Sampling forbidden fruit

Sampling forbidden fruit

In Southeast Asia, where economic growth has been so impressive for many years, the people are distressed to hear about unconstitutional actions on the part of the authorities. In this region some governments seem to find it difficult to decide what degree of political openness is appropriate. Malaysia, which many western observers regard to be one of the most democratic countries in the Association of the Southeast Asian Nations, shocked the world on Sunday with the announcement of the banning of a news magazine. For us in Indonesia the news was really completely unexpected because we have long seen that neighbor as quite democratic.

Malaysia has held scores of fair general elections and has gone further than others in the region in protecting civil liberties. It has a multi-party legislature and a free press, even if most of the mass media are owned by the government political party, the National Front. Its leaders, especially Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad, have been very open with the public.

Against this backdrop we are quite at a loss to understand Kuala Lumpur's motivation in revoking the publishing permit of the magazine Muslim Media International. Mahathir said that it reviled Moslem nations and slandered the image of Moslem leaders. The Sunday New Straits Times quoted Mahathir as saying that the Ministry of Home Affairs had received protests from Moslem countries concerning the magazine's editorial content.

It is not very clear what legal reasoning was employed by the government in arriving at its decision to ban the magazine. Is Kuala Lumpur now confused about the place of press freedom in Malaysia's fast-growing economy? To date, Mahathir has never been found to be on the wrong side of his country's Constitution, and his style has been very different from that of Singapore's former premier Lee Kuan Yew. It was Lee who said: "I do not believe that democracy necessarily leads to development. I believe that a country needs to develop its discipline more than democracy."

What Lee regards as discipline has been perceived by others as a political system approaching totalitarianism. Singapore, like some East Asian countries, apparently agreed with the thinking of those Indian politicians who said that their country's slow growth was the price of democracy. The idea that democracy and economic growth are incompatible appears to be supported by the Chinese example, in which a repressive regime has presided over an economic miracle.

Yet Lee's philosophy has been completely rebutted by many other examples. If so-called "discipline" or dictatorship were the key to prosperity, several African countries would have been economic superpowers by now. The states of Eastern Europe would have been economic giants long before the collapse of the Soviet Union. And people would be queuing up to enter Cuba, rather than trying to escape.

We strongly believe that Mahathir does not need to sample the forbidden fruit of press bans, because there has been no clash between democracy and economic growth in Malaysia.

Mahathir's move strikes us as an unfortunate setback. In Indonesia, by contrast, the situation appears to be more promising, with Minister of Information Harmoko saying recently that there would be no press bans here in 1995.

We hope that Southeast Asian leaders will agree with us that regional stability will come, not from economic growth alone, but through the fulfillment of the peoples' long-cherished dream: to make their countries, not only economically successful, but also places where ideas can be exchanged freely.