Southeast Asia: goodbye democracy, make way for autocracy

Southeast Asia has long been the showcase for all variants of authoritarianism, from communist dictatorship (Vietnam, Laos) to capitalist dictatorship (Cambodia) to military dictatorship (Burma), absolute monarchy (Brunei), one-party rule (Singapore) and clientelist democracy (Malaysia, Indonesia and the Philippines).

Yet over the past decade the region has held out hope that democracy has finally taken root. In a remarkable series of elections that began in 2014 voters demanded change and, surprisingly, appeared to get it. That year, the Indonesians chose as president Joko Widodo, whom they baptized Jokowi. This political outsider, coming neither from a military family nor from the elite, seemed to embody the spirit of reform which, fifteen years earlier, had ended a period of dictatorships.

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Legitimate … and disappointing elections

In 2015, Burmese voters voted overwhelmingly for the party of Aung San Suu Kyi, a champion of democracy. The army, which had ruled the country for fifty years, authorized him to take office. Three years later, Malaysians ousted the United Malays National Organization (Umno), a party that had dominated the political scene since the country gained independence. Repeatedly, voters in Southeast Asia seemed to strike severe blows at their political masters.

Yet this series of blows was far from fatal. In fact, the Southeast Asian autocrats now seem to be making a comeback. Sometimes they return to power illegitimately. Anxious not to increase the influence of Aung San Suu Kyi, the commander-in-chief of the Burmese armed forces fomented a coup d’etat in 2021. Sometimes autocrats even manage to be elected the most legally in the world. In May 2022, Bongbong Marcos, the son of former dictator Ferdinand Marcos, triumphantly won the presidential election in the Philippines.

In Indonesia, Jokowi proved to be a democratic disappointment, weakening the safeguards controlling presidential power, disregarding minority rights and displaying his admiration for Suharto, the dictator who ruled Indonesia for thirty years until 1998. Today an even more worrying rebound could occur. One of the favorites to replace Jokowi as president in 2024 is none other than Prabowo Subianto, Suharto’s ex-son-in-law who served as a general under the former dictator and who was prosecuted for alleged human rights abuses in the 1990s. He spoke of his wish to reverse the decentralization of power in Indonesia and grant more political power to the central government.

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The Shadow of the Coups

The regressions of recent years are a powerful reminder of the nature of power in Southeast Asia. Many autocratic regimes agree to embrace democracy not because they are in crisis but because they think they can maintain their grip on power even by letting people vote. This is often the case and they do not deprive themselves of it. Political elites manipulate constituencies to their advantage and win elections by buying votes and stuffing ballot boxes. This will probably be the case in Cambodia in 2023 during the legislative elections.

It also sometimes happens that despite these manipulations, voters elect the “bad” candidate. When this happens the old guard can simply stage a coup and demand new elections, as the armed forces have done many times in Burma and Thailand. In 2023 the Thai army could do the same again if the opposition parties win the elections scheduled for May. For the region’s autocrats, democracy is a mere fig leaf that can be discarded as soon as it has served its purpose.

Charlie McCann, Southeast Asia correspondent for The Economist