Tuesday April 14, 2009 By KARIM RASLAN Indonesia’s President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono stands poised to lead Indonesia to the forefront of global players alongside Brazil, China and India. THE global financial crisis is spawning – and exacerbating – an equivalent set of political shocks. Over the next year or two there will be winners and there will be losers both globally and regionally, and the recent G20 meeting in London was as much about determining which nations would emerge on the right side of history. For us in South-East Asia, with our trade-dependant economies, the impact has been near disastrous. Moreover, nations such as Thailand, Malaysia and Singapore, with their rigid and inflexible political systems, are suffering an added whiplash as their respective peoples’ question the wisdom of age-old social contracts. At the same time, the economic slowdown has laid bare deep-rooted divisions of class, race and geography that haunt our societies. That this should be happening to
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