The International Herald
Tribune, in a front-page article from Singapore by Michael
Richardson, reported that the fierce austerity programs being demanded of
Asian countries by the International Monetary Fund "could ignite virulent
anti-Americanism" and "create dangerous instability in Asia." But it was Asian
leaders, not the Americans, who seemed for the moment to be taking the
strain.
The
South China Morning Post
talked of "unprecedented diplomatic pressure" being imposed on the increasingly
insecure President Suharto of Indonesia, who, it said, was awaiting further
frantic, bossy telephone calls (following those he had already received from
President Clinton and Prime Minister John Howard of Australia) from Japanese
Prime Minister Ryutaro Hashimoto and German Chancellor Helmut Kohl. The
Guardian of London
devoted its editorial Monday to demanding Suharto's resignation.
The main
editorial of the Manila Times was devoted, on the other hand, to congratulating
the president of the Philippines, Fidel V. Ramos, for canceling a planned trip
to Switzerland and Belgium. But the congratulations contained more than a hint
of sarcasm. The trip would have been his 34 th abroad during his 67
months in office, the newspaper said; and "[o]n every trip, the President--with
the First Lady on occasion--brings with him at least a hundred official,
security and personal staff, as befits the powers and responsibilities of his
office."
That was
not counting the inevitable "business delegation" composed of representatives
of government-owned financial institutions and companies, the Manila
Times added, pointing out that "every single presidential aide or factotum
gets $2,000 in allowance for a trip," meaning "$200,000 going down the drain
for allowances alone," on top of which there were the air fares, hotel bills,
rented cars and communications equipment, phone bills, "etcetera."
"He [the president] might have thought ... that
canceling his trip could send the wrong signals to the world that we are going
under. Possibly so. Or worse, they might think we have slid down to utter
poverty, we can't even finance our chief executive's voyages overseas," the
newspaper continued.
"What, we
poor? In the days of the Aquino administration, there was one official in fact
who--to justify his purchase of electric massage pillows--had the temerity to
say 'we are a rich country pretending to be poor.' For a long while it did seem
like we, the people, were consigned to endure poverty, while our leaders
wallowed in assumed wealth at our expense. The President has shown a fine
example."
In the continuing Algerian crisis, the London Sunday
newspaper the Observer made waves across Europe by claiming that "at
least some of the massacres in Algeria are the work of the regime's military
security force." "Two policemen seeking asylum in Britain told the
Observer they took part in massacres and torture of defenceless
civilians, under orders," the newspaper said. "The defectors said special
forces disguised as 'fundamentalists' with beards and Muslim dress slaughtered
entire families in the middle of the night."
In France, where the trouble
in its former colony continued to occupy many newspaper-column inches, the
principal Paris morning paper, the conservative Le Figaro, carried an interview
with the leader of the Algerian Islamic party (FIS) that won the 1991 Algerian
election, only to see the result quashed and its members jailed for five years.
Abdelkader Hachani condemned the massacres as "crimes against humanity" and
said that, by rejecting a political solution and refusing to protect the
population, "the government bears a large part of the responsibility."
In its weekend edition,
Le Monde carried a
front-page article about "the incredible record of the South African
prison system," from which 700 prisoners have escaped in the past two months
alone. This was not so surprising, it said, when it was taken into account
that, "according to official statistics, 10,000 public order officials have
been charged with crimes and offences of various kinds since January 1996, and
that, according to a recent opinion poll, the majority of South Africans no
longer have either respect for or confidence in their police."
