[EAI Online Seminar]

YouTube Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Llbm3FBDyE

The East Asia Institute (EAI, Director Son Yeol), as the secretariat of the Asia Democracy Research Network (ADRN), hosted the fifteenth "Exploring Direct, Deliberative, and Participatory Democracy in Seven Asian Countries" online seminar series.

Democratic countries in Asia are striving to establish good governance by introducing elements of direct democracy into their indirect democratic political systems. Despite various trial-and-error experiences depending on national historical contexts, they are proposing methods to promote direct, deliberative, and participatory democracy through both online and offline channels.

In this online seminar, member institutions of the ADRN from the Philippines, India, Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, Mongolia, and Sri Lanka gathered to explore and diagnose direct democracy trends and discuss ways to establish better democratic governance.

This seminar was conducted as part of the ADRN research project "Ups and Downs of Direct Democracy Trends in Asia."

• Date and Time: June 23, 2022 (Thursday) 16:00 – 17:30 (KST)
• Panelists:
  
  Mohamed Aaseem, Analyst, Verite Research
  
  Dolgion Aldar, Consultant and Representative, Independent Research Institute of Mongolia
  
  Kaustuv K. Bandyopadhyay, Director, Participatory Research in Asia
  
  Thawilwadee Bureekul, Director of Research and Development, King Prajadhipok’s Institute
  
  Halmie Azrie Abdul Halim, Researcher, Institute for Democracy and Economic Affairs (IDEAS), Malaysia
  
  Francisco A. Magno, Senior Fellow, Institute of Governance at De La Salle University
  
  Sri Nuryanti, Researcher, Indonesian National Research and Innovation Agency

I. Overview

Democratic countries in Asia are incorporating concepts and mechanisms of direct democracy into their political system, but many still face difficulties in implementing good governance. In order to examine the diverse backgrounds and ongoing trends of direct democracy within Asia, the Asia Democracy Research Network (ADRN) hosted an ADRN online seminar, inviting scholars from seven Asian countries to speak about their country’s direct democracy trends.

II. Case Studies: Philippines, Mongolia, Indonesia, Malaysia, Sri Lanka, Thailand, India

Philippines

“Even though there are mechanisms for direct democracy […], the clear challenge is the persistence of political dynasties…and the continuity of authoritarian populism in the country”

Direct democracy in the Philippines is anchored in its constitution. Article 13 of Section 16 of the constitution emphasizes the right of the people and their organizations to effective and reasonable participation at all levels of social, political, and economic decision-making.

At the center of Philippine direct democracy is a system of initiatives and referendums. For example, a 2019 referendum sought public approval of the Bangsamoro Organic Law and the creation of a new province. Another example is recall elections. There have been instances when a petition made by a certain percentage of voters in a province or local jurisdiction resulted in out-of-cycle recall elections for local mayors.

Local government code also encourages the development of policies for public participation. For example, several local governments have created a local people`s council, adding an additional layer of direct governance to the already-mandated local development councils. People’s councils can observe, vote on, and participate in city government project activities and programs. The people’s council can also designate representatives to all city council committees and suggest and vote on proposed legislation.

A new development in Philippine direct democracy is the use of digital democracy. Mayor Vico Sotto of the city of Pasig is known to actively use digital platforms to gauge public opinion on and get approval for certain policies. For example, new rules on speed limits in Pasig were proposed through online platforms, in what Magno likens to a local online referendum.

Participatory budgeting practices also help to boost accountability. Several mechanisms have been introduced over the past six or seven years (e.g. the Budget Partnership Agreements) to encourage bottom-up budgeting and citizen participatory audits. Village-level residents are also asked to identify budget priorities through a series of workshop assemblies; these priorities are incorporated into the budget of higher levels of government, including national development plans.

Direct democracy requires a combination of government enabling mechanisms and civil society demands. Enabling factors within the Philippines include its democratic political culture after the replacement of authoritarianism in the 1980s; rules and legislation, including local government code and the Philippine constitution; the right to information in the executive branch, the pursuit of open data for citizens, and access to reliable public documents; and ongoing capacity building for government agencies based on public participation.

The Seal of Good Local Governance (SGLG) is a law that provides incentives for participatory governance, aiming to ensure transparency, participation, and accountability across all government functions. The Department of the Interior and local governments are now also providing data ongoing infrastructure project, allowing people to monitor the progress of projects online and provide feedback.

On the demand side of direct democracy, one factor is the availability and accessibility of independent media that enables citizens to discuss public issues. For example, a corruption scandal in which government funds were being funneled to fake NGOs was exposed by the Philippine Daily Inquirer, an independent media organization. This prompted an online petition for the government’s anti-graft agency to probe the 10 billion peso scam, and hundreds of thousands to protest.

