Elections not seen as panacea for Asia’s ills

[rooster59]

Elections not seen as panacea for Asia’s ills

By WASAMON AUDJARINT, 
SUPALAK GANJANAKHUNDEE 
THE NATION

 

 

ELECTIONS DUE in many Asian countries in the next couple of years may be manipulated to vindicate authoritarian rulers and autocracy, panellists at a symposium warned yesterday.

 

Bangladesh, Cambodia, Malaysia and Pakistan are set to hold elections this year. Indonesia and India are yet to announce elections due next year, while Thailand’s election, scheduled for February, is again not final.

 

“Whether we have the right to vote is top priority for us [in Thailand] now,” Kobsak Chutikul, secretary-general of Asian Peace and Reconciliation, told the international symposium on elections hosted by Asia News Network at a Bangkok hotel.

 

Panellists agreed that democracy and fundamental rights were under threat throughout Asia.

The election is no longer about exercising public will, but of powers-that-be using it to manipulate public will, said Mahfuz Anam, editor-in-chief of the Bangladesh newspaper The Daily Star.

 

“The people who are in power do not take elections as a measure of popularity, but being in power is about deceiving and manipulating public opinion,” he said.

 

Every country, including Bangladesh, is using state machinery – bureaucracy, intelligence, police and the judiciary – to manipulate public will, he said.

 

Democracy and the fundamental rights of the people are currently under pressure not only in Asia but all over the world, said Kingsley Abbott, senior legal adviser, Southeast Asia, of the International Commission of Justice.

 

The assault on human rights and the rule of law; the attack on freedom of expression as well as misuse of the law are happening widely in the region, he said.

 

Freedom of expression is being suppressed in many countries in the region, he said. Cambodia and Myanmar have arrested a number of journalists, he said.

 

In Thailand, it is unlawful for five or more people to gather for political purposes. This year alone, as of yesterday, the junta has charged more than 60 people for violations of military order, he said.

 

“Law is also misused,” he said. “Rather than simply violate human rights, states increasingly legislate to make violations [of human rights] lawful, such as the military order in Thailand that bans political gathering, which is a violation of fundamental rights, the right of expression and assembly.” Sedition and computer-related crime laws are being abused to violate rights in the entire region, Abbott said.

 

Kobsak suggested that people should not have high expectations in elections. “It is just the right of individual persons to go to vote. Like in South Asia, people just go to vote without high expectations whether or not the election could bring them good politicians into the government,” he said.

 

“I think we have to look beyond politicians. Behind them are the people and we have to let people have the opportunity to have a say,” he said.

 

Abbott called on all stakeholders, including journalists and lawyers as well as people who wish to see justice, to fight for democracy and human rights. Countries should prioritise discussion on human rights bilaterally and multilaterally. The United Nations must keep human rights up front, not just in words but through actions, he said.

 

“The Asean principle of non-interference should be dropped in favour of human rights and the rule of law for sustainable development. Civil society needed to be protected,” he said.

 

Abbott called for the Thai junta to lift all restrictions on fundamental rights and allow an election to take place soon.

 

Bhokin Bhalakula, a key Pheu Thai Party figure, worried that the junta’s grip on power would be maintained during the pre-election period, which could result in an unfair election process, including control of party campaigning.

 

“While there are laws and regulations, the question is how they would be interpreted and enforced,” the Thai politician and former deputy prime minister, said.

 

“So, it’s questionable whether this would bring about double standards. Rules can be deviated by people.” 

 

His remarks could refer to the junta and the police enforcement of a series of laws, from the computer crime act to sedition to lese majeste, which have been used significantly against online commentators on subjects critical to the junta.

 

Source: http://www.nationmultimedia.com/detail/politics/30341118

 

 

-- © Copyright The Nation 2018-03-17

[YetAnother]

11 minutes ago, rooster59 said:

“The people who are in power do not take elections as a measure of popularity, but being in power is about deceiving and manipulating public opinion,” he said.

wow, i guess we then can call our current idiot rulers 'the deceptors'

[YetAnother]

19 minutes ago, rooster59 said:

“While there are laws and regulations, the question is how they would be interpreted and enforced,” the Thai politician and former deputy prime minister, said.

a former Deputy Prime Minister said that; quickly illustrates the overall thai attitude toward 'law'; apparently it is something to be flexibly used to one's own purposes

[Samui Bodoh]

49 minutes ago, rooster59 said:

“Law is also misused,” he said. “Rather than simply violate human rights, states increasingly legislate to make violations [of human rights] lawful, such as the military order in Thailand that bans political gathering, which is a violation of fundamental rights, the right of expression and assembly.” Sedition and computer-related crime laws are being abused to violate rights in the entire region, Abbott said.

 

This is sometimes referred to as "Rule by Law" to contrast with the idea of "Rule of Law".

 

There is a great deal of truth to the concerns raised above. However, you also have to look at the complicity of the general population(s) in allowing abuses to go forward; if the population(s) silently acquiesces, then it is hard to complain afterwards.

 

This is, in my view, an incredibly important era in the history of the SE Asia region. It seems that many countries are at a crossroads and are deciding (by one means or another) whether they want to go down the Democratic path with Elections, Civil Societies and Human Rights or more Authoritarian systems whereby decisions are made without their consent.

 

Ultimately it is up to the people in SE Asia to choose, but I hope that they choose the more Democratic route...

 

Edited March 17, 2018 by Samui Bodoh
Lack of coffee

[Anak Nakal]

Asian people need to have their vote, Enough of the Big People!

[CharlesSwann]

They can't say it is getting worse across Asia though. It's just that hopes are fading that full-on democracy, which they once had their sights on after the demise of various full-on authoritarian systems (Mao's China, Pol Pot's Cambodia, Suharto's Indonesia etc), will become the norm any time soon.

 

What we have instead are newly-comfortable societies who don't really care who rules them (at least, not enough to rise up) as long as they have plenty to eat and plenty to entertain themselves with (the most important things, as the Romans knew) in other words, placid bourgeois mediocrity. This allows the elites to get away with it. The only thing to fight for now is a bit of pride, but that may not be worth the effort.

 

I favour accountability. Whether that necessarily comes in the form of one-man-one-vote democracy, with all its attendant bickering, I haven't yet decided. Consider too that democratic Europe is a political basket-case.  I'm planning a new political system for the world. In the meantime I think the danger of lapsing back into the evil autocracies of the past is much less now that the world is united by technology, and stability in any form is worth plenty. In other words, I take a pragmatic view at this stage during what may be a transition that takes another century or more.

[Enoon]

 

The hope that "they" will become like "us" was always forlorn.

 

The spectre is that "we" (as we further embrace Totalitarian Capitalism) will become more like "them".

 

 

[natway09]

Great headline &............. how true

[Cadbury]

Any elected government in Thailand would surely have to be better than the present military government which ignores important social issues like road deaths and endemic corruption and which has a leader who busies himself by telling school kids that the Thai language is going to be the next international language and proposes his government and civil servants to dress up like circus clowns as their daily work attire. 

Barnum and Bailey would have nothing on this incumbent self-appointed circus.

Edited March 17, 2018 by Cadbury

[Oziex1]

While the Thai people may cry out for elections what real choices do they have for a leader who will lead, and not just loot the country?

 

The Asian patronage system is terribly flawed to the point of being just plane crooked.

[Tilacme]

The plight of the ordinary is far more dire than that.  The age of weak puppet governments controlled by globalists is the future, imho.