Day: November 23, 2022

JAKARTA– The death toll of Monday’s earthquake in west Indonesia has jumped to 268, and 151 others are still missing, a local official said, yesterday.

 

“The number of deaths has reached 268 people now,” Head of the National Disaster Management Agency, Suharyanto, told a press conference.

 

The 5.6-magnitude quake, which hit Indonesia’s West Java province on Monday, also left 1,083 people injured, and forced 58,362 others to flee their homes, as the tremors of the quake destroyed over 21,000 houses and infrastructure facilities, he said.

 

Search and rescue operations for the quake victims are still underway, Suharyanto said.

 

Earlier yesterday, Indonesian President, Joko Widodo, asked authorities to prioritise the operation and to rescue the victims first.

 

The government would compensate the houses damaged by the tremors, ranging from about 10 million rupiahs to 50 million rupiahs, the president said, when visiting the affected areas.

 

Widodo stressed, the new houses to be built must be able to resist the earthquake tremors.

 

The quake struck at 13:21 Jakarta time (0621 GMT) on Monday, with the epicentre at 10 km south-west of the district of Cianjur, in West Java province, and a depth of 10 km, the meteorological, climatological and geophysical agency said. (1 U.S. dollar equals 2,005 rupiah)

 

Source: NAM NEWS NETWORK

In the central Taiwanese city of Taichung earlier this month as the country prepared to vote in local elections, the same word came up several times during a speech by Democratic Progressive Party hopeful Shen Shu-cheng: “heijin.”

The term directly translates to “black gold” but most in the audience understand that it refers to corruption, vote buying, or illicit money used for political purposes. The term is also something observers might refer to the recent past, not the local elections due to take place on November 26.

Shen is running for county councilor in Nantou, Taiwan’s mountainous, land-locked county that demonstrates the limits of even one of Asia’s strongest democracies.

The elections this weekend are highly competitive and see multiple candidates vying for some 11,000 positions, among them 930 slots for mayors, magistrates, and county and city councilors.

While most will likely go smoothly, there have still been struggles this election cycle.

“The problem of buying votes may be relatively rare in cities such as Taipei and Taichung, but in Nantou, because it is relatively rural, buying votes is actually very serious, I would say prevalent,” Shen said, “And in Nantou vote buying is linked, at the same [time], to gangsters involved in other illegal activities who also intimidate voters.”

The heijin era saw its heyday in the 1990s during Taiwan’s bumpy and crime-ridden transition to democracy after nearly 40 years of martial law ended in 1987.

Some blame the sudden rise of the criminal underworld as guns became widely available post-martial law, while other academics have even blamed President Lee Teng Hui who led Taiwan between 1988 and 2000. Lee was reportedly willing to work with less than savory characters when he lacked support within the Chinese Nationalist Party, or the Kuomintang (KMT), during Taiwan’s transition from a single party-state to democratic rule in 1996.

While the era has largely passed, patronage networks, vote buying, and even candidates with ties to organized crime have been hard to erase completely in more rural areas.

“It’s becoming more difficult to buy votes now because we have smartphones and can record videos or live broadcasts at any time, which also makes older people not dare to buy them so blatantly,” Shen said. In Nantou, vote buying has become discreet and conducted through intermediaries like the local lizhang or neighborhood warden, although the payments have dropped in value.

The problem can still be found beyond Nantou. As of last week, the Ministry of Justice said it has accepted 2,400 cases of election bribery involving nearly 4,000 people.

Ko-lin Chin, professor of criminal justice at Rutgers University in Newark, New Jersey, captures how organized crime infiltrated Taiwan’s politics in the 1990s in a 2003 book Heijin: Organized Crime, Business and Politics in Taiwan. In it, Chin quotes some political candidates who recall how heijin dominated the country’s politics for the better part of a decade.

Chin declined to comment on the contemporary problem of heijin but one of the most shocking events of the era was in 1997 — a year after Taiwan’s first democratic elections — when a campaign manager was buried alive, and several local politicians were shot in a farmer’s association election.

