Mr. Rangel Wants A Debate

U.S. Rep. Charles Rangel’s proposal to reinstate the military draft is an idea that for political reasons hasn’t gained traction. But a national debate about sharing sacrifice in time of war would be healthy nonetheless.

Members of Congress of both parties are voicing opposition to conscription, which was dropped in 1973 in favor of volunteering as a means of filling the ranks.

Mr. Rangel, a New York Democrat, has been arguing throughout the conflict in Iraq that a war’s burden should be shared by all elements of society. He says the sacrifice now falls disproportionately on the poor and members of minority groups who flock to the military because they can’t find jobs.

But that’s always been the case. The armed forces have traditionally been a magnet for frustrated job-seekers of all races and kids who need structure and discipline, as well as those who are simply motivated by patriotism to serve no matter their race or class.

The socioeconomic makeup of the military today is not dramatically different than it was in the past – although on average those serving are better educated now, the services rely slightly less on minority groups and the troops are a little older.

Mr. Rangel also asserts that U.S. leaders wouldn’t be so quick to go to war if the children of the elites were subject to being drafted. That doesn’t appear to be the case, however. In America’s experience, the draft hasn’t been a great democratizer; at least it wasn’t in this nation’s last big war – Vietnam – until the lottery was introduced.

While some children of the “elites” volunteered for service in Vietnam or didn’t try to beat the draft, deferments for college and marriage, medical exemptions, and assignments to Guard and Reserve units spared many young men of privileged backgrounds from going to the front. Poor and minority youth were spared, too, but not in as great a proportion. A draft would have to be iron-clad if it were to catch equally all elements of society – and that would be hard to guarantee.

As to Mr. Rangel’s argument that a draft would restrain a government’s appetite for war, where’s the history? During the Vietnam War, the draft produced an endless supply of cannon fodder. Public opposition finally stopped that misguided and costly adventure, but only after more than a decade of fighting.

Mr. Rangel is right, however, when he talks about the concept of a mandatory national service commitment. Young Americans would have the option of choosing either the military or non-military roles – joining the Peace Corps or its domestic equivalents. National service could turn out generations of committed young citizens.

Another way to widely share the burden in time of war is to pay for it through a broad-based tax.

The Iraq war, now in its fourth year, coupled with the war in Afghanistan, has cost some $500 billion so far – in contrast to early estimates of a measly $60 billion. There is no end in sight.

A recent study by Harvard and Columbia University academics projects that the ultimate bottom line for the war in Iraq could reach a staggering $2 trillion when such factors as the long-term care of psychologically and physically wounded veterans are added.

But there has been no tax increase to pay for the war. The cost is just being added to the national debt. The Bush administration is simply printing money to pay for this costly, draining quagmire. The war is being fought by volunteers on future generations’ dime.

That’s the ultimate passing of the buck.

The Hartfoed Courant, November 26, 2006

Well-paid fear-mongering

Richard Clarke, the former U.S. anti-terrorism official who has been going around as a very well-paid consultant warning about the dangers posed by shipping liquefied natural gas, should consider in public — as politically unpopular as that might be among the many millions of beneficiaries of LNG imports — how safe the importation of this fuel actually is.

Earlier this month, on the same day that Mr. Clarke was terrifying members of the Boston City Council about the city’s imminent incineration, Suez LNG, which brings the fuel to the terminal in Everett, next to Boston, announced that the 1,000th cargo loaded at its LNG facility in Trinidad had arrived in Boston. It was the 174th trip to the Hub for the tanker Suez Matthew since it went into service, seven years ago. Boston’s LNG terminal has received almost 750 LNG shipments without incident since its startup, 35 years ago.

The Trinidad-Everett link is a critical way for New England to receive natural gas. The fossil fuel meets some 20 percent of the region’s natural-gas demand, and is used for home heating, industrial use and electricity generation. The fuel has had increased demand in recent years because it is much cleaner-burning than coal and oil.

