Democracy roots spread in Southeast Asia

Jun 1, 2011
By Michael Vatikiotis
Asia Times Online

Fifteen years ago I published a book on political change in Southeast Asia. I gave it the title Trimming the Banyan Tree.

The book, rather controversially for the time, predicted no great wave of democracy sweeping across the region. "The prevailing political cultures of the region are proving resistant to change," I wrote. "Strong leadership, supported by an enduring culture of patronage remains a characteristic feature of the more economically successful states...."

For all the liberal triumphalism of the post-Cold War era, I saw no swift or linear progression towards greater pluralism and democracy in Southeast Asia; rather I predicted a slow, gradual pace of reform, subject to setbacks. "It is easier for ruling elites to trim the banyan tree at their convenience," I wrote at the time, "harder for activists to muster the strength to hack off whole limbs."

Looking at Southeast Asia today I would say I was partly wrong, but sadly also partly right. I was partly wrong in the sense that democracy has made significant advances in the region - notably in Indonesia. I was partly right because we have also seen parallel advances in political reform rolled back in countries like Malaysia, Thailand and also arguably in Cambodia and Myanmar - where even marginal openings since the 1990s have been closed. Some commentators have characterized surprising gains made by the opposition in the recent Singapore elections as a "tsunami", but half a dozen seats in parliament at the expense of a couple of senior ministers is more of an unusually high tide than a tsunami.

The mid-1990s, when I was writing Trimming the Banyan Tree, were years of social and economic change and upheaval. The post-Cold War era lent impetus to liberal notions of democracy and human rights in Asia. Across the region, old sclerotic autocracies were forced to give way to reform. This process was greatly accelerated by the financial crisis that hit the so-called tiger economies in 1997-98. Indonesia's long transition to multi-party, freewheeling democracy got underway.

But there was no great avalanche of change. Unlike the Arab Spring we are currently witnessing in the Middle East and North Africa, there has been no chain-reaction across borders in Southeast Asia. Indonesia's democratic transition has had little or no impact on politics in neighboring Malaysia or in Myanmar, for example. The main reason for this is language. In the Middle East, Arabic is the lingua franca at all levels of society; here in Southeast Asia, the common language is English, which is mostly spoken at the elite level and thus among power holders.

Modern forms of strong leadership and one party rule, often led or backed by military might, prevail across much of mainland Southeast Asia. The region is home to two Communist Party dominated states (Vietnam and Laos) and two countries where the military determines political direction (Myanmar and Thailand). In Malaysia racially defined politics makes for virtual one-party rule with the military taking a back seat to sweeping internal security laws wielded by a strong police force.

To be sure there is more respect for basic human rights than there was 15 years ago - though some may question this in times of upheaval. But there is little sign that entrenched notions of paternalistic rule exercised by strong leaders are disappearing in the face of genuine popular sovereignty. Even in Indonesia there is something of a hankering for the strong leadership of former dictator Suharto, and bureaucratic reform aimed at instilling greater transparency and equality has ground to a halt. Some in Jakarta even talk of a democracy recession.

Why is this so? What makes political change in Southeast Asia so challenging? Why is democracy so imperfectly in place after such a long struggle spanning many decades? And why is successful political reform subject to regression?

Firstly, changes to traditional social and cultural norms in Southeast Asia have been slow to occur. This social inertia tends to reinforce acceptance of strong leadership, it generates low expectations from more autonomous forms of political behavior, and above all sustains receptiveness to the obligations of patronage. Across the region, political parties tend to act as vehicles for bringing individuals to power rather than representing the interests of voters.

In Thailand I have been asking the question of the coming July 3 election: Will voters be swayed by the critical issues of truth, justice and the need for reform thrown up by the upheaval of May last year? The answer I get from almost everyone is "no" - it’s still the money that counts.

Secondly, economic growth, though impressive, has trickled down unevenly. Rural areas in particular are prone to high levels of poverty that maintains dependency on government handouts and patronage, reinforcing respect for leaders who deliver from the top down. The resilient faith placed in strong leadership represents the survival of an arcane social contract that entrusts social harmony and economic management to a firm patriarch aided by a few mandarins. "In the fields there is rice, in the water there is fish" promised the ancient Thai Kings.