Moving forward, Magno recommends passing the Freedom of Information Law, legislating participatory budget mechanisms at national and sub-national levels, integrating citizen participation in civic education, promoting open data and conducting analytics for better government planning, and building a database on citizen participation to aid policy reform efforts. He calls for new mechanisms to make the government’s Full Disclosure Policy (FDP) fully operational, incorporating local knowledge stakeholders to create platforms that better bridge government data and policy advocacy. The persistence of political dynasties, which have been successful in representative democracy elections, and the rise of authoritarian populism in the country.

Mongolia

“Mongolia has the key mechanisms allowing for direct democracy…, but the general observation is these laws are not implemented in practice”

There is very limited space for direct democracy in Mongolia, especially as traditionally defined—people voting directly about the issues that interest them. However, using a broader interpretation and examining whether mechanisms exist for citizen participation, there has been progress on the direct democratic front.

Like many other countries in Asia, Mongolia was ruled by an authoritarian regime for 70 years, transitioning out in the 1990s. In that sense, there has been a great deal of democratic progress. Though Mongolia has yet to hold a national referendum and there is not broader national scale participation, key mechanisms exist to allow public participation in various stages of governance, such as planning, budgeting, and monitoring. 2011 legislation established the right to information and transparency, and there are several mechanisms allowing public hearings, petitions, and complaints, as well as mandating the government to respond to these complaints. 2017 legislation introduced deliberative polling.

The first democratic constitution of 1992 set the foundation for direct democracy, recognizing that the people of Mongolia shall directly participate in state affairs. The role of the public evolved further with the Law on Referendum (1995) and a surge of laws in the 2010s which allowed and expanded the role of public participation in governance. However, these laws and mechanisms have not been fully implemented in practice, or are obstructed by other, contradictory laws.

Over the last two decades, the trend has been toward digital transformation and incorporating technology in the state-citizen relationship. This year, the Parliament of Mongolia released a “Digital Parliament” application, and there is a committee dedicated to digitalizing government services. But whether this digital transformation has contributed to people directly voting or indirectly changing policy is unclear. So far, its primary role has been to amplify state-citizen communication, and less so the reverse. The hope is for this digital transformation to provide actual decision-making empowerment for the public.

There have been some concerning setbacks for Mongolian direct democracy over the last decade. For example, laws on state secrets significantly restrict the right to information by allowing the government to classify any type of information as a secret. The current parliament also does not have a dedicated standing committee on petitions and complaints, as the existing committee was dissolved and replaced by the digital parliament application. But given the lack of widespread digital access and Mongolia’s “digital divide,” many citizens are unaware that such an application exists.

Mongolia also lacks proponents of direct democracy. In discussions on promoting democracy, few are saying that people need to directly vote and make decisions about key issues. Instead, Mongolian discussion of democracy focuses on representative democracy; there are many ongoing efforts to introduce another constitutional amendment to change the electoral system and fix the parliamentary system.

There are several popular claims against direct democracy. The first is the nationalist objection, which argues that proponents of democracy, especially direct democracy, are “pro-American liberals” who don’t understand the Mongolian culture and context, leading to pushback against democratic movements. Second, as Mongolia is situated between Russia and China, some have voiced the opinion that talking too much about freedom and freedom issues poses a national security concern. In a similar vein, some argue that civil society organizations (CSOs) should be restricted and regulated by the state. Some believe that democracy begets inequality, and will not contribute to the public’s quality of life. Others argue that Mongolia needs to dedicate its energy to developing a long-term vision for prosperity, rather than wasting time making decisions and getting caught up in discussions of accountability. Finally, a popular belief is that the masses are uneducated, and to have them at the helm of the decision-making process is dangerous.

Indonesia

“Direct democratic practice has successfully [allowed] Indonesia to be resilient

[to] democratic setbacks”

Indonesia, as a democratic country, has laws that regulate the working implementation of democracy. One such laws stipulates that Indonesia acknowledges the practice of direct democracy. The most prominent forms of direct democracy today in Indonesia are referendums and elections.

Indonesia has implemented direct democracy in the form of referendums; notable examples are the referendum to amend the 1945 Constitution, and the referendum held by the East Timor province to vote on their affiliation to Indonesia. There are two referendum types. Typically, a referendum committee provides a simple question for citizens to directly answer. There are also popular referendums, however, in which citizens make a petition that calls a popular vote over existing legislation. A special committee for hosting referendums determines the timeframe and required signatures for a valid petition (for example, petitions may require signatures from diverse communities to protect minority interests). This form of direct democracy effectively grants the public the option to veto laws adopted by the elected legislature.

The referendum to amend the 1945 Constitution was crucial because the Constitution had never been changed; a 1985 presidential decree had stated such an amendment would only be allowed through a referendum in which 90% of those voting supported the initiative, and the amendment did in fact pass.