Mr. Clarke bases his objections on the potential of a terrorist attack on the facility in Everett, or on the Suez Matthew while transiting Boston Harbor, or going up the Mystic River. Since 9/11, visits by the ship have been attended by increased security, including armed surveillance on bridges and, indeed, elsewhere along its route.

Last year, Mr. Clarke made presentations in Rhode Island and in Fall River, where LNG terminals have been proposed. These were used by such politicians as Fall River’s mayor, Edward Lambert, to whip up opposition to the proposals.

In fact, the region needs more LNG, and more LNG terminals, which Mr. Clarke effectively acknowledges: His presentation in Boston was as a paid consultant for the developers of a proposed LNG facility on one of Boston Harbor’s outer islands — a very good idea in itself.

Nothing in human affairs is utterly without any risk but Mr. Clarke’s well-compensated fear-mongering, without any balancing facts, ill serves the region. Meanwhile, in Europe and Asia, LNG shipments continue to go into some of the world’s biggest ports.

The Providence Journal, Sunday, November 26, 2006

Design review is the way to go

Quality courthouse at stake

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Denver wasted no time in naming a high-level architectural peer review panel for the new courthouse that will be part of the Justice Center complex. It was the wise thing to do given public concern about the design once the original lead architect, Steven Holl, jumped ship and left the project in the hands of the local partner, klipp Architecture.

The courthouse will be one of the enduring buildings that help define the city. So it’s of great importance for its design to be successful in its own right while complementing the other buildings in the complex and enhancing the Colfax Avenue corridor. The panel will include three other architects who are working on the Justice Center: David Owen Tryba, who is the master urban design architect; Lee Becker, lead architect for the detention facility; and Ranko Ruizic, a lead designer with the firm responsible for the post office and parking garage building. They’ll be joined by three distinguished architects independent of the project, and the panel will be overseen by Peter Park, the city’s manager of Community Planning and Development.

Such review panels are commonly used on major projects, including federal courthouses. Federal guidelines say the purpose “is not to mandate solutions but to highlight opportunities to strengthen the design and fulfill project requirements.”

James Mejia, the project’s policy manager, said panel members “should have an interest in assisting the design process, rather than merely critiquing it.”

They’ve already begun. The courthouse plan is about halfway through the “schematic” phase, in which the basic outlines of the building are set, and it works well with the detention center, Mayor John Hickenlooper said. The city has solicited the first round of comments, and there will be several more, as well as workshops and on-site visits, by the time the process wraps up toward the end of January.

Hickenlooper praised Brian Klipp of klipp Architecture for his effective collaboration with the panel. He too recognizes the importance of the project.

It looks more likely than it did just a few weeks ago that Denver will get the kind of building it deserves. Keeping faith with the public, Hickenlooper said, means delivering what voters were promised when they approved the justice center, and delivering it on time and on budget.

If the review panel can contribute to that outcome, the city made a wise move in bringing it into the process.

Rocky Mountain News, November 26, 2006

An American schizophrenia

If only our nation’s foreign policy dilemmas would sit still and keep quiet, we could confront them, or avoid them, as we please.

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Our most treacherous quandaries, though, erupt without warning around the globe. Fifty years ago this autumn, a bold and heart-rending revolt in the streets of Budapest, Hungary, forced Americans to deal with one perennial dilemma head-on: Should our nation pay the price of planting freedom and democracy in lands oppressed by tyrants? Or should we instead preserve our blood and treasure, and let people of other lands fight their own way to freedom?

Those two questions go to the heart of how a nation forged by revolution 230 years ago sees its role in a world that could use more revolutions. Right now, in fact, those questions echo in our disputes over U.S. efforts to expand liberty in the Middle East and South Asia.

Some among us want an America that transplants individual freedoms and liberal democracies to monarchies, theocracies and thugocracies. Others among us see that instinct as noble, perhaps, but costly and unnecessary.