As a result of this surprising degree of social and economic inertia, Southeast Asia's paternalistic leadership models have adapted rather than yielded to demands for pluralism. Great stress is placed on the formal legitimacy conferred by constitutions and elections, rather than their meaning in terms of meeting popular aspirations for change. The rules of democracy tend to be engineered to favor power holders and greatly inhibit abrupt changes of order. In any case, the batteries of draconian security laws available to governments in most countries of the region create barriers to effective protest for change.

Momentum for change

That said, there are recent trends that suggest the coming decade will see more rather than less momentum for political change. These factors could well be enhancers and accelerators of political change.

The first factor is the rise of populist politics. The 1997-98 Asian financial crisis generated popular discontent with old established elites regarded as corrupt and excessively rich, opening the door to populist figures appealing to the frustrated middle classes who lost their wealth and those who felt excluded from power. Joseph Estrada in the Philippines and Thaksin Shinawatra in Thailand rode the crest of this wave. The new populist politics has shaken the foundations of established elites and opened the door to more radical social change.

Mobile phone services and the Internet have proven to be powerful agents for mobilizing popular support. More important than the sheer numbers that can be mobilized using mobile phone messaging and the Internet is the ability of the new technology to spread consistent messages and consolidate popular constituencies around platforms for change.

Thailand’s Red Shirt movement was effectively launched on the back of the ability to digitally shape and transmit a simple but powerful message that differentiated between the haves and have-less - the "amart" or aristocrats and the "phrai" or peasants. In Singapore, muscular media management couldn’t cope with the power of social networking and instant messaging that drew huge crowds to the political rallies organized by weak opposition parties and transformed their lawyerly candidates into virtual rock stars.

The major driving force of political change today is pressure from civil society. Across Southeast Asia, people are organizing themselves at the community level to challenge the power holders. Above all, they are able to do so because of the modest opening of space and respect for human rights. In Indonesia, civil society and a free media hold the line against backtracking on bureaucratic reform and a subtle but noticeable impulse to restore central authority and moving away from the decentralization that has helped reduce conflict.

Equally, civil society is more focused on the needs of ordinary people. For much of the last 30 years - especially after the collapse of the Soviet Union and Communist Eastern Europe, religion replaced socialism as a basis of salvation ideology in the region. However, religious faith is a less effective mobilizer of political change because it is either innately conservative or too far out on the radical fringe to move the mainstream of society. This would appear to be changing with the rise of new neo-socialist movements on the back of populist politics.

Add to this the real chance of deeper and long-lasting recession around the corner combined with the factors mentioned above and this will make it harder for the kind of V-shaped recovery needed to protect the political status quo. One of the inhibitors of sweeping democratic change in the past was the ability of conservative elites to re-invent themselves as democrats in time to prevent the mobilization of mass-based movements with the real capacity to change the status quo. This kind of moderation will be harder to sustain in a prolonged period of economic stress.

If the pace of democratic change in Southeast Asia has been slow and subject to regression these past few decades, what would accelerated and sustained change look like? Will it bring violence? And what form of democracy will evolve? These are tough questions to answer. What we see in the Middle East provides a clue and a warning to what happens when long pent up frustrations boil over and people are willing to subject themselves to violence and even civil war in order to bring down the old autocratic order.

Here in Southeast Asia, fundamentally anti-democratic elites long ago learned to release pressure for change with piecemeal reforms, symbolic gestures and modest but limited measures of popular sovereignty. I coined the term "Trimming the Banyan Tree" but you could also call it "Democracy light". The region’s fast-paced growth of consumption has generally dampened frustrations and provided a sufficient accommodation between the growing aspirations of ordinary people and narrow elite interests. So long as the economic dynamism of this region continues, I see no reason why this should change.

All this is not to say that democracy has shallow roots in Southeast Asia. US President Barack Obama during his visit to Jakarta in November 2010 told Indonesians that "your democracy is sustained and fortified by its checks and balances: a dynamic civil society; political parties and unions; a vibrant media and engaged citizens who have ensured that - in Indonesia - there will be no turning back."

In other countries of the region too, the key to moving forward is to thwart the anti-reformist urges of resilient anti-democratic elites by ensuring a prominent space for civil society and respect for truth and justice that constitutes the basis for equality.

Political Change in Southeast Asia: Trimming the Banyan Tree was published by Routledge in 1996. Michael Vatikiotis has since remained a keen observer of the political landscape in the region, but has not felt the urge to revise his thesis. This article is adapted from a presentation he made in his personal capacity to the Political Development Council of Thailand in May 2011.