I have beaten this drum before and been beaten down. But it does not change my view after 35 years living in the region.Originally Posted by TaoR
Some answers have been given re democracies in Asia. I was also frequently in the Philppines in the years before Marcos was toppled and saw many of the evils of that dictatorship. I have also witnessed the continuing massive corruption of the political process and the continuing control by a handful of mega-rich powerful families. To say the Philippines is a funtioning democracy in which the mass of the people really understand the meaning of democracy is a rather sad joke.
Deomocracy never existed in Japan - nor in almost any other Asian countries - until the full influence of western powers was brought to bear, usually through force. Japanese democracy is an American bred fiction. I have lived there and seen it at first hand. The same is largely true of South Korea which during the Cold War America needed as a balance to North Korea, although major internal protests against the military governments and not incidentally the awarding of the Olympic Games in 1988 helped in its birth. Certainly on the face of it democracy functions more effectively, but in the present government run by the daughter of the assassinated dictator Park, it is regressing, the media is muzzled and certain powerful families are regaining their power.
Of Thailand's near neighbors, the democratic fiction does not even come close in Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos. In Malaysia and Singapore, the so-called democratic process was skewed from day 1. True, each citizen has a vote, but it is far from an equal vote. For that reason, only one party has ruled Malaysia since Independence and similarly only one party in Singapore. Indeed for years Singapore harassed it's single Opposition MP with lawsuits, making him bankrupt and outright lies (as later proven by the Supreme Court) all but sending him to an early grave. Malaysia is now embroiled in a monster corruption scandal involving state assets made public, only because the local media is muzzled, by the Washington Post. The total amount so far is US3.8 billion and rising. The Prime Minister and his son are directly involved and new laws have been enacted to ensure there can be no anti-government protests. Singapore banks have been caught up in the mess with several censured and two being forced to close.
Many Singaporeans are now unhappy at how little their vote counts for and are upset at the many government initiatives, including massive immigration that has doubled the size of the population in a couple of decades - in which they had zero say. But because their votes count for precious little in what is effectively a nanny state, there is little movement for change - a lot of talk, but no action.
The one beacon in the region is, rather ironically, Taiwan. A Cold War puppet of the USA and a military dictatorship until around 1990, it has embraced democracy and at the same time put in place the institutions needed to ensure that democracy functions pretty well. For I believe, as most do, that you simply cannot have one without the other, for that way chaos, power grabbing and more corruption of the system lie. Thailand's population had the vote, but effective systems to ensure a functioning democracy actually worked have never been put in place.
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