority region especially that of Tibet remains contentious and becomes frequently an international issue that discredit Chinese diplomacy in the western media and public. Second, the regional polity of Taiwan maybe regarded as "one state two governments" in the legal sense.

The present constitution in its unitary form is inadequate in addressing these issues. Further, the course of action pursued by the CCP is economic agenda with Taiwan and political dialougue with Dalai Lama's government in exile are very measured and gradual steps.

It is also in this sense that the Constitutional Convention can be bold and inclusive for a peaceful constitutional settlement. However, this can only take place with CCP making political accommodation of some sort for the ideal of One China and also its concern of legitimacy.

Using the metaphor of hosting a party, the party can only be fun if everyone at the party can have fun.

It has also been discussed elsewhere that the future of a democratic China depends very much on whether CCP accepts or accedes to political pluralism. The former is preferred as the latter may be a result of chaos and disorder.

Across the Taiwan Straits, KMT has demonstrated its willingness to adapt to the political pluralism and its ability to regain the power by ballot.

Both parties are Leninist in origin and suffice to say that the CCP is more organized and determined and therefore more successful to perpetuate the one party-state polity.

Will the CCP has a change of heart like the KMT?

No evidence is present to show that the CCP is happy to accede to a power sharing arrangement execpt for the accommodation of one country two systems in Hong Kong and Macao where its allies are in control. The CCP leadership has of late spoken to intra-party democracy. This rules out the possibility of political pluralism in near future.

This is compounded by the fact that as long as the CCP continues to cling to the adage that the political power is derived from the gun barrel, any peaceful change to the Chinese party-state polity is likely depends on the development of intra-party democracy within the CCP.

A critical pre-condition to a multi-party democracy in China will requires the CCP to cede its monopoly over the military and that the military has to be independent and answerable to the state and not the party.

The concession on military control and accommodation on political pluralism that the CCP are asked to make is very substantial but need not be disadvantageous to the party.

The CCP has had almost 60 years of ruling experience and a nation-wide party machinery, this constitute an incumbency advantage that allows itself time to rule for many years to come and to earn legitimacy via free and open electoral contest and relevancy via dynamic political policies for sustainable and comprehensive development. Outside the border, it helps earning China, Chinese and the CCP the international respect.