Don’t let Southeast Asia’s sham elections fool you

Opinion

By the Editorial Board
WP|
April 12, 2023 at 3:13 p.m. EDT

 

Paetongtarn Shinawatra in Bangkok on April 3. (Sakchai Lalit/AP Photo)

"Thailand’s election is flawed from the start. But it looks like a model of pluralistic democracy compared with the sham exercise underway in neighboring Cambodia. There, the outcome is a foregone conclusion;"

Southeast Asia is readying for two, possibly three, elections in the coming months. But make no mistake — none promise to be free or fair, and they should not be recognized as such.

First up is Thailand, which is scheduled to vote on May 14. The country has been under de facto military rule since a 2014 coup, although the coup leader, former general Prayuth Chan-ocha, managed to change his army uniform for civilian garb after a highly suspect election in 2019 that cemented the military’s role in power.
Make sense of the news fast with our daily newsletter

Mr. Prayuth is seeking an extension of his term in the coming election, but this time the military is split. Another former general, Prawit Wongsuwan, is also running for prime minister under the banner of a rival military-allied party. This unusual division gives hope to some that perhaps the will of the people might be respected and the generals tossed out. Don’t count on it.

The most popular party at the moment, according to polls, appears to be the Pheu Thai Party, the latest iteration of the populist party of the ousted billionaire tycoon and former prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra. Mr. Thaksin and his party won every election since 2001. But each time, military coups or legally suspect court rulings disqualified the party or its elected members of parliament.

The party’s latest attempt is led by Mr. Thaksin’s daughter, Paetongtarn Shinawatra, 36, a political neophyte who has been drawing large crowds to her rallies. Another opposition party, called Move Forward, is also expected to do well, especially among Bangkok’s more youthful and elite voters. The two could split the anti-military vote.

But this election has already been rigged to guarantee the Thaksin family will not return to power. First, the electoral commission that oversees the balloting is not independent; its members have been appointed by the ruling military. The election was scheduled to take place on examination day for students nationwide, which might dampen youth turnout. Also, some 1,800 pro-democracy activists and government critics have been criminally charged, many for taking part in peaceful political demonstrations.

"But rigged and sham elections are a perversion of democracy. The international community, including the United States, should not give leaders who cling to power through fraudulent elections the recognition they crave."

Just as important, no matter which party prevails in the election, which will choose 500 seats in the lower house of parliament, those elected representatives will vote along with an appointed 250-seat senate — made up entirely of allies of the military — which also votes for the premier. So to have any chance to form a government without the military, a party has to win 376 seats of the 500 up for grabs, a near insurmountable task.

And should any party achieve that goal, the military could always annul the elections through a coup. There have been more than 20 military coups or coup attempts since the end of the absolute monarchy in 1932. There’s no reason to believe the soldiers will remain in the barracks if the election produces an outcome the military sees as unpalatable.

Thailand’s election is flawed from the start. But it looks like a model of pluralistic democracy compared with the sham exercise underway in neighboring Cambodia. There, the outcome is a foregone conclusion; Prime Minister Hun Sen, already Cambodia’s longest-serving leader, is set to extend his hold on power for another five years in elections scheduled for July 23.

The main opposition to Mr. Hun Sen’s ruling Cambodian People’s Party, the Cambodia National Rescue Party (CNRP), was banned in 2017 and its leader, Kem Sokha, sentenced to 27 years in prison for treason last month. Not surprisingly, Mr. Hun Sen’s ruling party won all 125 national assembly seats in 2018. Other CNRP leaders have been arrested or fled into exile. Mr. Hun Sen earlier this year shut down the Voice of Democracy, one of Cambodia’s last remaining independent media outlets.

Mr. Hun Sen expects his party to win as many as 115 parliamentary seats over the small Candlelight Party, formed from the remnants of the disbanded CNRP. Mr. Hun Sen, 70, appears to be trying to line up his son, Hun Manet, a Cambodian four-star army general and U.S. Military Academy graduate, as his successor.

Mr. Hun Sen is following a familiar decades-old script that has kept him in office since he muscled his way into a power-sharing agreement after U.N.-sponsored elections in 1993 ended in a stalemate. He arrests opposition leaders or forces them into exile, he clamps down on the media and he instigates violence against campaign workers in rural areas. The tragedy is that his tactics seem to work.

The generals ruling another Southeast Asian county, Myanmar, formerly known as Burma, were also planning to push ahead with a sham election originally set for this August after seizing power in a coup in February 2021. But the country remains racked by civil war and the ruling junta recently extended its state of emergency by another six months, putting that election in doubt. So: There’s one less flawed election to worry about this year — if that is any comfort.

It might be considered a positive sign that Asia’s military rulers and autocrats see the need to hold regular elections as a way to create a veneer of legitimacy. As the United States competes with China for influence in the region, it might also be tempting to accept these elections as democratic steppingstones, somewhat free if not wholly fair, and then get on with pursuing closer ties with these countries.

But rigged and sham elections are a perversion of democracy. The international community, including the United States, should not give leaders who cling to power through fraudulent elections the recognition they crave.