ABSTRACT
Looking even briefly around Asia, two phenomena are readily observable. First, unlike the situation in many African countries, losers do not protest and refuse to accept general election results. The electoral process has progressively stabilized throughout most of Asia. Touted recently as the “most democratic” of elections in Bangladesh’s history was the January 2009 election, in which the Awami League won an overwhelming majority of seats in the National Assembly. The trend towards electoral stability began in Asia in the late 1990s, with South Korea and Taiwan transiting from military-backed authoritarian rule to democracy and the peaceful change of the ruling party in government. In 1997, South Korea instituted a one-term presidency system, and over the past decade, the ruling party in Taiwan has alternated between the Democratic Progressive Party and Kuomingtang (KMT). Equally dramatic was the severe curtailing of the power of the long-ruling coalition party, the Barisan Nasional, in Malaysia in the March 2008 general election, when it lost its two-thirds majority in the federal parliament for the first time since the late 1960s. This loss was traumatic for the party, so much so that Prime Minister Abdullah Badawi was forced to hand over power to his deputy, Najib Razak, prematurely. In Indonesia, the military has returned to the barracks after the successful completion of two rounds of presidential elections following the ousting of the late President Suharto in 1998. Finally, the only long-ruling government that has not suffered any loss of electoral political power is the People’s Action Party (PAP) government in Singapore.
