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BANGLADESH

The Daily Star (www.thedailystar.net) makes a plea for Bangladesh's political parties to find some common ground in the year ahead, to avoid the kind of stalemate that marked 2005.

"As 2006 starts, it becomes clear that the main problem we face as a nation is lack of unity, especially between the government and the opposition. This sends precisely the wrong message, both inside the country to those who would seek to exploit such divisions, and outside the country as well. The cost to the nation from this kind of divisiveness is potentially catastrophic. The key is in the hands of the politicians, and our new year's plea to them is, for the good of the nation, to find some common ground."

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INDONESIA

The Jakarta Post (thejakartapost.com) looks forward to a better 2006, after a year marred by the aftermath of the devastating tsunami, economic problems, violence and natural and man-made disasters.

"This time last year, we ended 2004 on an extremely subdued note. The powerful earthquake and massive tsunami that killed over 160,000 people and rendered another half a million homeless in Aceh and Nias island towards the end of last year stunned the whole nation, and the whole world for that matter. New Year 2005 was understandably greeted everywhere around the globe with subdued fanfare, out of respect for the victims....

"And what a year 2005 turned out to be for Indonesia. It was a year filled with tragedies; some inflicted by Mother Nature, others man-made...

"We had two major plane crashes, in Surakarta and Medan. We had an outbreak of polio at the beginning of the year, and an outbreak of bird flu half way through 2005...

"So what do we have to be hopeful about in 2006?

"Tragedies, particularly natural disasters, are largely beyond anybody's control. But even if these disasters persist in different forms and scales, the nation has now grown more resilient in facing them. The year 2005 has been both a year of disasters and a year of learning.

"Let us all look forward to a happier and more prosperous 2006.

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INDIA

The Times of India (timesofindia.indiatimes.com) looks at the growing might and influence of Asian countries in the world and says the initiative lies with New Delhi if it is to avoid being marginalised by regional giant China.

"If the 16 nations attending the East Asian Summit in Kuala Lumpur were to stand up and coalesce into a trading bloc, they would account for half of the world's population, one-third of its GNP and half its foreign exchange reserves.

"Such a bloc would change the world as we know it, definitively shifting it from its Eurocentric axis. But Beijing prefers a smaller bloc, excluding India, Australia and New Zealand.

"Beijing's interests are transparent: it could dominate the smaller bloc and use it to counter US influence.

"While New Delhi has often been outmanoeuvred before it will be the task of its diplomats, in the new year and beyond, not to allow India to be marginalised once again."

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JAPAN

The Yomiuri Shimbun (www.yomiuri.co.jp) looks at the challenges posed by Japan's shifting demography, with the population officially going into decline at the end of 2005, and says that painful reforms are unavoidable.

"The demographic changes taking place in this country can be described as a historic turn of events for the Japanese people. Today, we are witnessing the advent of a society whose population is starting to decline, a development unprecedented since the beginning of the Meiji era (1868-1912)...

"The declining population will be exacerbated by a rapid expansion in the number of people who belong to advanced age groups in the nation's demographic structure. To make matters worse, the pace of the drop in the so-called productive-age population -- people aged between 15 and 64 -- is forecast to exceed that of the decrease in the overall population. The annual decrease in the number of people in that age bracket is predicted to average 740,000 over the next 10 years.

"The rapid decline in the population, coupled with its graying, is bound to bring about various changes in the nation's socioeconomic structure. There also are great concerns that the dwindling and aging population, if seen from a medium- and long-term perspective, could cause a slowdown and stagnation in economic growth...

"It is feared that the population decrease, combined with the rising age of the population, might make it difficult for the corporate sector and the government to collect funds needed for economic and fiscal activities...

"Reforming the revenue-collecting structure cannot be achieved without due consideration to a proposed hike in the consumption tax, a financial burden imposed on people from every generation, including elderly people. Avoiding discussions on the tax increase will do nothing to reform the structure."

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THAILAND

Looking back on a year marked by disasters, Thailand's The Nation (www.nationmultimedia.com) hopes that lessons learned in the aftermath of the Indian Ocean tsunami and other calamities will make for a better 2006.

"While it has been labelled as some as the Year of the Catastrophe, 2005 obviously wasn't beyond redemption, even in those places where disaster hit hardest. In Aceh, the tragedy of the tsunami helped propel the government and insurgents to a peace deal. In Kashmir, the earthquake forced India and Pakistan to work together and inspired belief there could be a peaceful resolution to the 50-year-old conflict.

"Perhaps the conflicts in Iraq, the War on Terror, the riots in France, and the return of bird flu will prompt a rethink of the way we handle international differences, react to trouble spots, raise food, deal with globalisation and take care of the environment. May we enter 2006 having learned the hard lessons of 2005."

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