These divisions in our political culture–in America’s ranks of patriots, really–afflict us with what many outsiders see as an American schizophrenia. Hungary offered the rest of the world one opportunity, but certainly not the last opportunity, to make that diagnosis:

- When freedom-minded Cuban exiles prepared for the Bay of Pigs invasion of 1961, would the U.S. go beyond organizing the exiles and throw its military might into a full-scale attack on Fidel Castro’s communist Cuba?

- When Kurds and Shiites sought to oust Saddam Hussein after the Persian Gulf war of 1991, would the U.S. only encourage them, or overtly help shut down Iraq’s slaughterhouse regime?

In those two cases, as with the earlier revolt in Hungary, the calculated answer was no. America arguably had inspired all three uprisings, then had watched from orchestra seating as they played out on stage.

All three failed.

- – -

Hungary cast the mold: The U.S. first stoked hopes of freedom, then abandoned the courageous Hungarians who rose up to demand it.

During the decade after World War II, once proud nations of Eastern Europe had chafed at playing the role of Kremlin puppet states.

Then, in the autumn of 1956, Washington was faced with a terrible choice: Should the U.S. assist the restive people of Hungary–and run the risk of catalyzing World War III?

Earlier that year, a Polish workers’ challenge to Soviet domination had emboldened the equally resentful Hungarians. On Oct. 23, Budapest students gathered at the Parliament building to express national grievances against Moscow. Other citizens joined them by the thousands. After perhaps half of the 200,000 congregants left the square for the streets, authorities fired shots into at least two of the surging crowds.

With that, a demonstration morphed into a fledgling revolution. Fighting escalated, a statue of Josef Stalin fell. At 4 a.m. on Oct. 24, the first Soviet tanks rolled into the capital. Days of fighting followed, with outnumbered but heavily armored Russians battling poorly armed students and workers.

An upstart new government tried to declare Hungary a neutral nation, free of the Soviet yoke. But Russia’s military crushed the rebellion in November. Strikes and protests continued into January of 1957, when another Russian crackdown ended the revolt. Soviet savagery–killings, rapes, tortures, deportations to gulags–had dimmed, although not extinguished, Hungary’s spirit of independence.

Through it all, America … watched and did nothing. Early on, Radio Free Europe led the Hungarian people to believe help was en route: On Nov. 4, 1956, RFE said a “practical manifestation of Western sympathy is expected at any hour.” This as Secretary of State John Foster Dulles, who had preached opposition to Soviet dominion in Eastern Europe, was quashing that very hope of U.S. intervention. The U.S. didn’t see Hungary as a potential military ally, so America would fight Soviet dominion there with sympathy and little else. In short: Good luck, pals, you’re on your own.

By valuing stability over the spread of freedom, the Eisenhower administration essentially ceded future control of Eastern Europe to the Soviets. Hungarians paid the price of that decision, as did citizens of other Iron Curtain nations.

- – -

Should America have backed Hungary’s freedom fighters in 1956?

As Iraq proves in each day’s headlines, U.S. interventions overseas cost American lives and dollars. The rewards may not come for decades, if at all.

Alternately, though, our isolationism can condemn freedom fighters of other lands to subjugation–and plague us with ongoing crises that demand even greater investments. Imagine how the late 20th Century might have played out if the U.S. had forcefully told an initially confused Kremlin regime to back away from Hungary.

Hungary did puncture the Kremlin’s myth that East Bloc masses embraced communism; that revelation angered and dispirited western Marxists. But Hungary’s greatest impact was within the East Bloc. The revolution of 1956 lived on in the hearts of millions of people in neighboring lands until, after three-plus decades of push and pull, the Berlin Wall finally fell.

Will Iraq have a similar effect on the greater Middle East? Regardless of Americans’ differences on how to end the war there, prosecuting it has disrupted chronic suppression that long masqueraded as regional stability. There can be no unbreaking of the china. In another 50 years, we’ll know whether American intervention in Iraq helped transform the dangerous political culture of the greater Middle East.

These regional freedom fights tend to be long hauls. That’s neither a reason for Americans to join the battle or to look the other way.

Hungary, though, has spent 50 years teaching us one uncomfortable lesson: Not standing with those who stand up for freedom also has its costs.

