Banyan

FROM a base in converted shipping container, placed on Islamabad’s main thoroughfare, Tahir ul Qadri, a populist cleric who has been demanding changes to Pakistan’s electoral system, delivered thunderous addresses all this week. Many saw the troubling influence of Pakistan’s powerful armed forces behind him. That may be why he felt able to make extraordinary demands on the government.

In the end, late on January 17th, the government appeared to bow to the mysterious cleric—who has proved himself a brilliant orator—saying it would meet most of his calls for electoral reforms. Some had suspected that the army was trying to find a way to postpone the elections altogether.

Update to this article

SINCE its creation the German Bundesbank has done a great deal of good. It owes the respect it commands to its unmatched skill at improving peoples’ lives. Not shortening them.

So what was the Bundesbank (or, more likely, German diplomats who nudged it) thinking when it offered to provide technical assistance on the detection of counterfeit currency to a country that is about to introduce the death penalty for currency counterfeiters?

Why Bangladesh wants to join the likes of China and Vietnam in putting to death people who produce cash without the legal sanction of the state is unclear. But it’s not especially startling either.

ONE of the most laudable achievements of Myanmar’s ongoing process of democratic reform has been the ceasefire agreements the new government has signed with all of the major ethnic insurgent groups—all but one, that is: the Kachin, under the banner of the Kachin Independence Army (KIA), fight on. Unfortunately, that single conflict has become big and ugly enough to cast a lengthening shadow over the rest of Myanmar’s progress.

In the past few weeks fighting has escalated further.

WHO and what is Tahir ul Qadri? And, more importantly, who is behind him? Those are the questions now racing through political Pakistan, with no firm answers. The religious cleric, previously a minor figure politically, has been living in Canada since 2006, where he acquired Canadian citizenship. Since he arrived back in Pakistan last month, however, Mr Qadri has caused a political sensation with his demands that Pakistan's democratic system be reformed. He wants to throw the “criminals” out of Pakistani politics, the implication being that doing so would leave very few of today’s politicians still in business.

SITTING squarely in the most densely populated part of the planet, the extent of Bangladesh’s physical isolation is staggering. The country shares a 4,100km (2,550-mile) border with India, the world’s fifth-longest. Yet the militarised, two-metre-high fence on the Indian side ensures that one half of Bangladesh’s 64 districts—those bordering India—are also its poorest. Matters are even worse in Bangladesh’s south, where watchtowers and a security fence built by its other neighbour, Myanmar, make the border as impenetrable as the one that once separated the two Germanys during the height of the cold war.

SO Narendra Modi, the burly chief minister of Gujarat, has romped to victory for a third successive time in state elections. In itself that is no surprise, though his emphatic margin of victory is striking: with counting half complete by mid afternoon on December 20th his Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) looked set to equal its 2007 tally of seats, with Mr Modi sweeping aside rivals.

This is an impressive personal win for the charismatic, and controversial, Mr Modi who has dominated his state for over a decade—rather more than it is a victory for the party. Nobody should be any doubt that he now wants to push on and try to become prime minister.

ALL year, it seems, Malaysia has been on a war footing. For elections, that is—and thankfully, rather than anything more martial. The country operates on a Westminster-style parliamentary system, so the prime ministers’ five-year term does not officially end until early next summer. Nonetheless, Najib Razak and his people have been talking up the chances of going to the polls before then pretty well continuously over the past 18 months or so, which keeps everyone guessing.

Now, with the end of the year in sight and no further announcements, it seems that Mr Najib will take this down to the wire.