From 19th centuries, Southeast Asia become a place where European competing for their power. The sea provided an access for them to consolidate their power in Southeast Asia. Portugal, Holland, Spain, England, France, Germany and United States made conquests by the helps of sea power and naval technology. At the late 19th century, the whole Southeast Asia except for Thailand felt the immense impact of foreign colonization and dominance.
The World War II provided a huge change in Southeast Asia. As the War was finally over, European countries wish to control over their former colonies. However, circumstances had change because the European colonial have been shattered at World War II. As consequences, the colonies in Southeast Asia began to seek for independence and become the 11 countries in Southeast Asia,
Indonesia and Vietnam was the first countries to get independence and East Timor as the last country to get its own independence in 2002. Until today, among the 11 Southeast Asia countries, only Singapore and Brunei become a highly develop country. The others didn’t acquire a stable and wealthy maturation in political development. In this article, I will mainly discuss the major political problem in Malaysia and Thailand as two example that represent the major political problem of Southeast Asia.
The most evident problem of the political problem in Southeast Asia is the metamorphism of the government political system. After independence, many countries in Southeast Asia countries have built their government system according to the western democratic system. However, the political system which built in Southeast Asia countries is distinct from those systems in Western. For example, Philippines, Indonesia, Myanmar and Thailand used to have military coup and military dictatorship; while Malaysia and Singapore has problem of one-party dominance. The National Front in Malaysia and People’s Action Party in Singapore had been ruling the country for many years.
The first major political problem of Thailand is the instability of the democratic politics. Thailand is the first country who practices democratic politics among Southeast Asia countries; however, the stability and maturity of the politics in Thailand is much weaker than Indonesia, Philippines or Malaysia.
Since the political reform of the absolute monarchy in 1932, Thailand had experienced 20 military coups. Sulak Sivaraksa, a Thai social activism said that, “In Thailand, an unsuccessful coup d’état is like a reelection, a successful one is like a general election.”
The Royal Thai Armed Forces is always possess leading position in the Thailand coup d’états even it is against the democratic process. In fact, the Thai intellectual, political party, even their leader tolerate with the program of coup d’état without accused them openly. During the 2006 Thai military Coup, the United Front for Democracy Against Dictatorship (UDD) was formed to oppose the military government. The UDD also accused the PAD for supporting the coup. Despite the UDD is oppose the political violence of military coup, until today, there isn’t a party which have ability to block the startup of military coup.
Even during the electoral government, the political parties can not last long because of the democratic system weakening. The political parties in Thailand continue facing the vicious circle of reestablishment and collapse. Although Thailand has western parliamentary democracy system, but in reality, the parliamentary system is quite distant from a mature western democracy political system.
In the case of Malaysia, the major political problem can be attribute to the transformed political system, a system used to be democratic but eventually become authority of bureaucracy.
Malaysia is a federal constitutional elective monarchy. The system of government is closely modeled according to Westminster parliamentary system, British colonial rule. However, in 1974, Tun Razak made some change to the political institution. He first brings forward an idea of a political party alliance, the National Front, as a coalition of three major and great political parties. Since then, the uneven distribution of power and authority become a serious problem in Malaysia politics.
Unfortunately, the imbalance of the political system gets worst after Dr. Mahathir Mohamad had been promoted to Prime Minister of Malaysia. In 1969, the 13 May incident, when Mahathir was a politician, he criticize Tunku Abdul Rahman, the Prime Minister because of the overly concession to Malaysian Chinese. Mahathir is a leader who totally practices dictatorship in his government operation. The famous political controversy in Malaysia, the “Anwar Ibrahim sodomy trials” is believed as a political purge from Mahathir.
The strongman politics of Mahathir has led to the serious problem of one-party dominance. Since his 22 years of holding the Prime Minister post, the National Front had winning five consecutive general elections. And his accumulation of power had led to the independence of the judiciary. He also deploys the Internal Security Act to detain activist and non-mainstream religious figures and political opponents.
The second major political problem of the Southeast Asia country is the diversification of cultural. Some countries has its own traditional factors and cultural while some countries have racial problem. Those background problems had led to the uneven distribution of authorities and power.
In Thailand, the traditional culture had interfered the Thai politics, either in psychologically or culturally. In Thai traditional culture and social hierarchy, every social relation is classified into level and status. The concept of equality is not highly spread in Thai people’s mind. The hierarchical relationships with the privileges due to the uneven distribution of social resources lead to the serious divide of rich-poor divide. The rich-poor differentiation then contributes to further strengthen hierarchical relationships.
Today, we can still see the impact of hierarchy in Thai social life. Thai people pay full respect to the Royal families, and this phenomena is less observed in other constitutional monarchy governments. The royal family’s news always appear on the front-page of newspaper, the media often published message of “insulting royal families” charges and sentences, which is also very rare in today’s world.
The royal family of Thailand has prominent position, they are widely respected by Thai people, Rich Thai people can also get royal nobility by donate to the royal. In rural areas, traditional local authority still maintain control power over the region, they also use improper way to obtain wealth.
In Malaysia, it’s a completely different story. The uneven distribution of authority and power is mainly cause by the multi-racial of Malaysia. In Malaysia, nationalism is often confused with racialism and it’s frequently used by some leader to against the minority in country. These led to the decline of cohesiveness, thus cause the people in country lack of unified thinking.
This is very evident when the political base of Malaysia is an “Alliance of Malay, Chinese and Indian”. The National Front which mentioned earlier is a coalition of three ethnic political parties, which include United Malays National Organization (UMNO) for Malay, Malaysian Chinese Association (MCA) for Malaysian Chinese, and Malaysian Indian Congress (MIC) for India. The National Front support racial harmony and they serve Malay as first priority. Until today, Malaysia government is mainly ruling by Malays. Although Malaysia didn’t have serious racial problem among the people, but the racial issues is always bring up by some politician.
As conclusion, before Southeast Asia countries gain their independence, they used to be rule by strong colonial government. Therefore, when they get their own independence, they cannot build a efficient government and political system. The military and one-party dominance problems are widely appeared in Southeast Asia countries. This kind of political violence had led to the uneven distribution of power. Thus, the political system which established according to western country then transform into a Southeast Asian authorities.
Besides, the representative democracy is too weak when it is incorporate with racial and social hierarchical problems. The political and social-cultural different in countries is still a topic that cannot be ignored. Only when the government pays more attention to human right and democratization, then these problems can be resolved,
However, the year 2011 seemed to have some of the biggest political developments in Southeast Asia countries. Thailand continued to move closer to worsening political infighting, Singapore had its most competitive election, Myanmar seemed ready for real democratic change, and Malaysia had the most massive street demonstration.
