2017年07月21日

よりたくさんのお金とより少ない自由 東南アジアの将来は繁栄するが自由が少ないようだ。この地域がより豊かになっても、民主主義は後退している。

 More money, less freedom
South-East Asia’s future looks prosperous but illiberal
Democracy is losing ground even as the region grows richer
Jul 18th 2017 | MAE SOT

よりたくさんのお金とより少ない自由
東南アジアの将来は繁栄するが自由が少ないようだ。
この地域がより豊かになっても、民主主義は後退している。

THE young woman with the microphone cajoles, hectors and wheedles customers with the breathless enthusiasm of a livestock auctioneer at a county fair. She is standing behind a table stacked high with blue jeans; most of the milling crowd is dressed in lungyis, Myanmar’s skirt-like national dress. The fancy mall around them is anchored by a huge department store, dotted with banks and mobile-phone stalls and topped by a cinema and video arcade.

cajoles:おだてる
hectors:怒鳴り散らす
wheedles:甘い言葉でそそのかす
livestock:家畜
stacked:山積みになった
milling:ひしめき合った
lungyis:


anchored:支える
dotted:点在する
topped:最上階に

Myanmar has been growing so fast—by an average of 7.5% a year for the past five years—that the boom is reverberating in Mae Sot, just across the border in Thailand. Two years ago, says a longtime resident, the site of the mall was a swamp, and Mae Sot was a poky little border town with two small grocery stores. Today huge supermarkets, car dealers, electronics outlets and farm-equipment showrooms line the wide new road from the border into town, patronised by a steady stream of Burmese shoppers. Skeletons of future apartment blocks loom; the Thai government is building a new international airport. The Asian Development Bank (ADB) forecasts that Myanmar’s growth will hit 8% next year. 

reverberating:影響を及ぼす
Mae Sot:a district in western Thailand that shares a border with Burma to the west.
swamp:沼地
poky:みずぼらしい
Skeletons:骨格
loom:ぼうっと見えてくる

The region is full of such stories. Cambodia, Laos, the Philippines and Vietnam have been growing only slightly more slowly. Overall, the ten countries of the Association of South-East Asian Nations (ASEAN) grew at an annual rate of 5% over the past five years: not quite as fast as China or India, but much faster than Europe, Japan or America. The region’s 625m-odd people are growing richer and better educated; they will live longer, healthier and more prosperous lives than their parents. Of course, plenty of poverty remains—most people in Myanmar are still subsistence farmers—but the region’s economic trends are promising. 

subsistence:必要最低限の生活 自給農家

It was not always obvious that the South-East Asian economies would do so well. Only a generation ago Myanmar had been cut off from the world by despotic generals; Cambodia’s 25-year-old civil war was still sputtering; and Vietnam was only just beginning to experiment with some timid market reforms. The wealthier countries in the region, meanwhile, had seen their economies, and the underlying models of growth, shattered by the Asian financial crisis. 

despotic:独裁的な
sputtering:ぱちぱちと音を立てている
timid:自信なさそうな
shattered:打ちのめされて

The crisis proved salutary. Indonesia, the Philippines and Thailand all adopted sounder macroeconomic policies and made some effort to curb the cronyism that had accompanied earlier growth. Nominally communist Laos and Vietnam and autarkic Myanmar all embraced free markets, up to a point. The days of nationalisation and central planning seem to be over. In much of the region inefficient and coddled state-owned businesses endure, and rent-seeking, corruption and protectionism are all more common than they should be. But across South-East Asia, liberal economics has won the argument. 

salutary:教訓与えてくれる
cronyism:身びいき
autarkic:経済的自給自足の
up to a point:完全ではないがあるところまでは
nationalisation:国有化
coddled:甘やかす
rent-seeking:民間企業などが政府や官僚組織へ働きかけを行い、法制度や政治政策の変更を行なうことで、自らに都合よく規制を設定したり、または都合よく規制の緩和をさせるなどして、超過利潤(レント)を得るための活動を指す。

Politically, however, the region is moving in the opposite direction. The Asian crisis may have brought huge economic hardship, but it did at least unseat Suharto, Indonesia’s strongman of 20 years, and instigate political reforms elsewhere. In the years that followed, imperfect democracies in Malaysia, the Philippines and Thailand appeared to be gaining strength. And Myanmar, after years of isolation and repression, embarked on an unexpected transition to democracy. 

