Daily Lessons from Life 08 April 2014 - All eyes on Asia's two giant democracies

"All eyes on Asia's two giant democracies - The Business Times 08 April 2014

ELECTIONS in India and Indonesia - two of the world's largest democracies - start this week. In India, the total electorate is estimated at 814 million while Indonesia has around 190 million voters. Both economies are moving in the right direction, but the outcome of the elections will be critical for their futures since they will need to do a lot more to ensure their recovery remains on track."

These are two very complex and vast countries. That it has democratic voting is in itself a remarkable feat!

Lessons for me are:

1. India has very strong state governments and politics while Indonesia probably less so with the Central government exerting great control if it wanted to. e.g. it could have stopped the regional government to STOP the annual haze episode if it wanted too!;

2. most, if not all, their citizens are still very much focused on economic issues. Corruptions in both countries, by their own citizens' admission, are rampant. Yet, if things can move alone and everyone still make a decent living, nobody really care too much. It is when the corrupted parties got dead drunk and went overboard that they will be thrown out via the ballot boxes. Having said that, there are a good number of voters who are fairly amiable to 'been paid' for their votes. So, the idealists will have to make do;

3. the other thing to look forward to is no violence at the voting stations. Election in these countries are mostly quite peaceful compared to some other so-called democratic nations though there were occasion violence. Democracy is imperfect but it really does allow the majority to pick someone to govern the whole nation. Of course, if the government has to be formed through coalition and alliance, there will be a lot of 'horse trading' and 'compromise'. Something that nations that favour a quick decisive government feared. Some honestly believed that if the government is not an absolute majority, it is a big negative for the nation. It probably is IF the people are not critical and not well educated. Yet, if the diverse people are well educated and understand the principles of: for the greater good of as many people as possible, it will be ok. If not, very difficult to get the nation to move forward.