By Mark R. Thompson*
South China Morning Post, 14 Dec 2017
Mark R. Thompson says with its brief foray into openness over, ASEAN appears to have returned to being a bloc of ‘strong leaders’, with democracies breaking down or becoming highly illiberal. Cronyism and incompetence among its strongmen are the only hope.
Cambodian strongman Hun Sen held an elaborate religious ceremony in Angkor Wat earlier this month, lauding ‘political stability’ in the country in an attempt to legitimize his rule after banning the major opposition party. It was further evidence that the 50th anniversary celebrations of ASEAN were not going entirely according to plan.
The success of the 10-nation bloc had been celebrated just months earlier by the influential Singaporean academic Kishore Mahbubani, who saw in it reason for optimism amid ‘troubled times’ around the globe, because the Association of Southeast Asian Nations had brought ‘peace and prosperity’ to a region that was once plagued by poverty and conflict.
Yet there have been plenty of negative headlines about Southeast Asian countries during ASEAN’s semi centennial – the ethnic cleansing of over 600,000 Rohingya in Myanmar, the bloody ‘war on drugs’ in the Philippines, the jailing of the Christian and ethnic Chinese former Jakarta governor Basuki Tjahaja ‘Ahok’ Purnama on flimsy blasphemy charges, and ‘kleptocratic’ rule in Malaysia (as even US attorney general Jeff Sessions characterized it earlier two weeks ago).
Mahbubani pointed to the role of former ‘strong leaders’ in holding the regional organization together – President Suharto of Indonesia, Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohammed, and Singapore’s Lee Kuan Yew (omitting another key but unsavory ex-leader, Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos).
Subsequently, however, ASEAN enjoyed its own ‘democratic spring’, with important elite groups joining the opposition to dictatorship to restore good governance, as in the overthrow of Marcos in a display of Philippine ‘people power’ in 1986, Thailand’s 1992 ‘black May’ uprising, ‘reformasi’ demonstrations that toppled Suharto in 1998, with similar protests against Mahathir a year later. Most surprising of all, the Myanmar military allowed competitive elections in 2015 after decades in power.
But then, in one country after another, elites began turning against the democracies they had been instrumental in establishing.
Today, only Indonesia remains a liberal democracy, albeit one threatened by Islamic militants who have targeted not only Christian ethnic Chinese like Ahok but also non-mainstream Muslim groups and sexual minorities. Moderate outsider Joko Widodo narrowly won the 2014 presidential election against the illiberal populist Prabowo Subianto, Suharto’s former son-in-law and one of his most brutal generals. But a prospective alliance of ultranationalist populist elites and Islamist radicals may put Indonesian democracy in grave danger in the 2019 polls.
Just two decades ago, Thailand appeared to be the most promising democracy in the region, adopting a liberal constitution designed to end military intervention. But Thaksin Shinawatra’s landslide electoral victory in 2001 and self-aggrandizing rule angered members of the traditional elite, who opposed him in the name of upholding the moral values of king, nation and religion.
Responding to this challenge, Thaksin wooed urban poor and upcountry voters, helping local villages, introducing universal health care and, under his sister’s tenure, subsidizing prices for the rice crop. Unable to beat him at the ballot box, Thaksin’s pro-royalist opponents used corruption charges to mobilize the middle class against him, paving the way in 2006 for the first of several military interventions.
If Thai democracy broke down after promising beginnings, the Philippines has undergone continuous political oscillation. Invoking ‘good governance’ against a corrupt dictatorship, anti-Marcos elites – the Catholic Church, big business and civil society – backed successful efforts under democratic rule to revive the economy, but these failed to reduce poverty levels significantly.
Joseph Estrada, a cinematic populist, was tagged by middle- and upper-class critics as a lazy and corrupt buffoon relying on star appeal to the poor. They launched a new ‘people power’-style uprising in early 2001, but this time against a freely elected president still supported by the marginalized majority.
Things seemed promising when Benigno ‘Noynoy’ Aquino won the 2010 election, pledging to renew the good governance mission of his mother Cory Aquino after the troubled presidency of Gloria Macapagal Arroyo. The tenure of Arroyo, Estrada’s successor, was marred by corruption allegations.
But after a major pork barrel scandal, a failed anti-terror operation, crumbling infrastructure, and the sense that crime was out of control, Rodrigo Duterte’s call for ‘real change’ in the 2016 election resonated, particularly among the better-off who felt they had the most to lose.
As president, the once authoritarian mayor from the southern city of Davao has brought his thuggish ways to the national level. But Duterte’s bloody drug crackdown has targeted the poor, while drug smuggling, which the president’s son has been accused of facilitating, remains rampant.
Police vigilantes have killed thousands, including minors and a foreign businessman murdered by police assigned to the drug war, while holding him for ransom. Duterte’s administration has undermined already fragile checks and balances, making a return to outright dictatorship a real possibility.
Only in Myanmar does there seem to have been real democratic progress, with a government under the de facto leadership of former opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi. But the military’s brutal treatment of Rohingya Muslims demonstrated it had outmaneuvered civilian leaders, forced to cede control of security matters and reluctant to defend a minority excised from the country’s national narrative during the generals’ long rule.
Academic Larry Diamond speaks of a global ‘democratic recession’. In Southeast Asia, it has been more of a political depression, with democracy breaking down or becoming highly illiberal.
After a brief flirtation with greater openness, ASEAN seems to have returned to its origins as an organization of ‘strong leaders’.
Yet, aside from relatively efficient and corruption-free Singapore (with recently tightening controls on political expression, despite a very public social media feud in the prime minister’s family), the Thai generals have struggled to manage the economy and set up a stable post-King Bhumibol political order, Prime Minister Najib Razak’s rule remains overshadowed by the worst scandal in Malaysia’s history, and Cambodia’s Hun Sen is clinging to power for the 32nd year, like never-say-die dictators such as the recently deposed Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe.
Democracy’s best hope in Southeast Asia seems to be the cronyism and incompetence of regional strongmen.
Mark R. Thompson is a professor in and head of the Department of Asian and International Studies and director of the Southeast Asia Research Centre at the City University of Hong Kong. This article is a condensed version of a talk he gave to the Hong Kong Forum on December 8.
