Having stayed in South-east Asia for over 4 years now I have begun to get a little pessimistic about democracy vis-a-vis development, especially in this region. Can democracy lift these people out of poverty, bring development, progress? My answer has alarmingly started vacillating towards a ‘No’ sometimes.
A long long time ago they had kings and queens (Thailand still does and also Malaysia, sort of). The fate of the people depended on the character of the ruler – a benevolent one brought progress, a cruel one brought hardships.
Then came the colonialists (with the exception of Thailand) and the status quo was maintained. Reasons why Malaysia and Singapore are far better off than Indonesia or Cambodia could probably in some small measure be attributed to them being ruled by the British whose innate sense of justice made them a far more benevolent colonial power than say the Dutch or the French.
Then came freedom and with it dictatorships – Sukarno & Suharto, Mahathir, Marcos, Lee Kuan Yew are all at the top of the list of 20th century dictators. Some of them functioned under a kind of pseudo-democracy where everything was stage-managed to make sure they were returned to power term after term with overwhelming majorities. But what set them apart from other infamous dictators, especially in the eyes of the West was that some of them embraced capitalism and free-market economics with gusto. As a result they got very rich and so did their extended families and friends but also some development was achieved. Nowhere is it as true as in Indonesia perhaps. Soeharto’s crony capitalism is something so awe-inspiring in a negative sense that I have been planning to write about it for some time. Lee Kuan Yew was probably an exception in that he did not get filthy, stinking rich to attract attention – he did well but kept within limits.
But the development was easy because there were no voices of protest. A toll road had to be built – no problems of demonstrations by people whose homes would be bull-dozed without adequate compensation. And with the media well-controlled those voices were perhaps too easily muted anyway.
But then came democracy, at least in Indonesia and Thailand. Though there is still many a rough edge, but Indonesia has largely a well-functioning democracy in place as did Thailand probably, before the military coup that ousted Thaksin. But the problem with democracy is that though it gives people a voice – but the loudest one which drowns out the rest may not always be the most reasonable; though it gives people opportunities – but they are prone to be grabbed by the haves more than the have-nots. So it comes to pass that the have-nots are not any better off than before. And with development slowing down due to protests which are louder and more powerful than in an authoritarian system, people soon start reminiscing about the good old days under a dictator! Believe me, I see it happening around me every day. It comes as no surprise then that even the Vice-president (Jusuf Kalla) of a democratically elected government (Indonesia) talks about democracy being only the means to an end and can be manipulated if the ends are not being met. And manipulation of democracy is what their predecessors had been doing all along! So is it just a matter of time before they slip back to dictatorships?
But ‘democratically’ elected dictators in Singapore and Malaysia have been more successful and there has been no real hunger for democracy in the populace of these two countries. In Malaysia the first rumblings of discontent amongst the minorities of Indian origin have started surfacing. But in Singapore there is no significant dissent, no loud voices of protest, yet. The reason is probably that Singapore has enjoyed a benevolent dictator at the helm who, since Lee Kuan Yew gave up office, has been carefully chosen. But the system survives on the personal integrity of one man. And if the maxim ‘Power corrupts’ ever manifests itself in Singapore, are there enough checks and balances in the system to prevent the country from sliding into chaos? This is a question I have asked quite a few Singaporeans. The answers have been mostly evasive which probably points to a certain fear inside that this could happen as history has too often proved.
So it seems that a benevolent dictator is the only real solution if you want to see development, fraught as it is with the danger of absolutely no system to reign in one whom power starts to corrupt. And that seems too much to leave to fate. I remember a time back in India when I entered my late teens and with it was on the way to become a part of the Great Indian Election where a billion people vote to chose their rulers in what is apparently the greatest exercise of choice and free will on this planet. (I say ‘apparently’, since the aberrations in the system are numerous.) This was before India became the ‘Fastest Growing Democracy’ that it touts itself to be. So things did not look as good as it does now and Indian politics was as nauseating as it is now. A few friends would often discuss whether we do really have a choice when we vote, whether choosing between many crooks is really an exercise that we were willing to undertake in the name of democracy. And we all ended up agreeing that what India needed was a benevolent dictator (the name of
Kemal Ataturk was uttered frequently). But it took many years for that youthful idealism to fade and the realization to sink in of what the absence of checks and balances could result in.
So the answer to whether democracy will survive in South East Asia is a complicated and complex one. It is made more difficult by the absence of precedents in history. Democracy, in its present form is very new to the world. And even more recent in these parts of the world. Even the US of A, the torch bearer of democracy, took almost 200 years to get to where it is now, to iron out the imperfections in its systems, to make democracy work. And here we are trying to write-off democracy only after a decade or so. But Lee Kuan Yew says that Asians are not suited for a Western style democracy, that they needed a form that is suitable for them. And in this lies another issue – what works for the West might not work for the East. So who can tell whether even after 200 years we will see a mature democracy in an Asian country? Like I said, there is no historical precedent. But clearly the alternatives are no real alternatives – it is too much to stake on the whims and fancies of one man or a group of men who have no accountability. Democracy, warts and all, is still the most civilized, the most humane, the most rational, the most safe form of government known to man. It might take years, it might take decades, but we have to give it a chance. We have to make it work.