Chicago Tribune, November 26, 2006

A Broken Trust

Denton County judge fails another ethics test

–“A judge shall not allow any relationship to influence judicial conduct or judgment. A judge shall not lend the prestige of judicial office to advance the private interests of the judge or others.”

– Texas Code of Judicial Conduct, Canon 2, Section B

In eight lawyerly canons, the Texas Code of Judicial Conduct outlines basic ethical guidelines for our state’s judges, from justices of the peace to justices on our highest courts.

That includes Denton County Probate Court Judge Don Windle, although he apparently doesn’t see it that way. His disregard of these standards is breathtaking.

As Dallas Morning News reporters Kevin Krause and Brandon Formby revealed, the issue is Judge Windle’s handling of the elderly Veatch sisters, Mildred Erle and Helen, and their joint estate, worth nearly $825,000.

Probate courts typically preside over cases involving those unable to care for themselves and their estates, mental health and custodial issues and guardianships.

Told that neither Veatch sister was able to manage their assets, Judge Windle placed them under guardianships in his court, moved them to a nursing home and restricted access to them.

And that might have been fine, except for this: When Mildred Erle followed her sister into death last summer at age 95, her will – rewritten less than a year into her guardianship – left a large amount of the estate to Judge Windle, his court or people he assigned to manage the estate. Among the new beneficiaries? The judge’s former wife and his personal accountant. Legal? Possibly. Ethical? You be the judge.

Judge Windle and other principals reached for comment said they were shocked to find their names in the will and disavowed any claim to the money.

And that almost would be fine, except that Judge Windle, after a 10-month investigation, received a public reprimand two months ago from the State Commission on Judicial Conduct, its most severe sanction.

Its report said he compromised his impartiality by using his office to advance the interests of one of his former investigators and a business partner.

That former investigator, Beverly McClure, is the woman Judge Windle married and divorced, the ex-wife who turns up as a beneficiary in the Veatch case.

How does it smell now?

Our sister newspaper, the Denton Record-Chronicle, has called for Judge Windle to resign, and we find it hard to disagree.

If he won’t, we hope Denton County voters – the people who depend on his court in extraordinarily sensitive matters – will remember his unique brand of ethics if he ever runs for office again.

The Dallas Morning News, Sunday, November 26, 2006

Lebanon on the brink

A political murder could spark a disastrous chain of events. The U.S. must help protect its fragile regime.

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THE ASSASSINATION OF Pierre Gemayel, an anti-Syrian member of Lebanon’s Cabinet and the scion of one of that country’s leading Christian clans, could lead to other casualties: the collapse of a pro-Western government in Beirut, a resurgence of noxious Syrian influence and the deflation of a trial balloon — only recently floated in Washington — for holding discussions with Syria and Iran about the future of Iraq. The worst-case scenario is another civil war.

It’s easier to lament that potential chain reaction than avert it. But the White House should try to rally other nations — including Syria, which denies any complicity in Gemayel’s death — around the fragile government of Lebanese Prime Minister Fouad Siniora.

The Bush administration has stopped just short of explicitly accusing Syria of ordering Gemayel’s assassination. A State Department official called the killing “an act of intimidation,” and President Bush said it demonstrated “the viciousness of those who are trying to destabilize that country.” United Nations investigators were already looking into allegations that Syria was behind the 2005 murder of another anti-Syrian leader, former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri. On Wednesday, Siniora asked that the U.N. probe be expanded to cover the latest crime.

Supporters of democracy worldwide took heart when public outrage over Hariri’s assassination produced the so-called Cedar Revolution, a peaceful rejection of outside meddling that led Syria to withdraw its troops from Lebanon. Allowing an assassin to reverse what remains from that revolution is unacceptable. The U.N. has insisted that Lebanon’s neighbors respect its territorial integrity, and the cease-fire resolution that ended this summer’s Israeli-Hezbollah conflict assumed that the government in Beirut would exercise a national monopoly on military force.