The connection between crime and politics continues to be a problem in Taiwan. Among the candidates running on November 26, nearly 200 have criminal records, election fraud, or drunk driving charges, according to a database compiled by the Taiwan Anti-Corruption and Whistleblower Protection Association.

Among the candidates on November 26, there’s Chung Tung-chin, running as an independent for Miaoli County magistrate who served a 3-year and 8-month prison term for beating a man to death and is linked to the death of another man in 1987 among other crimes, according to court filings reviewed by local media. Chung reportedly called the death “accidental,” local reports added. VOA reached out to Chung for a comment about his criminal records, but inquiries went unanswered.

Then there’s independent Chiayi County councilor candidate Tsai Cheng-yi, who served a prison sentence for match-fixing Taiwan’s national baseball league in 2009, and Yilan county magistrate Lin Zi-miao, who is running for relocation even though she was indicted on corruption charges in August. VOA also reached out to Lin seeking answers about her past corruption charges but did not get a response.

These remnants of the heijin era contrast with Taiwan’s international reputation. It scored 25th worldwide in Transparency International’s 2021 Corruption Perception Index and presidential elections are open to international observers and conducted with fewer issues.

Puma Shen, the director of the disinformation research group DoubleThink Lab, said the heijin era began to disappear in the early 2000s, around the time Taiwan’s major opposition party defeated the KMT and the democratic system matured.

Wang Chin-shou, a professor at National Cheng Kung University in Taiwan, put the year as 2008 when the KMT was willing to prosecute its own members in a major corruption scandal despite winning the presidency and a majority in the legislature in national elections that same year.

Wang said judicial independence has come a long way since the 1990s as prosecutors can initiate independent investigations. Taiwan’s urbanization has also made it difficult, he said, as it has broken up local patronage networks.

“After 2008, for county and mayor legislators, not to mention the presidential election, we basically don’t see vote buying anymore. I can’t say that with 100% certainty, for example in [rural counties] Hualien, Taitung, or Miaoli,” he told VOA. “It’s still possible, but basically the truth is that there are very few in Taiwan. It’s quite common among township parties and county and city councilors, but quite a few people have been arrested.”

 

 

Source: Voice of America

Azka Maulana Malik, who is 5 years old, still can’t talk. He keeps crying for his mother. He refused food offered by a nurse and several people who tried to comfort him. He covers his mouth and cries.

Softly he whimpers, “I want my mommy.”

A search-and-rescue team found him Wednesday evening local time, trapped under the rubble of his house in Nagrak Village, Cianjur. His mother and grandmother died there after a shallow 5.6 magnitude earthquake shattered his village.

His dad, Muhammad Eka, 38, told VOA Indonesia that Azka and the boy’s mother and grandmother were at home that afternoon. Eka was driving his daughter to a nearby city.

Searchers discovered the bodies of the two women on Tuesday.

Azka was nowhere to be found.

“I accepted what happened to us, but I will not give up finding him,” said Eka, who kept digging through the rubble of their home with the search-and-rescue team in the very heavy rain.

Several times, aftershocks and the danger of landslides stopped Eka and the rescue team.

Then, the team pulled Azka from the rubble.

Alive.

Azka “had survived just because of a mattress and a small house ceiling protected him,” said Muhammad Farid, a police officer who pulled Azka from the rubble. “He curled up. He did not cry. He did not even call for help. He was quiet, almost unconscious.”

The officer added, “[He is so quiet] perhaps because after three days and two nights under the ruins of his home, he had lost hope. When we found him, his body was covered with his own feces. He was also dehydrated.”

Hooked up to IV tubes, Azka is being treated at the makeshift tent in the Sayang Hospital carpark in Cianjur. His father, in mourning, hears Azka’s cries.

“He keeps asking for his mom. I can’t tell him now,” said Eka.

Dr. Badrul Mustafa, an earthquake expert at Andalas University in Padang, West Sumatra, told VOA Indonesia by phone that many residents of West Java probably had little knowledge of what to do during and after an earthquake.

