Rise of Authoritarianism among Southeast Asian countries especially during the COVID-19 Pandemic

Second Class Citizens

Nov 11, 20205 min read

The year 2020 has been one of the most challenging years ever to be recorded. With the spread of the SARS-CoV-2 across the world, effecting a wide-scale pandemic, no country was spared. The challenges were sudden and unforeseen. Nations were left to decide to manage the impending situation while simultaneously engaging with different political and socio-economic issues. Undeniably, most, if not all, it was seen that the novel coronavirus did not only escort a list of inadequacies, inequalities, inconsistencies, and inaccesibilities in the each political systems but rather exposed a flawed system that was already there in society.

Specifically, the impact of the COVID-19 situation among Southeast Asian countries have exacerbated the tendency of leaders towards authoritarianism. Authoritarian-leaning leaders in the region used this time to attack their political enemies and to gain additional powers. For instance, Prime Minister Hun Sen of Cambodia and his cronies exploited the COVID-19 situation to use “fake news” laws to jail political opponents and those that criticized his government’s response to COVID-19. In the Philippines, President Duterte has granted himself “special temporary power” at the advent of the pandemic but left only hardships to the Filipino populace. During this time, he was also able to jail his political opponents, and many actually suspect that he is laying groundwork for declaring Martial Law. In Thailand, Prime Minister Prayuth Chan-o-cha, who led a military coup while still in uniform in 2014, used the cover of COVID-19 to repress freedom of expression using arbitrary legal mechanisms.

Each government had their own ways to curb the spread of the virus, although some have become more notable. As such, there is a perception that authoritarian regimes have better handled this pandemic situation than other regions which practice democracy. For instance, the success stories of Vietnam and Singapore with one-party governments greatly differ from the narratives of Southeast Asia’s two largest democracies: Indonesia and the Philippines.

As such, this “proof” had made such aforementioned democratic states to increase the role of security forces correspondingly. For instance, in Indonesia and in the Philippines, national COVID-19 task forces are dominated by current and retired military forces. Important posts in important matters are filled by officials with no prior experience to public health and medical concerns.This was also the case in Thailand where the military-dominated regime has been put at the center of their response. In Myanmar, the military has used the opportunity to assert itself in national affairs, launched an offensive against the Arakan Army, and violated its own COVID-19 cease-fire in the Northern Shan State. In Malaysia, one of the region’s least politicized security forces has played a publicly prominent role in enforcing the country’s “movement control order”, thereby also arresting groups who express dissents against the current status quo.

As these matters continue to surface, citizens held demonstrations to denounce such unfair legislations. Thailand’s citizens have been boldly protesting and want the parliament to be dissolved, their constitution to be changed, and for harassment of activities to be stopped. Indonesian citizens, with the passing of the controversial Omnibus Law, took to the streets to object to the possible exploitative tenets of the said bill. The Philippines, with its leaders’ tending to populist ideas, have solicited grimaces and public wrath from its citizens especially with the passing of the Anti-Terror Law and the draconian measures being implemented during quarantine. Cambodia’s government has also made reforms to quash possible dissents from its populace. And akin to other demonstrations and protests in these countries, these are all met with resistance from government and police forces, leaving many attendees injured and detained unlawfully.

What explains the prominence of authoritarianism in the region

The recent years had become challenging in the Southeast Asian region beause of the observable erosion of democratic values in favor of authoritarianism. The prominence of conservative political movements, right-wing governments, and populism have further exacerbated this situation, thereby possibly bypassing any democratic institutions.

According to Chacko & Jayasuriya (2018), one factor that led to this is the fact that countries are experiencing a fracturing of dominant modes of political incorporation under the conditions of global and domestic neo-liberal capitalist transformations. As a result, this contested process of political and social disincorporation has sharply reduced the capacity of state elites to manage crises. Such instance might also be seen as effects to persistent political instability of bourgeois political projects in these regions, especially undermining the representation the masses have been voicing out.

As such, political responses to these crises have predominantly been conservative and authoritarian in nature and have led to attempts to restructure the state in ways that limit dissent and electoral competition. Generally, the shift in these countries is because of the effects of the growing inability of political elites to manage political, economic and social crisis. And as evidenced by governments across different times, crisis and the failure of crisis management are a distinctive feature of authoritarian statism. The fracturing of modes of incorporation renders the political management of economic reform and associated crises intractable for political leaders and parties within the political projects that they have initiated.

Thus also a rise of noticeable forms of pluralist politics, namely in the guise of cultural nationalism and populism and have, in different ways, become a significant feature of contemporary politics under neo-liberal conditions in Asia. This is to somehow counteract the effect of the crises in these regions, compensated for by leaders who vowed to “change” the dynamics in their areas by pushing for motherhood statements without even targeting the root causes of these multifaceted crises.

Such evidences contribute to the observable shift from democracy to authoritarianism by autocratic leaders.

So what’s next for everyone in the region?

Even before the COVID-19 pandemic struck, most countries in Southeast Asia have long been leaning to “authoritarian statism”, but somehow worsened when several authoritarian-leaning leaders in the region used their capabilities to bolster their interests over the citizens and their political enemies.

As every citizen especially in countries like the Philippines, Indonesia, and Thailand vow to protect their democratic sovereign rights, activism has long been one of the ways to voice out the ramifications of their leaders’ autocratic decision-making. The future may be bleak for them, especially with COVID-19 not gone anytime soon, and mass movements may become apparent as time will pass by. And as leaders like Duterte continue to usurp the basic human rights of his people, the People Power in the Philippines or the Saffron Revolution in Myanmar may not be a far cry. That is if people continue to see that authoritarianism will have massive impacts on the social and cultural contexts of the people living in these areas.

Rise of Authoritarianism among Southeast Asian countries especially during the COVID-19 Pandemic

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