Compared to other nations in the region, Lebanon has democratic credentials that predate the Bush administration’s campaign to transform the politics of the Middle East. The country operates under a constitutional tradition that balances political power precariously among the Christian, Muslim and Druze communities. But it has been obvious for at least 30 years that the political status quo gave disproportionate influence to the Christian minority, especially Maronite Catholics like the Gemayel family.

Not all the support for Hezbollah among Lebanon’s Shiite Muslims is the result of Syrian subversion. Hezbollah has capitalized on longfestering discontent about the distribution of economic and political power. Hezbollah also provides Shiite communities with a network of social services and spearheaded rebuilding in southern Lebanon after Israel’s attacks (though Hezbollah lost some points by provoking the invasion with its incursions into Israel).

The Lebanese political system is imperfect, to say the least. But it should not be overthrown by an assassin’s bullet, whoever gave the orders. If Syria wants to bolster its claim of innocence in Gemayel’s murder, it should discourage its allies in Lebanon — notably Hezbollah — from exploiting the murder. And any talk of the U.S. giving Syria a role in a regional peace process should be put on hold if Damascus had anything to do with the assassination, or uses it as an opportunity to ratchet up its influence in Lebanon.

Los Angeles Times, November 26, 2006

Learning From Iraq

While politicians from both parties spin out their versions of Iraqs that should have been, could have been and just maybe still might be, the Army has taken on a far more useful project: figuring out why the Bush administration’s military plans worked out so badly and drawing lessons for future conflicts.

That effort is a welcome sign that despite six years of ideologically driven dictates from Donald Rumsfeld’s Pentagon, Army leaders remain usefully focused on the real world, where actual soldiers daily put their lives on the line for their country and where the quality of military planning goes a long way toward determining whether their sacrifices help achieve America’s national purposes.

Two hopeful examples are the latest draft of a new Army field manual that will be taught to officers at all levels beginning next year and a series of oral history interviews conducted with Iraqi and American officers involved in the disappointing efforts to establish and train Iraqi security forces. Last week, The Los Angeles Times published details of some of the major changes being incorporated into the new field manual, while The Washington Post reported on some of the lessons learned in the Iraqi training programs.

The field manual, the Army’s basic guidebook for war, peacekeeping and counterinsurgency, quietly jettisons the single most disastrous innovation of the Rumsfeld era. That is the misconceived notion that the size and composition of an American intervention force should be based only on what is needed to defeat the organized armed forces of an enemy government, instead of also taking into account the needs of providing security and stability for the civilian population for which the United States will then be responsible.

Almost every post-invasion problem in Iraq can be directly traced to this one catastrophic planning failure, which left too few troops in Iraq to prevent rampant looting, restore basic services and move decisively against the insurgency before it took root and spread.

Modern innovations in warfare make it possible for America’s technologically proficient forces to vanquish an opposing army quickly and with relatively few troops. But re-establishing order in a defeated, decapitated society demands a much larger force for a much longer time.

The new field manual will rightly call for stabilization efforts to start as soon as American troops arrive. And it will legally require American field commanders to request sufficient forces to successfully carry out these stability operations. That should short-circuit future debates about whether Pentagon policy makers are providing all the troops that the generals on the spot honestly feel they need.

Correcting deficiencies in American military training is also essential, since the biggest reason the United States has not been able to withdraw significant numbers of its own troops over the past three years has been the lack of adequately prepared and reliable Iraqi security forces.

Iraqi officers interviewed for the oral history complained that their American trainers were often junior officers without combat experience. American officers expressed unhappiness about how their own training teams had been selected and prepared. One major tellingly remarked that “I went there with the wrong attitude and I thought I understood Iraq and the history because I had seen PowerPoint slides, but I really didn’t.”

These are useful insights. But they can only go so far when a host government lacks the will to rid its security forces of sectarian militia fighters more intent on waging civil war than achieving national stability. That so far has been the biggest obstacle in Iraq.