“The earthquakes in this area are rare,” he said.

Elsewhere in Indonesia, near the Sumatra fault from Aceh to Lampung, earthquakes are more frequent.

The Monday tremor in Cianjur, West Java, was the result of a shift in the Cimandiri fault, one of the large faults in West Java with considerable potential for causing damage, Mustafa said.

Authorities said they would continue the search for at least 40 people who were still missing Thursday. The area was experiencing heavy rain and landslides.

In the news conference at the Cianjur Regent’s Office, West Java, on Wednesday, the head of emergency agency BNPB (Badan Nasional Penanggulangan), Lieutenant General Suharyanto, said that “as of Wednesday, the death toll has reached 271 and all have been identified.”

Another 2,043 people are injured and 61,098 people displaced, according to authorities.

 

 

Source: Voice of America

On 21 – 22 November 2022, Mr. Asi Mamanee, Director-General of the Department of Europe Affairs visited Luxembourg and held meetings with his counterparts at the Ministry of Foreign and European Affairs of Luxembourg, namely Ms. Véronique Dockendorf, Director for Political Affairs and
Mr. Jean-Louis Thill, Director for European Affairs and International Economic Relations. Both sides discussed key areas of bilateral cooperation including economic cooperation, financial cooperation, and also discussed ways to further strengthen Thailand – Luxembourg bilateral relations and also exchanged views on various regional issues of mutual interest. On this occasion, Director for Political Affairs hosted luncheon in honour of Director – General Asi and the Thai delegation including officials from the Royal Thai Embassy, Brussels.

During this trip, Director – General Asi also had the chance to meet with Mr. Claude Faber, Diplomatic Advisor of the Prime Minister of Luxembourg who took this opportunity to take the Thai delegation on a study visit to Esch 2022, European Capital of Culture in 2022, in Esch-sur-Alzette, the second biggest town in Luxembourg.

In addition, Director – General Asi met with Mr. Nasir Zubairi, CEO of Luxembourg House of Financial Technology (LHoFT) to discuss ways to expand both sides’ cooperation in financial technology which is the potential area of Luxembourg.

 

 

Source: Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Kingdom of Thailand

Mr Loh Boon Chye and Ms Mildred Tan, Co-Chairpersons of the Council for Board Diversity

 

Distinguished Guests

 

Ladies and Gentlemen

 

 

Good morning. I am pleased to join you at this Future of Charity Boards breakfast event.

 

This is the first time the Council for Board Diversity – or CBD for short – has organised an in-person gathering of charity board chairs. The energy in the room is palpable and I am sure you are looking forward to the discussions today.

 

With your decades of entrepreneurship and leadership experience, there will be many good ideas that will emerge this morning. It is my hope that the energy created in this room will carry over into your individual charities and result in positive outcomes for your organisations and beneficiaries.

 

We are just gradually emerging from the Covid-19 pandemic. It was an unprecedented crisis with no established playbook. I am heartened that charities rose to the occasion – you stepped up and overcame the challenges faced. There were many examples of the sector going the extra mile – be it providing support to migrant workers, or offering child-minding to low-income families with breadwinners in essential services.

 

You could even say that the charity sector has flourished, with more than 130 newly registered charities since 2020. There were also nearly 30 more organisations recognised as Institutions of Public Character – or IPCs.

 

All these demonstrated how valuable charities are in responding to the needs on the ground. It drew from the rich store of your compassion, resourcefulness and ability to innovate to fill the identified needs. But we should not stop there. We should and must institutionalise these qualities developed during the pandemic to keep them alive and leverage their benefits for a brighter future.

 

The business world is doing just that. Companies are racing ahead to make up for time lost to the pandemic. They are balancing the search for new technologies with evaluating the relevance of their operations and future-proofing their businesses. Charities must do the same.

 

Allow me to share three ideas you can consider implementing in your charities.