instigate :着手する
repression:抑圧
embarked:始める

But hoped-for openings never came in Laos and Vietnam, where the Communist Party has always been nakedly repressive. Singapore remains an illiberal, albeit effective, technocracy. The leaders of Malaysia and Cambodia, Najib Razak and Hun Sen, have proved depressingly adept at locking up critics and persecuting opponents. Cambodia’s most prominent opposition politician, Sam Rainsy, lives in exile to avoid imprisonment for a spurious conviction for defamation. Opposition figures in Malaysia find themselves in court on charges as varied as corruption and sodomy. 

nakedly :あからさまに
illiberal:反自由主義の
technocracy:技術家集団
depressingly:気が滅入るほど
adept:熟達して 
spurious:間違った
defamation:誹謗中傷

The junta that seized power in Thailand three years ago promises an election next year. Even in the unlikely event that it is free and fair, the constitution—which the army wrote and the new king signed in May—creates a junta-led Senate, imposes the generals’ 20-year plan on the country and provides ample grounds to remove any elected leader whom the army finds lacking. All this is designed to prevent voters from electing the “wrong” leaders, in the army’s view, as they have done at every opportunity over the past 15 years. 

ample :十分すぎるほどの
find lacking:よくないとみなされている

Democratic institutions are not yet quite that weak in the region’s two biggest countries, Indonesia and the Philippines, but in both liberals have more cause for fear than hope. Filipino voters, justifiably frustrated by the way that a few prominent families dominate politics, and by how recent economic growth has failed to reduce the high poverty rate, elected Rodrigo Duterte president last year. Alone among the five candidates, he seemed to care about ordinary people; his brutal anti-drug campaign has appalled foreigners but is popular at home. 

appalled:ショックを受ける

Mr Duterte reminisces fondly about the dictatorship of Ferdinand Marcos and seems to crave dictatorial power himself. He has declared martial law on the southern island of Mindanao, and often muses about doing the same nationally. He veers between indifference and hostility to troublesome principles such as due process, the separation of powers and the rule of law—all of which need shoring up, not weakening. 

reminisces:思い出にふける
fondly:浅はかにも
crave:切望する
muses:考え込む
veers:急に方向を変える
due process:正当な法の手続き
shoring:補強する

An election for governor of Jakarta in April, meanwhile, has left many Indonesians fearful for their country’s tradition of religious tolerance. Islamist agitators campaigned against the Christian incumbent, Basuki Tjahaja Purnama, falsely claiming that he had insulted the Koran. Anies Baswedan, one of his rivals, embraced their shameless attempt to stir up sectarian tension, and won. Prabowo Subianto, a tub-thumping nationalist who lost the presidential election in 2014, backed Mr Baswedan. The fear is that Mr Prabowo, inspired by Mr Baswedan’s success, will try to foster similar divisions at the national level. 

falsely:誤って
embraced:熱心に考えを採用する
stir:引き起こす
tub-thumping:熱弁を振るう
foster:心に抱く

But it is Myanmar that most encapsulates the region’s democratic reversal. When the army ceded power last year to Aung San Suu Kyi, its Nobel-prize-winning opponent of 30 years, expectations were astronomically high, even though the constitution the generals had written severely limited her powers. That has made her government’s craven and repressive acts all the more bewildering. It has charged more reporters with defamation than did her military-backed predecessor. She has been shamefully silent about the continuing persecution of the Rohingya, a Muslim minority, not even admitting, let alone trying to stop, the army’s well-documented campaign of rape, murder and destruction against Rohingya villages. It does not help that since Donald Trump became president, America, long the loudest champion of liberal values in the region, has more or less let the subject drop. 

encapsulates:包む・要約する
reversal:反転
ceded:譲渡する
craven:ひどく臆病な
repressive:弾圧的な
bewildering:戸惑わせる
let drop:止めにする

東南アジアの経済は急激に活発になって来ているが、何処の国もそれぞれ特有の政治的な課題を持っていて、なかなか民主主義が定着しそうにない。ミャンマーの経済が飛躍しているが、Aung San Suu Kyiの動きはロヒンヤへの対応に見られるようにおぼつかない。シンガポールは反自由主義だ。フィリピンはミンダナオに厳戒令が敷かれていて、彼はマルコスの憧れている。ベトナムやラオスは社会主義国で、あからさまに抑圧的だ。マレーシアはラザクが反対派を不法に押さえ込んでいる。

土曜日。今日は海野塾と出版記念パーティがある。ではまた明日。

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海野 恵一
1948年1月14日生

学歴:東京大学経済学部卒業

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アクセンチュア株式会社代表取締役(2001-2002)
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