Transforming American forces to fight 21st-century conflicts was the ubiquitous but largely empty slogan of the Rumsfeld era. Incorporating the hard lessons learned in Iraq into future military planning and training operations would constitute a far more practical variety of transformation.

The New York Times, November 26, 2006

Quindlen: Remembrance of Things Past

There is now only a single woman on the court. Imagine the world if homes, businesses, schools, had one woman for every eight men.

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In the glow of modern progress, the stories I tell my children about my girlhood sound as ancient as the Parthenon, beginning with my impossible (and improbable) dream of being an altar girl. The classified ads divided by sex, the working women forced out of their jobs by pregnancy, the family businesses passed unthinkingly to sons-in-law while the daughters stood by: the witnesses to those artifacts are going gray and growing old.

One of the most haunting reminders of those bad old days is on my desk, in a book to be published this spring titled “The Girls Who Went Away.” I knew instantly who they were: the girls who disappeared, allegedly to visit distant relatives or take summer jobs in faraway beach towns, when they were actually in homes for unwed mothers giving birth and then giving up their children. They came back with dead eyes and bad reputations, even though, like some of those in Ann Fessler’s book, they may have gotten pregnant the first time out. And they came back riddled with pain and rage and an unspeakable sense of loss. “I’d have an abortion any day of the week, before I would ever have another adoption—or lose a kid in the woods—which is basically what it is,” recalled one woman bitterly.

That’s what a pregnant 16-year-old might well do today: have the abortion. Or she might have the baby and raise it with her family’s help, or give it up for adoption after handpicking the adoptive parents and drawing up a contract allowing her to visit the child from time to time. It’s a whole new world, in which female sexual behavior is no longer a moral felony. But those of us of a certain age remember those other girls, who were expected to serve a life sentence. Their parents called them whores and threw them out of the house, or simply pressed their lips tight and pretended nothing had happened while their daughters died inside. In “The Girls Who Went Away,” one recalled, “It was the beginning of it being invisible.”

The number of us who remember being invisible is dwindling. Coretta Scott King remembered when a black woman was seen in some quarters only as a hired domestic, Betty Friedan when a white woman was often treated like a major appliance or a decorative home accent. But both of them are now gone. Sandra Day O’Connor, who with little fanfare stepped down from the high court recently, remembers when a lawyer could tell you, without a hint of apology, that his firm never had and likely never would hire a woman associate.

O’Connor, the first female Supreme Court justice, was never known as a feminist firebrand. But she had what I think of as transformative experience, something that can’t help but suffuse your life and your mind. She carried within her the memory of what it was like to be reflexively devalued despite being smart and capable. I think it’s probably a good thing for a judge to have faced down that sort of organized systemic injustice. One argument is that it’s not supposed to matter, that judges are simply there to consider the statute as written, as though the law were algebra and its subject numbers. But jurisprudence is not math, and judges are not automatons but people who have been undoubtedly and sometimes mysteriously marked by what they remember, or choose to forget.

By Anna Quindlen, Newsweek

Power to split monopolies: Commission should foster competition

India is moving into unchartered territory with the government’s decision to empower the Competition Commission with authority to split any large corporation guilty of monopoly abuse.

Regulatory authorities in the US and the major European countries have long had such powers. In the Indian context this is a welcome enabling legislation but it has limited practical use. In increasingly contestable markets, competition authority should focus more on encouraging competition.

The competition authority in India already has powers to regulate anti-competitive agreements or mergers and acquisitions, which should help prevent creation of new monopolies. The power to break-up a monopoly found to be abusing its market dominance is, therefore, relevant only in respect of historical monopolies that have come about through wrong policies or state protection.

Indeed, if we look around most such monopolies are in the state sector. From coal mining to railways, there is a long list of government corporations that could easily interest the Competition Commission if it were to exercise its powers.

Then there are state electricity boards that are very reluctant to allow private producers to evacuate power to other states. Would the Commission look into possible monopoly abuse by the state sector and suggest splitting of, say, the Railways, into freight and passenger business? If it does, it could make a difference.

