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PDFIndonesia’s President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono has “a big idea”. He is proposing to hold an Asian Democracy Forum later this year in Bali, co-chaired with Australia whose Prime Minister Kevin Rudd is pushing plans for a new Asia Pacific Community. East Asia is a vital testing ground for values, ideas and institutions. This contest will, argues Michael Green, formerly senior Asian Affairs director at the NSC, “determine whether the future regional architecture in Asia is inclusive and based on universal values.”
Indonesia is emerging as a pivotal player as its young democracy, the world’s largest Muslim state, emerges from decades of authoritarian rule. If democracy is consolidated across the vast archipelago, its influence could be significant in a strategically vital and delicately poised region. ”With the simultaneous growth of democracy in East Asia and the rise of China, along with the continued division of the Korean peninsula,” NED’s Carl Gershman recently noted, “East Asia is today the region of the world where the alternative systems of democracy and authoritarianism are most sharply counter-posed.”
