CONVERGENCE OF DEMOCRACY IN ASEAN

ASEAN countries have often been labeled soft authoritarianstates. Many member nations have
voting democracies but limited freedoms for individuals and the media. A single party or
regimewhich precludes viable opposition partiesdominates most of the young democracies.
Into the 1990s, most ASEAN countries propounded Asian values and regional approaches to
human rights and democracy that emphasized differences in culture and developmental levels.
The Philippines, with its emblem of people power after the fall of Marcos, was seen
as an exception, an aberration.

In this context, the first and most important change in ASEAN after the crisis is the rise of
democracy. Democracy was strengthened in Thailand when people organized to demand
government response to the pressures of the crisis. There have been street demonstrations
as well as more liberal press discussion. Indonesia has seen perhaps the most dramatic surge
in democracy. After 32 years of power, President Suharto was swept from power during the
crisis and many millions subsequently participated in elections that, for the first time, were
widely accepted as free and fair.

Democracy is no panacea of course. Indonesia continues to face great political and economic
challenges such as the integrity of the country, the role of the military in politics, and the
insolvency of many banks and companies.. If Indonesia can consolidate democracy and provide
good governance in this manner, the nation will be historically transformed.

What happens in Indonesia is of great consequence to other ASEAN members and the nature of
the association itself. Although ASEAN has a rotating chairmanship, Indonesiadue to size and
historyhas always been its epicenter. If Indonesia consolidates democracy, together with
Thailand and the Philippines, the ethos of governance in ASEAN will shift. This has broad
implications for other ASEAN members. In Malaysia, the crisis years have brought controversy
and a growth in opposition, especially after the sacking of its deputy premier, Anwar Ibrahim.
For Singapore, the crisis induced a gradual opening so that leaders now openly want a civil
society, but one that is cooperative rather than confrontational.
A movement in the region towards democracy can quicken that gradual opening, strengthening
civil society or even opposition parties. Most of all, such a movement in ASEAN stands to
impact members such as Laos, Vietnam and Myanmar, countries with one-party states and
closed regimes.



Research conducted by Abdullah and Benny (2011) show that only 42 percent of Indonesian
respondents claim to have heard of, or read about the Asean Community. Even in Jakarta, 71
percent of the respondents say they have not heard or read about the regional agenda. The
number of respondents who claim to have read or heard about the Bali Concord II is even lower
at only 16 percent. Meanwhile, the majority of respondents say they have not yet heard about the
Asean Charter.
This is a democratic deficit; a situation refers to a perceived lack of accessibility to the ordinary
citizens, representation of the ordinary citizens and accountability of certain institution. In the
Asean case, people know nothing about Asean Community 2015 but sooner or later they will be
affected by it. However, this problem is not unique to Asean. The notion of democratic deficit is
firstly popularized by the European social scientists in regard to the idea of the European Union
(EU). Having multi-layered, multi-centered, division-of-power governance, as the EU has right
now, is a big puzzle for the ordinary Europeans on the accountability of the EU policies.