NYT Op-Ed by Bill Keller on Slovakia, Liberia, Peru, Somalia, and Myanmar.
Bored by the soggy sleep-ins and warmed-over anarchism of Occupy Wall Street? Fed up (Fed Up!) with the presidential Race to the Bottom? Depressed by the warning signs of the next Depression? I bring relief. Like Nurse Jackie scavenging in the medicine chest for stray painkillers, I have assembled some capsules of hope from places you probably haven’t noticed lately, because the dominant news is so disheartening you can’t bear to proceed beyond the front page.
Admittedly some of these nuggets come from countries where you might not want to live. But I offer them as evidence that once in a while our sorry species gets something more or less right. Maybe we can extract a lesson, or a little encouragement. At the very least, we can remind ourselves — at a time when our own politicians are competing to be the most ardent champion of “American exceptionalism” — that we are not God’s only gift to civilization.
Let’s start with Slovakia, the little country that is the less famous half of the former Czechoslovakia. Last week, though, plucky Slovakia was the last of 17 European countries to vote on a bailout plan intended to prop up the endangered economies of countries like Greece and Portugal while they curb their spendthrift ways. After 16 affirmatives, the fate of Europe came down to the Slovakian Parliament. And the Slovaks, prodded by a new opposition party that caters to the Facebook generation, said “NO.” The naysayers challenged the idea that Slovaks, who are themselves among the least affluent of Europeans, should pay to bail out profligate neighbors and the bankers who poured money into them.
After the rejection, the government fell. And then a new, temporary coalition went to work and agreed to ratify the agreement after all.
Slovakia thereby accomplished two things. By signaling that it was running out of patience, it struck more fear into the hearts of the world’s bankers than the cumulative protests of Occupy Wall Street have done in a month of poster-waving. And then, the warning delivered, it regrouped and gave Europe one more chance, demonstrating an important level of maturity for a little country that not so long ago was a ward of the Soviet Union.
“We are similar to Americans,” a Slovak official told me. “We have fragmented domestic politics, but at the end of the day we get things done.”
I told him I was flattered to have my country compared to Slovakia, and he was right about the political fragmentation, but I wasn’t so sure about the getting things done.
On to Liberia. You may recall it as the West African country founded by freed American slaves, and famous for 25 years of madness involving child soldiers, blood diamonds, rape and mutilation, among other atrocities. Liberia is still a wreck of a country, dirt poor, illiterate and corrupt, but these days it has elections that are free, fair, consequential and respected.
Last Tuesday Liberia held an election in which the two top presidential candidates were both Harvard-educated — and not in the least ashamed of it! The incumbent, Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, a former World Bank economist and a new-fledged winner of the Nobel Peace Prize, would stand out as the most qualified candidate in many countries’ elections, possibly including ours. Her main rival, Winston Tubman, also has degrees from Cambridge and the London School of Economics and a long career in diplomacy. It’s true that he brought in a soccer star as his running mate, but he’s still regarded as a pretty solid guy. Of course, after former President Charles Taylor, who is in The Hague awaiting judgment on charges of committing crimes against humanity, the greatness bar is not high.
There will be a runoff. Sirleaf tells voters that she’s got things in hand, and Tubman should get in line. Or, as the campaign slogan puts it: “Monkey Still Working, Let Baboon Wait Small.” Probably wouldn’t work in Iowa.
Now we go south to Peru. While his counterparts in neighboring Brazil and Ecuador have been flamboyantly consolidating their own power, nationalizing industries and picking fights with the U.S., Ollanta Humala, the new president of Peru, so far seems bent on a quiet, moderate pursuit of systemic reform. He has eschewed left-wing nationalist rhetoric, appointed an investment-friendly cabinet, and calls the U.S. a “strategic partner.”
Last week, announcing a campaign against corruption, he fired 30 of the 45 generals at the top of a national police force that is widely mistrusted by Peruvians as a league of shakedown artists. Of course, this has the advantage of creating a new police force loyal to the president, but if he gets police to stop putting out their hands for bribes and deploys them effectively against mounting crime and drug trafficking, Peruvians will thank him. Fingers crossed for Peru.
Next, let’s put our hands together for Somalia — arguably the saddest place on earth, ravaged by militant Islamists, pirates, bandits and dire famine. Last week residents of Mogadishu gathered in a soccer stadium for what The Times called “one of the largest rallies in years.” To demand handouts? To call for tax cuts? No, to denounce the Shabab, the Qaeda-supporting guerrilla group that has terrorized Somalia for years.
To be sure, Somalia is no poster child for postcolonial Africa, but it’s not every day you hear of people packing a soccer stadium to rally against armed evil. On second thought, don’t applaud. Send money. God knows they need it.
And finally Myanmar — a k a Burma — a beautiful land oppressed for most of the last 50 years by one of the more eccentrically awful military juntas. I made the round of its splendors 25 years ago, and have never quite shaken the memory of a Burmese student who took us quietly aside to plead for attention to the country’s miserable isolation. He drove home to this visitor that Burma’s secession from the world may have created a museum for tourists, but it made a fearsome prison for the Burmese. For decades protests have met repression, elections have been stolen or nullified, and Western sanctions have encountered intransigence.
Now there are signs of a thaw. The military regime installed a new parliamentary government six months ago, opened talks with the pro-democracy leader and Nobel laureate Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, and last week it began to free some dissidents. It’s a long way from democracy, but it’s a rare beam of hope in a place hungry for it.
YES, much of Southern Europe teeters on the edge of default, the Arab Spring shows signs of turning sour, even China’s economy is slowing, Ukraine is backsliding into authoritarian rule, Iran is allegedly commissioning hit men in America and last week we learned that our Afghan allies have been engaged in the wholesale torture of prisoners. (Wherever could they have gotten THAT idea?) We have no end of countries behaving badly.
So I return you now to your regularly scheduled gloom. But, Slovakia, Liberia, Peru, Somalia, Myanmar: Thanks! And keep up the good work!