Second, in the 1999 referendum held in East Timor, the people of East Timor were asked whether they would like to remain affiliated with Indonesia or become independent. The area had been annexed—forcibly incorporated—into Indonesia in 1975 under the Suharto presidency. Demands were made by European and ASEAN countries for Indonesia to carry out political reforms, and the referendum came as a consequence of UN resolutions calling for the right to self-determination. Out of a total of 438,968 valid votes, 344,580 (78.5%) were pro-independence, while 94,388 (21.5%) supported remaining with Indonesia. Voter participation was very high—98.6% of all registered voters participated in the referendum. The results of the referendum led to the official separation of East Timor from Indonesia.

Though Indonesia used to have indirect elections, direct elections began in 2005. Indonesia directly elects its executives: the President and Vice President, governors, mayors, regents, village heads, and national and local representatives.

Various literature studies have revealed the advantages of direct democracy, but Indonesia’s democratic transition has shown the pathway to consolidation by merging direct elections for president and vice president with those for local governors and regents. The strengthening of direct democratic practices has allowed democratic institutions to ensure the proper functioning of civil society organizations and allowed other interest groups to engage in policy decision-making. Direct democratic practices have allowed Indonesia to remain resilient to democratic setbacks, though it is still necessary to push back against rising populism being used in popular votes to expand power.

Malaysia

“The age of government-knows-all has basically ended”

Malaysia has had a tumultuous relationship with democracy, moving between three different governments within the span of two to three years. Malaysia’s first democratic transition occurred in 2018, shifting the federal government after 60 years under the former ruling coalition (known as the National Front). Unfortunately, the new government did not last long, only managing to stay in power for about a year and a half due to ideological splits and members of the party changing their party affiliation. The Sheraton Move—the political move carried out by the existing government in which the ruling coalition broke up—notably led to a political and constitutional crisis just before the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. The general election had been invalidated by the politicians themselves, leading to frustration among the voters as, after only one and a half years, a new government rose to power that was, in essence, a coalition of the losers of the previous general election.

As voters become more disillusioned and mistrust towards institutions arose, Malaysia underwent periods of uncertainty in terms of leadership. Seated in this context, conversations have arisen about opportunities to explore other forms of democracy, namely direct/participatory democracy, amongst members of civil society. There is also a need for less state intervention and greater empowerment of CSOs (civil society organizations); whereas Malaysia has historically been a top-down country, movements on the ground are now talking about a bottom-up approach.

The three governments that have held power in Malaysia since 2018 are known as the National Front (Barisan Nasional, or BN), the Pact of Hope (Pakatan Harapan, or PH), and the National Alliance (Perikatan Nasional, or PN). The National Front is the former, long-ruling coalition that stayed in power for six decades. The Pact of Hope government, a coalition based on progressive opposition politics, won the 2018 general elections but was short-lived. Finally, the National Alliance is a coalition comprised of the losers of the previous general election and splinter parties who deserted the previous ruling coalitions. The ambiguous self-collapse of the Pact of Hope movement and the undemocratic rise of the National Alliance have led to a fragile, minority government. Though the government has been forced to sign a memorandum of understanding between the National Alliance and the opposition bloc committing the current government to reform, the memorandum has also faced backlash from supporters of both parties due to the failure to consult the public during its creation.

Malaysia has historically practiced a representative/indirect model of democracy in combination with a constitutional monarchy, borrowing from the Westminster Model (an inheritance from the British colonization period). The monarch and royal families also have an internal consultative mechanism. Therefore, Malaysia has a very complex power structures and diverse social makeup. However, the discussion on democracy coming down to the ground level has been very limited, as—of the three branches of government—only the lower house of the Parliament is elected. The remaining positions are filled by appointment. in terms of politics in Malaysia.

Some political science dialogue in Malaysia centers around clientelism and patronage. In Malaysia, members of parliament (MPs) or potential candidates often engage with the public/the local level for political gain by providing citizens with “goodies” or aid and basic necessities to garner votes.

Malaysia, being situated in the center of Southeast Asia, is highly in touch with its surroundings, especially in terms of democracy. Democratic development in Indonesia and the Philippines in particular affect Malaysia, while larger superpowers like China and India—who are also facing challenges in terms of their democratic models—affect Malaysia indirectly as new generations become open to conversations about leadership decisions. In Malaysia, modern discussions of direct democracy are far more advanced than twenty or thirty years ago; whereas earlier generations preferred to pass policy and leadership decisions over to elites and community leaders, younger generations are much more aware and participatory. Technology has also been a major factor in encouraging Malaysian democracy.