 

The first is to examine how effective your charity is in achieving your stated goals – in other words – impact assessment. This is about achieving both immediate targets and long-term goals in the most efficient manner. A useful tool that charities can use is the Sector Evaluation Framework by the National Council of Social Service (NCSS), which provides a repository of outcome metrics that can be used to measure the effectiveness of programmes, allocate resources appropriately and articulate impact to funders and potential donors. This is important as potential donors need to know the impact of the programmes and activities that you are proposing to run, and asking for funding. Having this evaluation framework is hence useful. To stay focused on achieving your organisation’s mission, I also encourage you to regularly review your charity’s direction and keep abreast with updates on the code of governance for charities and IPCs.

 

The second idea is to increase collaborations with fellow charities to leverage each other’s strengths. In the last two years, I have seen more charities initiating partnerships to meet the needs of beneficiaries. For instance, during the circuit breaker in 2020, when the first COVID-19 cluster emerged at a nursing home, many of their nurses had to be quarantined. Many other charitable nursing homes stepped in to offer nurses to help care for the seniors.  Another example of collaboration is the Maintenance Support Central (MSC) by Singapore Council of Women’s Organisations which worked together with the Legal Aid Bureau to provide free video-conferencing services for those who require urgent support on legal matters relating to marriage and family.

 

The Government is also always ready to collaborate. For instance, the Ministry of Social and Family Development partners community groups and social service agencies to support rough sleepers and homeless persons, as part of the Partners Engaging and Empowering Rough Sleepers (PEERS) Network.

 

When different organisations work together – be it between a charity and government agencies, businesses or other charities – it brings to the table a diversity of strengths and skills that everyone can benefit from. With the pooling of resources, the result is larger than the sum of the parts.

 

The third idea is to have a well-constituted board with not just the right knowhow, but also breadth of expertise. With or without crises like a pandemic, charities must be able to transform and remain relevant to the changing needs of society. Having the breadth and diversity of skills, experiences, perception and approaches will help steer the charity towards its goals and deliver results.

 

Women on boards is one key aspect of diversity, as it is visible and measurable, and also a useful lead-in to an organisation’s consideration of broader diversity on the boards. Today, women remain a minority in many IPCs, taking up only one-third of all the board seats. The CBD seeks to address this, and works to encourage IPCs to recognise the value and benefits of having women on boards. Having board diversity is also one of the action plans in the White Paper on Singapore Women’s Development which reflects Singaporeans’ shared vision towards a fairer and more inclusive society. Indeed, having women on boards provides diverse views, which would allow boards to better understand the perspectives of different stakeholders and strengthen decision-making processes. When women and men work in partnership across all levels of society, we can build on each other’s strengths and achieve far more together.

 

To build a well-constituted board, individual charities must find your own mix of board members that will be most appropriate to your situation. By harnessing the collective strengths of your board members, you will be able to engage more communities and partners, attract more resources and ensure organisational effectiveness and governance. Similarly, we want to tap the energies of the larger community like yourselves in refreshing our nation’s social compact under the Forward Singapore, an important visioning exercise. The charity sector is vibrant and growing which augers well for our society. They can complement the Government to help the underserved communities. Charities play an important ground up movement, as they are run by people who are committed and dedicated to helping people.

 

Singapore is renowned for being progressive and agile. Our charities must operate in the same spirit, embracing progress while leaving no one behind. As the pandemic has demonstrated, we are able to innovate and work together to overcome the crisis and emerge even stronger – we must continue to do this to be a greater force for good. I visited many charities during the pandemic and saw how committed they are to reach out to their beneficiaries despite the restrictions. This ensures that the vulnerable sectors are not left on their own in the most difficult of times.

 

As charities seize opportunities and run with them, I have a special word for Board Chairs:  As board leaders, you have a significant role to play in encouraging and guiding your charities and Board members and ensure that they continue to run for many years to help those in need.

 

I am very happy that board leaders of charities have the opportunity to connect with each other this morning to discuss how to overcome challenges for a better tomorrow. I wish you all a lively and stimulating discussion with exciting ideas to take away, develop and turn into reality.

 

Thank you.

 

 

Source: President’s Office of Singapore