When it comes to democracy, the West isn't necessarily the best

Indian voters next to a cutout of Narendra Modi in Varanasi last month. Popular opinion was reflected to the degree that Modi lost his majority. AP

If an alien were to land on Planet Earth tomorrow and you wanted to explain the concepts of democracy, peaceful transitions and the rule of law to him, where would you point to?

You might start by looking at Indonesia’s elections in February, where a healthy 82 per cent of the more than 200 million registered voters turned out to vote in 800,000 polling stations for officials at multiple levels, right up to the presidency. The latter was won by Prabowo Subianto on 58.5 per cent, more than double the runner-up’s tally. As Mr Prabowo had said before the vote, “I have shown my commitment to democracy” by running in four presidential elections between 2009 and 2024 – and this time he won.

You might then turn to Singapore where Lawrence Wong succeeded Lee Hsien Loong as Prime Minister this May in a transition whose smoothness is partially explained by the fact that it had been planned two years in advance. Certain political freedoms may be limited in the city-state, for sure. But there’s little doubt that the governing People’s Action Party is very careful to bear in mind the wishes and well-being of the people – and elections are more competitive than some imagine, as then foreign minister George Yeo found to his cost in 2011 when he lost his seat.

In next door Malaysia, the country has been adapting remarkably well to a feature of democratic elections it had never faced before November 2022 – a hung Parliament. Many observers believe that Anwar Ibrahim’s unity government will be good to the last the whole term, despite it comprising previously sworn enemies.

In India, you might have to explain the vagaries of the First Past The Post voting system to your interplanetary visitor: how was it that Narendra Modi’s BJP could win 303 seats in 2019 with 37.3 per cent of the vote, but only 240 in 2024 with a fraction lower, at 36.6 per cent? And how can you win with under 50 per cent? Indian democracy may be far from perfect, but you would need to acknowledge that popular opinion was reflected to the degree that Mr Modi lost his majority, and that the London-based think tank Chatham House was far from alone in saying that the result was “a win for democracy”.

By this point, it turns out your little green man has done some reading. Why, he wants to know, haven’t you talked about the great democracies of Europe and North America?

He’s been looking at the figures. Wasn’t Britain’s recent election a disaster for the Labour party, he asks? After all, Labour went from being on 44 per cent at the beginning, to winning less than 34 percent in the actual vote, while its leader, Keir Starmer, suffered a huge setback in his own constituency, where his majority was almost halved. And yet they still secured the biggest landslide victory since 1997.

Mr Starmer’s party won three million fewer voters than Labour did under Jeremy Corbyn in 2019. Our friend is puzzled. Is democracy a system that rewards you for losing support? And don’t even get him onto how the Liberal Democrats ended up with 71 seats on 12 per cent, while Reform UK only has five MPs with 14 per cent of the vote.

In the US, the next presidential election may well be between a convicted felon who wouldn’t accept his own defeat in 2020 and an incumbent who is now applauded if he manages to get to the end of a sentence. Is this what Ronald Reagan was talking about, asks our visitor, when he referred to “the shining city upon a hill”?

Good luck explaining how France is an example of the benefits of democracy, with President Emmanuel Macron throwing away his own party’s parliamentary majority, leaving the country “ungovernable” in the eyes of many, and prompting comparisons to the French Fourth Republic, when there were 21 different administrations over the course of 12 years.

Some may think I’m being a little contrarian here. Yet the truth is that in regions such as South-East Asia, which faces near-constant accusations of democratic backsliding, the system is mostly working pretty well in the countries in which it is established. And if that means people vote for candidates such as Mr Prabowo or Ferdinand Marcos Jr in the Philippines, respectively the former son-in-law and son of former leaders, so be it.

In the countries that pride themselves most strongly on their democratic traditions, including the UK, the so-called “Mother of parliaments”, the system appears so tattered that these states are now its worst advertisements.

How could you possibly argue to anyone unfamiliar with the concept that democracy – rule by the people – is working well when one third of the votes can translate into nearly two thirds of the seats in the UK’s Parliament? Never mind the tyranny of the majority. That looks like a tyranny of the minority.

Increasing numbers of American voters – including about 50 per cent of registered Democrats – don’t believe that Joe Biden should be running for the presidency again. But there appears to be nothing to stop him doing so if he wishes. Where’s the people’s say in that? Returning to France, the people have indeed spoken, in the second round of parliamentary elections last weekend. And what they have voted for is so disruptive that 30,000 police had to be deployed to prevent violence in the wake of the vote.

So I don’t think it’s too far out for me to suggest that while there are few liberal democracies in South and East Asia, there are plenty of democracies that are functioning better than they are often given credit for, and which may even have some lessons for those in Europe and North America.

You don’t have to take my word for it. Here is what then US secretary of state Hillary Clinton once said: “If you want to know if Islam, democracy, modernity and women’s rights can coexist, go to Indonesia.” And some of its neighbours, too, she could have added.