SOUTH-EAST ASIA: Democratic Deficit Growing
Analysis by John Feffer
WASHINGTON, Jun 13 (IPS) - Last year’s coup in Thailand, continued extrajudicial killings in the Philippines, limitations on religious freedom in Malaysia -- South-east Asian democracies are not exactly flourishing these days.
Likewise, the wave of democratisation and people power that swept through the region in the 1980s has not had much effect on the governments of Burma, run by the military, or communist Laos.
While there are now more democracies worldwide than non-democracies, democracy in South-east Asia seems to be experiencing a recession.
"These are clearly fragile democracies," Anwar Ibrahim, former deputy prime minister of Malaysia and a key opposition figure there, said at an Asian Voices seminar sponsored by the Sasakawa Peace Foundation here in June.
"We cannot limit our understanding of democracy solely by the occurrence of elections. Elections are clearly problematic processes,” said Anwar, an outspoken advocate for human rights who is with the People’s Justice Party (Parti Keadilan Rakyat).
“We have to consider the presence of phantom voters -- a phenomenon which is not unknown even in the United States, for instance in Florida in 2000,” he said. “We must grapple with the fact that there is often no access to a free media and that the judiciary is blatantly compromised."__
In particular, Anwar questioned the democratic trajectory of Malaysia, now led by Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi and the National Front (Barisan Nasional) coalition. The political situation, he allowed, has improved somewhat since the days of Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad, under whose government in 1998 Anwar, then his key political rival, was convicted of corruption.
"In this system, the personalities change but there's no change with the judiciary, with the media," Anwar said. "Corruption has grown worse.”
MEASURING DEMOCRACY
“Yes, we are doing better than many nations in the developing world, but how do you assess success? Compared to Somalia or Zimbabwe, we're doing well. But in the early 1980s, we compared ourselves to Singapore, Taiwan, and South Korea. In 2007, these countries have long since surpassed us, some in terms of economic growth and others with respect to political change and reform,” Anwar added.
Perhaps the most dramatic blow to regional hopes for democracy came in September 2006 with the military coup in Thailand that ousted Thaksin Shinawatra.
But as Thitinan Pongsudhirak, director of the Institute of Security and International Studies in Bangkok, explained at the same seminar, the challenge to Thai democracy began before 2006.
"The 1997 Constitution was supposed to put a stop to the patronage system, to money politics. It was a People's Constitution," Thitinan recounted. The constitution promoted the transparency and accountability of the political system, augmented the stability and effectiveness of government, promoted bigger parties and a more stable party system. It gave more authority to the executive branch, and established a party list system in which experts can enter Thai politics without participating in money politics, he added.
The new Thai Constitution – now being rewritten after the coup -- also made it possible to go after corrupt politicians, he explains, even if such attempts are not always successful.
For instance, the national anti-corruption commission in 2001 found then-prospective prime minister Thaksin guilty of assets concealment. After Thaksin assumed power in the wake of his political party’s victory in the 2001 polls, the corruption trial went to the Constitutional Court. The court, however, acquitted the prime minister by a narrow margin.__
"After that, the Constitution went downhill, leading to the coup and the constitution's abolition," argued Thitinan. "The 1997 Constitution was supposed to usher Thailand into a promised land, but we have wasted a decade."__
Despite corruption charges, Thaksin was and continues to be quite popular within Thailand. "He had his populist platform," Thitinan said. "He became a threat to the established order. Things get done in a certain way in Thailand. The coup restored the primacy of the holy trinity: the alliance between the bureaucracy, the military, and the monarchy. Thaksin threatened this holy trinity. He won the peoples' hearts and minds in four or five years. He would win an election if it were held tomorrow by United Nations."_
DEMOCRACY AND ELECTIONS
In the Philippines, democracy also seems to have taken a step backward in recent years. Corruption and scandal dogged the administration of Joseph Estrada, who was ousted in a 2001 popular uprising amid an impeachment trial against him.
In the 2004 elections, observed Filipino lawyer and civic activist Jose Luis Gascon, "there were issues of cheating and intimidation on a widespread scale"._ Still, however, Filipinos have elections as a venue for choosing their leaders.
Having elections, however, does not make a democracy. "Ultimately, interventions must be done to strengthen civil society, to protect human rights, to ensure transparent parties, to strengthen the judiciary to ensure its independence, to guarantee free and fair elections in 2010, and to deal with the major cases of extrajudicial killings," Gascon said. "The Philippines should present a viable model in the region so that the Lee Kuan Yews and the Mahathirs of the world will not say that democracy is bad for South-east Asia."__
The democratic deficit in South-east Asia exists not only within countries, but between them as well.
Anwar reserved some of his sharpest words for the 10-member Association of South-east Asian Nations (ASEAN) and its policy toward the military junta in Burma. ASEAN groups Malaysia, Thailand, Burma, Laos, Cambodia, Vietnam, the Philippines, Brunei, Indonesia and Singapore.__
THE BURMA QUESTION
"In the case of Burma, we can see the utter abdication of responsibility and the failure of governments in ASEAN to undertake positive, effective measures and the failure to give any meaningful influence except for this obsolete notion of ‘constructive engagement’," Anwar said, referring to the policy of non-interference that ASEAN member countries have lived by since the organisation was creatd in 1967.
"The only thing happening in Burma is construction undertaken by these countries, not ‘constructive’ engagement: construction projects profiting from cozy relations with the corrupt military junta,” he added.
What should the ASEAN members do about Burma? "I'm not suggesting that the Thais and the Malaysians go to war with Burma. But ASEAN should take a strong position that a military regime cannot treat its citizens as slaves. If not for EU (European Union) insistence, you can imagine the military junta leading the discussions at ASEAN conferences,” Anwar explained. “We must be more principled. If you want to attend our meetings, some basic rules have to be accepted.” (END/IPSAP/TS/JS/190607)
