The early 21st century is harbouring an alarming trend in emerging democracies. As political liberalisation and democratisation make headway, they have ended up polarising and splitting societies undergoing democratic transitions. This trend is likely to dominate the developing world for the next two decades and beyond.
This file photo shows protesters shouting during a demonstration in Phnom Penh, calling for long-serving Prime Minister Hun Sen to step down. REUTERS/SAMRANG PRING
The way to ameliorate this global democratic malaise is to rearrange and adapt social contracts and political configurations of government and to foster and strengthen democratic institutions to meet new demands and expectations more effectively.
Thailand's ongoing political crisis is a case in point. The current "Bangkok shutdown" campaign merely highlights the long-running crisis that began when former prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra came to power in 2001. The sins of his misrule from corruption and abuse of power have galvanised a fierce anti-Thaksin movement that has taken to the streets of Bangkok in 2005-06, 2008 and the current phase in late 2013 and 2014. At the same time, the benefits of his rule and legacy have awakened newly empowered rural and urban segments of society who returned his proxy parties to election victory time and again. Such is Thailand's political divide revolving around what Thaksin has left behind.
Thailand has split broadly into three overlapping directions. First, the anti-Thaksin coalition sees the Thaksin regime as the embodiment and institution of corruption and graft in Thailand's political system that must be uprooted once and for all. Its current representation is the People's Democratic Reform Committee, spearheaded by former Democrat Party secretary-general Suthep Thaugsuban. Second, the roughly pro-Thaksin movement, aligned to the Pheu Thai Party and comprising the foot soldiers of the United Front for Democracy Against Dictatorship, favours caretaker Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra and her government. The third column increasingly consists of those who want to uphold democratic rule and "the system" at all costs, even if such a democratic allegiance indirectly benefits the Thaksin regime in the near term. Both the pro- and anti-Thaksin groups do not reject electoral democracy but they embrace it in different ways, whereas those who favour the democratic system over getting rid of the Thaksin regime want to maintain a rules-based democratic society regardless of its results.
The Thai experience has shown that democracy can be thin and superficial, reliant on procedures and political vehicles more than genuine democratic substance and process. A democracy cannot exist without the will of the people manifested through representation by way of elections. Yet elections alone cannot constitute a viable democracy with a lasting constitutional settlement. This dilemma suggests that Thai society has to cultivate a more effective democratic system with less emphasis on the veneer of elections and more focus on the democratic processes of accountability and a more acceptable balance between the electoral majority and minority. The majority-minority recalibration requires more of a voice and rights for the electoral losers. A way forward is to avoid a winner-takes-all approach and attitude. Electoral winners cannot do as they please after winning at the ballot box but must accommodate the interests and concerns of electoral losers more openly and systematically.
This is easier said than done but the alternative is unworkable. Electoral losers now have the means and the know-how to stall and stymie the work of government to the point of paralysis and protracted confrontation. Thailand comes to mind but emerging democracies nearby are also a testimony to this trend. In Cambodia, the opposition Cambodian National Rescue Party gained substantial ground but not enough to unseat Prime Minister Hun Sen and his Cambodian People's Party. In response, the opposition boycotted the national assembly, depriving the Hun Sen government of political legitimacy. In Malaysia, the ruling Malay-dominated Barisan Nasional coalition has lost some of its grip on power but not enough to be replaced by the opposing coalition. As opposition parties rallied repeatedly in the streets and in cyberspace, the resulting stalemate has turned into a political malaise.
The Philippines and Indonesia have done better whereby the election losers allowed the winners to rule. However, it is still early days before these two young democracies can be considered to be consolidated. The most promising democracies in this neighbourhood are Singapore and Myanmar. In Singapore, the entrenched rule of the People's Action Party has faced an increasingly adept opposition coalition, which is gaining in popularity. As the writing is on the wall, the PAP has adapted by bringing into its ranks younger and fresher talent, allowing the party to reinvent itself and perhaps still maintain overall power by ceding some of it to the rising opposition. In just several years, Myanmar has gone from a military dictatorship to a fragile democracy, reinforced by one compromise after another. The latest concession from the government to allow the constitution to be amended in a way that might allow opposition leader Daw Aung San Suu Kyi to be elected president in 2015 follows her opposition National League for Democracy's pledge to contest the polls in 2015 regardless of whether the constitution is amended.
Farther afield in Ukraine, Bangladesh and elsewhere, the electoral majority-minority bipolarity appears to be a solidifying pattern. The absence of an international superstructure, such as the ideologically driven Cold War, has both enabled more democracies to take hold and fanned confrontation in democratic societies at the same time. Back in the Cold War, street demonstrations that we are seeing around the world today would be readily suppressed by force.
But these days, more countries appear to be democratic and democracies appear messier because more people are partaking in political processes, thanks to information technology and its accelerated proliferation. It is as if the previously neglected masses of the world are voicing and taking part in the politics of their own countries. Without the Cold War and with advancing information technology, democratic development could well become the norm but will be more fiercely contested domestically.
For developing democracies to work, the election winners must be allowed to rule with accountability-promoting institutions and values, while the losers must be allowed to sufficiently express their interests and protect their minority rights. Otherwise these democracies will remain unsettled and mired in endless protests.
Thitinan Pongsudhirak is associate professor and director of the Institute of Security and International Studies, faculty of political science, Chulalongkorn University.