BANGKOK, Feb 19, 2011 (IPS) – As Egypt takes tentative steps to replace ousted president Hosni Mubarak’s three-decade authoritarian rule with a democratic culture, its political planners may want to look halfway across the world to the most populous Muslim country for lessons on how to prevent a return to strongman rule.

Indonesia ousted the Suharto dictatorship in 1998, and has since launched a slew of legal reforms that respect human rights, promote political competition and a multi-party democracy, and cultural plurality. These, says Rafendi Djamin, Indonesian commissioner in the ASEAN Inter-governmental Commission on Human Rights (AICHR), have been at the heart of his country’s success story. ASEAN is the Association of South-east Asian Nations, a 10-member regional bloc of all South-east Asian nations, including Indonesia.

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