The Future of Democracy

The year 2020 has been the most eye opening year for the world.

The sudden emergence of the 2019 Novel Coronavirus or the Covid-19 virus has openly exposed misgovernments and abuse to human rights of some leaderships or regimes especially, the Philippines.

We were asked to watch and interpret the V-Dem Democracy 2020 Report and immediately my mind asked why. Do data like these still matter when the majority of the population tend to neglect numbers and believe more on fallacies and unproven facts and ideas? In a world where most of the people will focus more on improving their personal lives believing that their political wills and citizenships won’t matter anymore, be the individual voice that will influence them to speak up and fight for their rights because sooner or later, one voice will be a power of collective voices that will cry for the nation.

Going back to the V-Dem Democracy 2020 Report, I found out that it focuses on five indices mainly: deliberative, egalitarian, electoral, liberal, and participatory. With these 5 indices, we were asked to emphasize data on one specific topic under each. Here I would like to actively discuss the performance of Singapore, Thailand and the Philippines in terms of Health Equality, Engaged Society, Freedom of Political Killings and the Harassments of Journalists.

The graph projects a huge gap between the three countries in terms of health equality. As you can see, the Philippines shows a low and steady rating which is very alarming to its nature. For about 24 years, the Philippines relatively remained at a very low rating when it comes to accessing basic health care. On 2011, the graph clearly shows how the Philippines’ rating went down and continuously boils down until the recent years. Each state or nation must focus on improving the quality of their universal health care systems because true enough, this is an investment to the county’s human capital. Without healthy and progressive workers the economy of the country is expected to be weaker and less competent. The Sustainable Development Goals aims to achieve Universal Health Care for all on the year 2030 because through this, we can eradicate poverty and corruption — these can not be achieved if the people will constantly be burdened unto their health related expenses every year. As per Singapore’s high quality rating on health equality, there are 3 key factors given by Dr. Kai Hong Phua of the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy in relation to this result. First is the involvement of both public and private sectors by consulting and experimenting which system works both ways, followed by sustainable financing and lastly,a strong implementation of government rules and regulations regarding their Universal Health Care.

When the administration changes the nation’s important policies, rules and regulations, they must include its people. A country with balanced participation both from public and private sectors will create a more aware, intact and developed country. Here I would like to focus on Thailand’s standing in terms of its society’s engagement on policy-making. As shown on the graph, Thailand experienced a huge drop on ratings linked to societal engagement. This is disturbing because once the society lacks engagement to its government results to the downfall of democracy.

Freedom from Political Killings

Political Killings are killings done by the state itself to their people who declare their opposition to the administration. This should not be tolerated because this is a clear violation on human rights and it invalidates the core of democracy. Distinctly both Philippines and Thailand recorded low ratings in terms of freedom from Political Killings. On May 1992, Thailand had experienced their black days as soldiers had violently killed the protesters against Suchinda Kraprayoon’s government without hesitations.

Back in the Philippines during a global pandemic, the administration eagerly sought for the passing of the Anti-Terrorism Law claiming that it will protect its people from terrorism but, how can the people feel safe if its own government is its number one rival? Cleary the “Duterte Regime” is sensitive when it comes to criticisms and disapprovals. The rise in numbers of political killings in the Philippines including the Extra Judicial killings related to the administration’s War on Drugs puts the country on a fragile state near in breaking its democracy. Cries from thousands of people and numerous Human Rights advocates have surged because of this. Senator Antonio Trillanes have once said that the Philippines is now “the murder capital of Asia.” This tag should have been alarming already to its people because this administration had stolen the “safe space” of its people. #OUSTDU30

The chart clearly shows that these 3 countries in Southeast Asia lacks effort in protecting the press. We all know that the press or media is one of our immediate source of information, news, and etc. Forced to shutdown when it was needed the most was the country’s largest TV network and major source of information, ABS-CBN. This was clearly an attack to press freedom because the network was threatened countless of times by the president, himself to be shutdown in no spare time. Blocking the mediums of information neglects the main purpose of Democracy.

The progressive changes from democratic to authoritarian will soon cause chaos and disagreements globally and locally.

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