^^ This. I think that among this group of states, Cambodia is fairing quite well.Lucky Lucan wrote:Is that a joke? ASEAN democracies?boozyoldman wrote:It is likely that Cambodia will have to wait for a generation to have even the sort of semi-democracy that some other ASEAN countries enjoy.
Can we make a list?
Brunei - Islamic Absolute Monarchy
Indonesia - Presidential Constitutional Republic.
Lao PDR - One-party Socialist Republic.
Malaysia - Federal parliamentary elective Constitutional Monarchy.
Myanmar - Parliamentary Constitutional Republic.
Philippines - Presidential Constitutional Republic.
Singapore - One-party parliamentary republic.
Thailand - Military Junta under a constitutional monarchy.
Vietnam - One-party Socialist Republic.
Comments welcome, these are very bare descriptions.
The names say it all for a few of the other countries: Islamic Absolute Monarchy and Military Junta, for example. And then there are the conditions in other countries.
Myanmar at the moment may be committing systematic ethnic cleansing, and world politicians won't even dare to visit there.
The Philippines have what has been dubbed "The Serial Killer President", with such great statements as "There were 32 killed in Bulacan in a massive raid, that's good.Let's kill another 32 every day. Maybe we can reduce what ails this country" and “When you kill criminals that is not a crime against humanity. The criminals have no humanity. God damn it! Marami pang patayan to. Lumalaban talaga yan. (There will be many more killings. They are really fighting back). It will not end tomorrow for as long as there is a drug pusher and drug lord!"
News headlines now commonly refer to Malaysia's PM as: "scandal-scarred Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak", who is being investigated for a multi-billion dollar scam.
I'm not even going to touch the authoritarian state of Singapore, as I'm pretty sure they're watching what I'm doing right now.
Indonesia has parts of the country under sharia law, is currently debating a law that would ban LGBT characters from national television shows, arrested and sentenced the Christian governor of Jakarta on bullshit blasphemy charges, and still cannot come to grips with what the Washington Post dubs "one of the Cold War's darkest chapters", where "more than 50 years after the events of 1965 the topic is still an inflammatory one in the world's largest Muslim-majority country" and "Indonesia still suffers from “dangerous anti-communist paranoia,” in the words of a recent Human Rights Watch publication."
And that's just a very quick overview of a few of the things going on in ASEAN. With all of that, I think Cambodia is doing very well for itself.