Modi’s on course for a third term, Jokowi’s lining up a new political dynasty and the opposition in both Pakistan and Bangladesh have been hamstrung, Rights advocates say it reflects the creep of authoritarianism across Asia – with established, elderly leaders likely to be the biggest winners
Last October, an Indonesian court ruling allowed the eldest son of outgoing President Joko Widodo to run for vice-president in next month’s polls despite him being 36 years old – four years short of the legal threshold to bid for high office.
The ruling revealed the “irony” of hard-won democratic principles being shunted aside in favour of the narrow interests of those given a mandate by the people, according to Amalinda Saviriani, an Indonesian student leader during the long protest years against former dictator Suharto, who resigned in 1998.
“We have these formal institutions of democracy,” she told This Week in Asia. “But it all depends on who has the power … and how they choose to adjust and change these things.”
Hundreds of millions of voters will cast their ballots in Asia this year, as a quirk of the electoral calendar brings perhaps the largest-ever democratic exercise to the world’s most populous region.
Bangladesh, Pakistan, Indonesia and India will vote – in that order – for a collage of mostly elderly incumbents, would-be autocrats, dynasts and veteran political schemers.
All of them, in different ways, have used the courts to “adjust things” in their favour, relegating lofty democratic ideals, ‘change’ narratives and concerns for greater civil liberties behind outmanoeuvring opponents and silencing critics.
The promises they have made pivot on the safe stewardship of vastly unequal economies, or tap deep nationalist emotions and identity politics.
“He has created a sense of a nation on the move,” New Delhi-based trainee accountant and first-time voter Vikas Narula said of Narendra Modi, the 73-year-old who has run India since 2014. “I feel prouder to be Indian than I ever did.”
The region’s opposition leaders have mostly failed to mount much of a challenge for a variety of reasons, from being banned in Pakistan to lacking a convincing new platform in India and feeling forced to boycott the polls in Bangladesh.
So far as Pakistan is related, although the government says elections are to be held on 8th February, 2024, but the ground conditions and un-level playing fields for some political parties, show that the elections can be postponed again.
