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By Ian Timberlake, Agence
France-Presse
SINGAPORE: Asia’s governments
face strikes, protests and hoarding in response to the spiralling
cost of food and other essentials that threatens to damage them at
the polls, observers say.
Asia’s political leaders are on
guard, wary of the potential for social unrest as people across the
region struggle to cope with steeper prices for staple
goods—particularly rice.
“There will be unrest and the
poorer countries will experience that much more than rich countries
like Malaysia and Singapore,” said Ooi Kee Beng, a fellow at the
Institute of Southeast Asian Studies in Singapore.
Philippines hard hit
Poverty-stricken Bangladesh and
the Philippines have been particularly hard hit by higher food
prices.
“Soaring food prices have
become a serious threat for the survival of the present caretaker
government,” said Bangladeshi political scientist Ataur Rahman.
Bangladeshis and poor Indonesians
are estimated to spend close to 70 percent or more of their income
on food.
In the Philippines, one of the
world’s biggest importers of rice, the government deployed troops
last week to deliver grain to poor areas of the capital Manila amid
worries about shortages.
It also ordered police to arrest
rice hoarders as part of efforts to pre-empt the “impact on peace
and order” of rises in basic commodity prices, the police said.
Trouble in Myanmar
Analysts have said economic
misery in crushingly-poor Myanmar was a force behind protests which
drew up to 100,000 people into the streets of the military-ruled
country last year.
The unrest became the biggest
challenge to the regime in almost 20 years, until the junta in late
September unleashed deadly force to end it.
Demonstrations initially began on
a small scale in August after a sharp fuel price hike.
The junta said 15 people died in
the crackdown but rights groups have given a far higher toll.
Experts say soaring global crude
oil prices are among the factors to blame for Asia’s food
inflation. Higher fuel prices directly translate into an added
burden for the region’s poor through, for example, higher fares on
public buses which are often people’s only mode of transport.
In Indonesia, higher fuel costs
mean a rise in the price of kerosene which is widely used by the
poor for cooking.
Indonesia’s late dictator
Suharto was forced to step down a decade ago during massive civil
unrest after he raised fuel prices during a crippling economic
crisis.
Facing an election next year,
President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono has sworn off further cuts to
fuel subsidies but analysts say most Indonesians are being squeezed
anyway by escalating costs of essentials.
Social unrest in China’
The government has responded by
distributing subsidised cooking oil and promising rice handouts but
the rice distribution would not reach enough needy people, said
Hendri Saparini, an economist with the Tim Indonesia Bangkit
think-tank.
“If in three months there is no
action from the government, I really worry there is going to be
social unrest,” she said.
In China, inflation is of
particular concern because it threatens to lead to social unrest and
fuel anger at the government, as it did ahead of 1989 democracy
protests that the military crushed.
The price of China’s staple
meat, pork, has risen by more than 60 percent year-on-year.
“There is a lot of resentment
(because of) the rise of prices,” said Jean-Pierre Cabestan, of
Hong Kong Baptist University.
That resentment could become “a
possible source of tension in the future,” he said, adding however
that the risk of unrest from inflation is less now than in the
1980s, partly because the country’s much larger middle class has a
stake in the stability of the system.
But for China’s low-paid
working class the situation is different.
“I think there clearly is
potential for worker unrest resulting from inflation,” said
Geoffrey Crothall, a Hong Kong-based spokesman for the
non-governmental China Labour Bulletin, an organisation promoting
labour rights in China.
Strikes in Vietnam
In communist Vietnam, where
consumer prices rose more than 16 percent year-on-year in the first
quarter of 2008, strikes are becoming more frequent. Last week more
than 15,000 workers at a Vietnamese shoe factory went on a two-day
strike “because of the increase in prices which has hit people
hard recently,” said union official Nguyen Thi Dung.
Even in Singapore, one of
Asia’s wealthiest countries which maintains tight restrictions on
public assembly, people have raised their voices.
Ten people were detained by
police last month after they held a rally, without a permit, to
protest rising living costs, witnesses said.
The World Bank warned last week
of possible “heightening political tensions” in Asia if rising
inflation stalls poverty reduction measures.
Rising prices have already
emerged as a key issue in Asian elections.
Malaysia’s ruling coalition in
elections last month ceded five states and a third of parliamentary
seats to the opposition, which campaigned heavily on high inflation.
Rising costs had triggered rare
public protests and, after his stunning electoral blow, Prime
Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi backed down on looming fuel price
hikes.
Pakistan went to the polls in
February overshadowed by suicide bombings but also by a shortage of
wheat for the country’s staple flat bread, the price of which had
doubled.
Voters dealt a severe defeat to
parliamentary allies of President Pervez Musharraf.
India’s ruling coalition is
under pressure to curb rising prices ahead of elections in nearly a
dozen states this year and general elections due by May next year.
Both the communists, who prop up
the minority government in parliament, and the opposition Bharatiya
Janata Party have threatened national anti-inflation protests.
Ooi, of the Institute of
Southeast Asian Studies, said the political danger from rising
prices depends on several factors including the extent of income
disparities in a country.
“I think what is decisive is
whether or not the population feels that the government is competent
and uncorrupted,” Ooi said.
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