Letter From the Editors

It’s a busy time for Southeast Asia’s democracies. Malaysia held elections in May; Cambodia is preparing to head to the polls at the end of July; Thailand and Indonesia are both ramping up for general elections next year. Yet the mere practice of elections can hide darker trends. Cambodia’s electoral contest will take place without the main opposition party, against a backdrop of tightened government control. Indonesia is being buffeted, as are many other countries, by the forces of populism and ethnic tensions. And Thailand, currently ruled by a military junta, may not even hold its long-awaited elections in 2019; they’ve been put off each year since the 2014 coup. Even Malaysia, the region’s much-vaunted democratic success story, faces questions as its new government settles into office.

In this issue, we asked a simple question: Just how healthy are Southeast Asia’s democracies?

In our cover story, Pavin Chachavalpongpun, associate professor at the Center for Southeast Asian Studies, Kyoto University, puts the 2014 Thai coup – and democratic backsliding that followed – in the context of Thailand’s history. The traditional royal political network is losing its grip on Thai politics, a process hastened by the death of King Bhumibol. But so far the elites have not been willing to embrace a truly democratic alternative, one that would give the majority of Thais a fairer share. This “interregnum” – defined by Antonio Gramsci as the crisis when “the old is dying and the new cannot be born” – could spell disaster for Thailand’s political stability.

Indonesia is also often held up as a cautionary tale, another declining Southeast Asian democracy. But Natalie Sambhi, a research fellow at the Perth USAsia Centre, takes a different tack, tracing Indonesia’s democracy today back to its remarkable 20-year transition from dictatorship. While there are worrying trends at play – anti-minority sentiments, lingering corruption, and the military’s continued outsized role – the country has a strong civil society and has fully embraced democracy after decades of authoritarian rule. “Against the odds,” Sambhi writes, “Indonesia has survived its democratic transition and continues to thrive.”

On a more somber note, George Wright, a freelance journalist based in Phnom Penh, outlines the mood ahead of Cambodia’s upcoming elections – which will take place without the main opposition party. With the now-banned Cambodia National Rescue Party calling for a boycott, the ruling Cambodian People’s Party (ironically) insisting on the sanctity of elections, and a number of new parties joining the fray, Cambodians must decide if the exercise of elections is important even without the possibility of real political choice.

Finally, we turn to the biggest story for Southeast Asian democracy this year: the surprise victory by the opposition Pakatan Harapan in Malaysia’s May elections. Now that the election is won, how will Malaysia’s first ever opposition party-turned-government fare? Nithin Coca, a freelance journalist focused on developing Asia, looks at the cautionary tale of Japan, which saw decades of Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) rule overturned in 2009 – only for the Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) to stumble badly in governing and the LDP be voted back into power, more securely than ever before. The role of seasoned politicians like Mahathir Mohamad may help the PH avoid that fate, Coca writes, but it’s certainly too soon to celebrate the death of the Barisan Nasional.

We hope you enjoy these stories, and the many more in the following pages.