‘Democracy has its (sometimes strange) many ways, and we will just have to learn to appreciate and accept how it is in other societies far different from our own.’
BANGKOK. – After about two weeks in the United States, observing the elections and trying to get a sense of the mood a few days later, I am back in my part of the woods, attending a corporate event in this Kingdom.
Thailand has had an interesting democratic journey, with ups and downs so common in Southeast Asian countries. For the longest time, the two biggest influences on the democratic process in Thailand have been the King (particularly the late and much beloved Rama IX), and the Thai military. The latter has been powerful for decades, a necessity due to the many insurgency problems in Southeast Asia that have not spared Thailand.
The Kingdom was also the closest country to the long-drawn-out struggle between the Vietnamese, Cambodian and even Lao people against the colonial power that subjugated the area, only to be relaxed by the United States in the 1950s. From the late 1960s onward, China emerged, ever-growing in its financial influence coupled with a remarkable rise in its military might.
The Thai military has had to be strong because it has had to be prepared for a unique historical fact: Thailand is the only nation in the region never conquered by any European colonizer.
Then there is the cultural influence that permeates everything and anything political anywhere in the world. In countries where cultural traditions like the role of the family and even of the father in the family are stronger than “democratic traditions,” then you see why democracy, as it is understood in the West, can take on a different look in countries in Southeast Asia like Thailand.
Until his death a few years ago, Rama IX towered over all power elites that competed within the ever-changing democratic space in the Kingdom. On more than one occasion, a head shake from the King stopped the military in its tracks and forced them to forego any thoughts of seizing power from democratically elected governments. In a way, he was the ultimate “guardrail,” very important in a region where democracy’s roots are not as deep and wide as they are in the Western world.
With my feet firmly planted back on Southeast Asian soil where democracy comes in many garbs, I look back across the Pacific and smile, grateful that I am not American and will not need to live through what happens in the next two (at the very least) years. But once again I cannot but feel disappointed that the United States has missed out on the opportunity of having a woman take the lead of the leading democracy in the world, given that so many others – including India, the world’s largest democracy, have already experienced woman power, shattering that last glass ceiling.
From Indira Gandhi to Golda Meir, Thatcher to Merkel, Aquino, Arroyo and Megawati, from Gro Harlem Brundtland to Benazir Bhutto – and even Thailand has had a woman prime minister – the world has seen a parade of women leaders great and not so great, coming to power on the strength of the popular mandate, seen as just as good a leader as their male rivals.
Will America ever have one? Will it take a hundred years more?
Democracy has its (sometimes strange) many ways, and we will just have to learn to appreciate and accept how it is in other societies far different from our own.
