IT IS said that the optimist peers at the glass and assesses it as half full, the pessimist gauges it half empty. But the cynic asks: Where's the leak?
This past year was so bad, it was almost impossible to describe. New words were needed. For example, consider the ruckus at the recent United Nations Climate Change Conference in Denmark, headed by the indefatigable UN Secretary-General Ban Ki Moon. It is now known simply as 'Copenhagen', which immediately morphs into a new verb - 'to Copenhagen' - which means something like to fuzz over the reality, such as 'zero plus zero equals whatever you want but never equals zero'. As in 'polluted' means 'almost as clear as the eye can see'. You get the idea.
That is one new term. Then from the proper noun - the last name of our United States President - comes the morphed verb: 'to Obama'. This means to split political differences to such a fine degree that it is hard to detect the presence of any actual coherent policy change. A third I fear that will make it into our political lexicon is 'to Ahmadi-Nejad', created to honour Iran's prevaricating and wholly annoying President. This proper noun to verb means, well, 'to prevaricate' - that is, 'to lie'. Catchy, eh?
Persistent illusion across the globe requires the observer to develop the psychic and professional protection of a realistically cynical attitude towards people, places and things. But let us not give up hope. In this spirit, here are several good things I hope will happen in 2010.
World pays more attention to South Korea, less to North Korea
A GREAT contemporary success story is South Korea, too rarely rendered in its full prideful panoply. A much larger- scale version of the excellent Singapore story, it is a sweeping saga of economic development catapulting a once beaten- down people to First World status. Notice how Seoul recently landed a multibillion-dollar peaceful nuclear power contract from the energy-ravenous United Arab Emirates (ordinarily the French or Japanese probably would have got it). Appreciate how it now ascends to the presidency of the so-called Group of 20 leading world economies - a sort of economic-Olympic Gold Medal award. Note, too, that today's Korean technology is not the shabby brand of yore - as those of you tooling around in a new Hyundai know happily. For South Korea, failure is not an option. By contrast, its northern neighbour is nothing more than a portrait in the pathetic. It is the tired story of failure with no exit. Maybe if we ignore it more, it will expect less from us?
These bad big shots will resign
AT THE top of a long list of unhelpful figures, three especially prominent personages stand out: Britain's Prime Minister Gordon Brown (he is seriously politically tone-deaf), Burma's (okay, Myanmar's) junta boss Than Shwe (a bad geriatric joke) and North Korean leader Kim Jong Il (rank incompetent). The world would be a much better place with all three off somewhere playing golf or checkers or some-such full-time.
India's Odd Couple named Time's Man and Woman of the Year
HEY, you white boys at Rockefeller Centre: Please take a look at nuclear-armed India, with more than a billion people, a hundred languages, many religions and as many problems, including nuclear-armed Pakistan. But it has been moving forward lately and could round out into superpower centre some day (maybe).
One positive factor has been the steadily wise guidance of clear-headed reform economist Manmohan Singh, now serving his second term as Prime Minister of giant India. This religious Sikh is smarter than President Barack Obama, wiser than China's President Hu Jintao and probably knows as many facts, figures and graphs (if you are into this) as Singapore's Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong (past-labelled, by us, as 'Prime Minister Google'). Dr Singh is well backed by ruling party chair Sonia Gandhi, the legendary Jawaharlal Nehru's powerful granddaughter-in-law and India's reigning behind-the-scenes- matriarch. This odd couple should share the honour. We Americans need to understand India much better - now.
China's President Hu opens up, gets down with Western media
THIS leader of China is of paramount importance to the world, but he is so tight-lipped one is tempted to label him the Great Clam of China. He really needs to do everyone a favour and show the public some of the awesome qualities said to have got him to the top of the mainland heap: thoughtfulness and an encompassing command of the issues, tempered with the proclivity to press the 'repression' button at the first sign of trouble.
Let some serious and respected journalist have an honest and open go at him. On the American TV side, who would be better than Charlie Rose, whose great work in interviewing complex Chinese leaders like Minister Mentor Lee Kuan Yew of Singapore qualifies him for the big chance. (If Rose happens to be unavailable...who is around to do Mr Hu? Hmm...). Anyway, dream on: This one is not going to happen.
Japan finds a successful premier
THAT is probably not the incumbent, Mr Yukio Hatoyama, who every day seems more and more overwhelmed by the very idea that he is Prime Minister. Japan, you see, tends to go through prime ministers faster than Tiger Woods goes through nightclub hostesses. The Land of the Rising Sun will begin to sink in the East unless it gets a grip on its political system and finds itself a prime minister with real staying power. This is urgent.
Originally published January 2, 2010 in the Straits Times.
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From 1989 to 1995, Tom Plate was editor of the editorial pages of the Los Angeles Times. Until 2000, he was an op-ed columnist for The Times. Today his column is syndicated internationally in newspapers from Dubai to Providence, Rhode Island. He is writing a trilogy of books on Asian political figures. Recent columns are catalogued at
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