AT&T is a famous example of a monopoly being broken up. Microsoft escaped a similar fate by reaching a negotiated settlement with the US justice department. As a general proposition, the easy availability of capital has also made sustained monopoly abuse difficult.

The essential task before any competition authority is to advance the case of market economy, which would in many instances include opposing anti-competitive government regulation.

It may be a good idea, therefore, to empower the competition commission to seek a review of tariffs or government regulation impeding market access in case they are found to be stymieing import competition particularly in those cases where there is reasonable local dominance.

TIMES NEWS NETWORK, SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 25, 2006

Lessons from Banten Election

Barring some unforeseen circumstances, the six-year-old province of Banten will experience a real test of its democracy when it holds its first direct gubernatorial election tomorrow (Nov. 26).

All the preparations have been completed, including checks on the candidates’ health and wealth.

Individual wealth reports are required from each candidate to ensure transparency and an election that is free from vote buying or fraud. This is particularly important in Indonesia, where most people simply assume politicians are corrupt.

The Corruption Eradication Commission (KPK) has verified and made public the candidates’ assets. In terms of the wealth of the candidates, Triyana Syam’un leads with total assets of Rp 329 billion. The incumbent, Ratu Atut Chosiyah, a businesswoman who took over the family construction firm, is second with assets valued at Rp 70 billion.

Four pairs of candidates are contesting the polls. Ratu Atut Chosiyah and her running mate Mas Achmad Masduki; Zulkiflimansyah and former actress Marissa Haque; Triyana Syam’un and Benyamin Davinie; and Irsyad and Ahmad.

The run-up to the election has been relatively smooth, despite the disqualification of one pair of candidates for lacking necessary political backing and the discovery of some fake ballots. Another hiccup is that many eligible voters who live in subdistricts bordering Jakarta have yet to receive their voter cards. And they are just among the tens of thousands of Banten residents who could lose their right to vote due to administrative errors.

More worrying, the provincial poll watchdog Panwasda has recorded several violations that could be considered serious breaches of the election law, including the use of minors and government officials in campaigns.

Banten’s direct gubernatorial election will surely be of interest to the managers of Jakarta, as well as residents of the capital, which will hold its first direct gubernatorial election next year. Jakarta should study the vote in Banten and watch how the neighboring province manages security and other election issues.

Banten, whose several regencies used to be part of Jakarta and West Java, has made amazing progress over the last six years.

Things got off to a bumpy start when Banten’s first governor, Djoko Munandar, was dismissed for graft. But his deputy Ratu Atut Chosiyah took over the administration and has won praise for her clean leadership in guiding the province of more than nine million.

Banten’s economy grew 5.88 percent last year from 3.95 percent in 2001. This success has encouraged provincial managers to launch an investment campaign called Banten Gerbang Investasi (Banten, the Investment Gateway).

From a legal point of view, Banten has also made substantial improvements. Chosiyah has said that legal certainty and law enforcement are key to wooing investors.

There are many things Jakarta will be watching for in the Banten vote, because what happens there could have a serious impact here.

Chosiyah and Masduki, who were nominated by the Golkar Party, the Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI-P), the Star Reform Party, the Crescent Star Party and the Prosperous Democratic Party, can expect a strong challenge from Zulkiflimansyah and Marissa, who are backed by the Muslim-based Prosperous Justice Party (PKS) and Indonesian Syarikat Party.

If Zulkiflimansyah and Marissa win, it will confirm the position of the PKS as a major political player, after having won the legislative election in Jakarta and the mayoral election in Depok, another commuter suburb to Jakarta.

While we expect the election in Banten to proceed peacefully, administrative hiccups and political rifts could lead to a delay. But we expect the administration and people of Banten to address all these problems in a smart and mature manner.

Whoever wins the Banten gubernatorial election, the first concern for Jakarta will be security. Only with good security will the new governor and deputy governor be able to continue the economic success story that Banten has become.

And a prosperous Banten will only benefit Jakarta, which could expect fewer people from the neighboring province to pour into the capital in search of work.

The Jakarta Post, November 25, 2006