The Freedom House’s 2018 report on Southeast Asian countries shows institutional stagnation, with Myanmar being the only one whose status was improved from “not free” to “partly free” after the military representatives accepted the results of parliament elections held in 2015 and the parliamentary held the country’s first relatively free presidential election. The Freedom House’s “Freedom in the World” report assesses the condition of political rights and civil liberties around the world. Lastly, as 2019 will be the political year for some Southeast Asian countries, the article examines whether the present condition will have a bearing on the state of democracy in the region next year. It is followed by a discussion on selected individual countries, such as Malaysia, where voters’ genuine preference for clean governance has curbed the elites’ strategy of identity-politics, and Indonesia, in which identity-politics and populism have continued to shape democracy. The following sub-section shows that across the region countries have shown mixed results. The article aims at highlighting the practice of democracy in some countries in Southeast Asian to show to what extent elections have brought in the above bundle of freedoms into the political system. More than the mere perfunctory elections, substantive democracy ideally calls for a political system that is marked by a free and fair elections, rule of law, a separation of powers, and the protection of basic liberties of speech, assembly, religion and property. Among these, intimidation, patronage/corruption, populism and identity-politics are widely used by elites to achieve political triumph. In addition, popular suffrage has also provided a platform on which various undemocratic strategies to maintain or achieve power can be tested. However, the elections’ varying degrees of freeness, fairness and administrative efficacy indicate that while some serve the purpose of being the mechanism for a peaceful arbitration of political rivalries, others merely give authoritarian regimes a veneer of legitimacy. Across the region, governments conduct elections and citizens cast their votes. To be fair, there is something to be said for the fact that elections are still treated as the ultimate yardstick for “democracy” in Southeast Asia. Despite these achievements, various challenges in the recent years continue to curb democracy and democratization in the region. Third, in 2015 when Aung San Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy (NLD) party rode a popular wave into a sweeping victory in Myanmar’s parliamentary election. Second, in 1998, when the resignation of Indonesia’s Former President Soeharto ended the 3 decade-long authoritarian government and ushered in the reformasi period which introduced direct elections and decentralization. In the post-cold war period, the region has witnessed at least three democratic milestones: first, in 1986, when the People Power Revolution in the Philippines led to the toppling of the Marcos regime and the rise of a new democratic government under Cory Aquino.
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