DEMOCRACY’S worldwide retreat makes no exception for South-East Asia. In the Philippines President Rodrigo Duterte has thrown the law to the wind in his war on drugs. Many innocents are among thousands killed. He has imposed martial law in Mindanao in the south. And in early May he cheered on the sacking of the chief justice, a critic. In Cambodia, in anticipation of elections in July, the strongman, Hun Sen, has snuffed out the last of the free press and abolished the opposition. And in Myanmar the government of Aung San Suu Kyi turns a blind eye to an army-led campaign of rape and slaughter of the Rohingya minority, some 670,000 of whom have fled the country.
The question is how much of a retreat from democracy this really amounts to. For in the dozen or so countries that make up South-East Asia, liberal democracy has long struggled in the face of authoritarianism, bolstered by monarchism, nationalism and ethnic chauvinism. A political map of the region put out by Freedom House, a think-tank,...Continue reading
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