BJB=Boring Japanese Basaball and MM on ANZUS, India and Pakistan

シンガポール人が冬季オリンピックを見るように、選抜高校野球に興味なし。プロ野球も始まったけど、それほど関心なし。ただ、唯一の在阪パリーグのオリックスには勝ってもらって、楽天には負けてもらいたい。ノムラさんにはシーズン途中でもいいのでひっこんでもらいたい。そもそも、寄せ集め球団の監督になってくれた田尾を１年でクビにするなんて。その後に据えた監督が、球界の友だちを失い、名球会の集まりにも参加しづらいノムラさんだなんて。狂っている。ノムラさん後の楽天は、ぜひ応援したい。

日本で気になるのは、同年で横浜の工藤くんだけ。

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「失い」で思い出した。Fort Canningにはいくつも解説板があるが、その日本語訳で「失」あるいはひらがな書きするはずの個所に「亡」が使われている。それから「、」「。」が行頭にきてもお構いなしだ。

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… New Zealand underwent a sea change in July 1984 when they decided they did not want a nuclear Pacific and took a strong anti-nuclear stand. They were prepared to jeopardise their ANZUS treaty with the United States by refusing to allow any nuclear-powered ship or any ship carrying nuclear weapons to sail through New Zealand waters or dock in its ports, in effect blocking off the US Navy. It was an astonishing reversal of their traditional attitudes. In October that year, when I met [Prime Minister David] Lange in Singapore, I told him that nuclear warships frequently passed through the Straits of Malacca and the Straits of Singapore, that we recognised the risks of nuclear accident but the US naval presence in the region had given us 30 years of stability. He remained unconvinced. For him and his [Labour Party], a non-nuclear world was the only way to a secure future. (p. 447)

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ANZUS加盟のニュージーランドが反核の姿勢をはっきりさせたこの話は、記憶に深～く残っている。米誌を読み始めた頃、毎週記事になってたから。

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As a young student, I admired Nehru and his objective of a secular multiracial society…

I visited Nehru [for the second time] in 1964 when I stopped in Delhi on my way back from a tour of Africa. He was a shadow of his former self, weary, weak in voice and posture, slumped on a sofa. His concentration was poor. The Chinese attack across the Himalayas had been a blow to his hopes of Afro-Asian solidarity. I left the meeting filled with sadness. He died a few months later, in May. (p. 450)

Indira Gandhi was the toughest woman prime minister I have met. She was feminine but there was nothing soft about her. She was more determined and ruthless a political leader than Margaret Thatcher, Mrs Bandaranaike or Benazir Bhutto… [T]here was that steel in her that would match any Kremlin leader. She was unlike her father. Nehru was a man of ideas, concepts he had polished and repolished… Right or wrong, he was a thinker.

She was practical and pragmatic, concerned primarily with the mechanics of power, its acquisition and its exercise. A sad chapter in her many years in office was when she moved away from secularism, and to win the Hindi-Hindu vote in North India, consciously or otherwise brought Hindu chauvinism to the surface and allowed it to become a legitimate force in Indian politics… She was at her toughest when the unity of India was threatened. There was outrage throughout the Sikh world when she ordered troops into the Sikh holy temple at Amritsar… [S]he was unsentimental and concerned only with the power of the state which she was determined to preserve. She paid for it with her life in 1984, assassinated by her own Sikh bodyguards. (pp. 454-455)

Only a well-intentioned prime minister would have sent Indian troops to Sri Lanka to put down a rebellion by Jaffna Tamils. These were descendants of Tamils who had left India over 1,000 years ago and were different from India’s Tamils. Indian soldiers spilt blood in Sri Lanka. They withdrew and the fighting went on. In 1991, a young Jaffna Tamil woman approached [Rajiv Gandhi] at an election rally near Madras, ostensibly to garland him, and blew them both up. It was not fair. His intentions had been good. (p. 456)

[President Zia Ul-Haq] invited me to visit Pakistan, which I did in March 1988… I was impressed to see Islamabad noticeably cleaner and better maintained than Delhi, with none of the filth, slums and streets overflowing with people in the city centre. Standards at their guesthouse and hotel were also higher. (p. 466)

Ties with Pakistan again stagnated until Nawaz Sharif became prime minister in November 1990… He visited Singapore twice in 1991 – March, quietly, to study the reasons for our economic progress; in December, to ask me to visit his country and advise on the opening up of its economy. Pakistan, he said, had started on bold reforms, using Singapore as a model.

He struck me as keen to change and make Pakistan more market-oriented…

[Sharif] was a man of action with much energy… His business background made him believe in private enterprise as the solution for slow growth and he was eager to privatise state enterprises…. The problem was that often he had neither the time nor the patience to have a comprehensive study made before deciding on a solution. On balance, I believe he was better able to govern than Benazir Bhutto… (pp. 467-468)

On my journey home I stopped in Karachi to meet Benazir Bhutto. She was full of venom for Nawaz Sharif and President Ghulam Ahmed Khan. She said her party had been unfairly treated; the government had tried to discredit her and her party by prosecuting her colleagues and her husband… She also claimed she had started their current push for deregulation and had passed the legislation for privatisation.

… I met Benazir Bhutto (now Prime Minister) in Davos in January 1994. She was elated and full of ideas. She wanted Singapore to participate in a road project from Pakistan to Central Asia going through Afghanistan… Her husband was even more ebullient. He was going to build an island off Karachi to develop as a free port and a free trade zone with casinos. It was totally uneconomic. Pakistan had so much unused land, what need was there to build an island? Their approach was simple: Singapore was successful, had lots of money, and therefore could invest in Pakistan and make it as successful. (p. 469)