This is the year of the election in Asia. After last week’s violence-marred contest in Bangladesh, which has left the country in a state of hiatus, elections will follow in fairly rapid succession in Thailand, Afghanistan, Indonesia and India. By the end of May, an electorate representing more than 1.7bn people, roughly a quarter of humanity, will have had its say in five countries.
Whether it is happy with the results, however, is a different question. Two things are happening in much of Asia that mirror changing attitudes towards elected governments all over the world.
One is the emergence of anti-establishment figures to challenge the prevailing order. Exhibit A is India’s Aam Aadmi, or Common Man party, whose symbol – a broom – epitomises the idea of the lowly citizen sweeping away entrenched corruption. Just a year old, it is led by a former tax official who presumably knows a thing or two about how rotten the system is. That the Common Man party is now running Delhi, and is even being mooted as a nationwide force in the coming general election, shows how strong the urge is in India to “kick the bums out”.