Challenges to transitioning to a direct democracy model in Malaysia include getting buy-in from a large portion of rural and semi-urban constituencies—these communities have greater difficulty accessing information and building democratic awareness and tend to prioritize “bread and butter” survival issues, preferring to delegate policymaking and international issues to politicians and local parties. Malaysia also has three rampant, ongoing challenges making discussions about democracy slightly more problematic: race, religion, and corruption. Additionally, the labels ascribed to democracy by conservatives—namely, that democracy, liberty, and human rights are foreign, Western agendas that should be rejected—and the conservative narrative that democracy is a threat to the “social contract” create added difficulty. Finally, though most Malaysians accept that peace and freedom are benefits of democracy and part of the democratic process, there is less focus on principles like good governance and justice. Thus, democratic education needs to be encouraged and advanced, which will take time.

Those who are pro-democracy and support elements of direct democracy in Malaysia often belong to four key groups—those in urban centers, those with a background in activism, those with exposure to multiculturalism, and those belonging to the younger age bracket. People not belonging to these groups tend to want to maintain the status quo, passing policymaking and discussion responsibilities to representatives in lieu of direct involvement. That said, due to social media, there has been growth of civil society organizations supporting deliberation and dissent in public spaces; people are talking about democracy in a robust manner on digital platforms. Malaysia’s volunteer culture is growing. And the current minority government, because it is so weak, has been forced to consult and hold town halls with NGOs; this is an acknowledgement of the societal role of NGOs and CSOs. After the 14th general election, the age of government-knows-all has come to an end; this has been a long process, beginning in 2008 with concerted opposition efforts to create public awareness. These days, rather than bulldozing policies, governments consider opinions from CSOs and community leaders; in many ways, the decision-making process is much more inclusive.

In terms of ongoing efforts in Malaysia, the Better Malaysia Assembly (BMA) is experimenting with a citizen’s assembly similar to that of Ireland and Switzerland; it will be carrying out a pilot project in the state of Johor this coming August. Online petitions (such as change.org) have been very popular, and one CSO (BERSIH – the Coalition for Clean and Fair Elections) is working on recall elections. As for open budget transparency, there are initiatives to invite the public to participate in monitoring state budgets.

Finally, there are a few emerging trends in Malaysia. More parties are being created, and there is talk of decentralization. With regards to political literacy, young groups are engaging in efforts to organize a digital parliament. In conclusion, the current government in Malaysia is a weak majority, and the opposition is in disarray. Though this is an opportunity for public involvement by CSOs, the potential for the return of corruption and previous governments (who are more familiar among voters) poses a threat to democracy.

Sri Lanka

“Although Sri Lanka […] allows citizens to directly engage with Parliament, the successful implementation of all of said instruments is contingent on effective implementation and follow-up by parliamentarians”

Democratic government typically takes two forms—direct, in which individual people participate in decision-making, and representative, in which elected representatives formulate policy. The instruments of direct democracy can be divided into formal instruments—like referendums and voter recalls—and alternative instruments, which also allow for citizen involvement but have not traditionally been seen as instruments of direct democracy.

Instruments of direct democracy exist and are relevant within the Sri Lankan context. When Sri Lanka gained its independence in 1948, the Solbury Constitution was already in effect, having been instated in 1944; the government accordingly had a Westminster parliamentary structure. In 1972, the first Republican Constitution came into effect, and was then replaced in 1978 by the second Republican Constitution. Throughout these three systems of governance, the sole formal instrument of direct democracy was the referendum, which was only introduced in the 1978 constitution. However, within the Westminster parliamentary structure, there were instruments that allowed citizens to directly engage in government, namely: private members’ mills, public petitions, and parliamentary questions. Like the referendum, these instruments have direct democratic features.

A referendum, in which people can directly vote on a law or a proposal, is allowed in three cases under the Sri Lankan constitution: if a constitutional amendment proposes changes to entrenched articles in the constitution, or the Supreme Court determines a proposed bill is inconsistent with entrenched articles in the Constitution, it must go to a referendum. Finally, the president can put forward a referendum for citizens’ approval for any matter of public importance. Sri Lanka has only ever held one referendum (in 1982). The Sri Lankan referendum framework has two critical shortcomings that undermine its efficacy as an instrument of deliberative democracy: first, it can only be called by the president, meaning that there is no means for the people to mandate a referendum. Second, it is limited to approving bills and measures that are at the parliamentary level or of national importance; as such, there is no application for local-level measures, preventing communities from directly participating in matters that will affect their day-to-day lives.

Private members’ bills, public petitions, and parliamentary questions enable citizens or groups of citizens to advocate for a parliamentarian’s support; the member can then sponsor the bill, submit the petition to the public petition committee, or submit a question to the government on the citizens’ behalf. However, research has found that over the last 5-6 years, these mechanisms have been inadequately and ineffectively used for direct engagement with the government. Of the 209 private members’ bills presented in Parliament, only 12 were matters of public interest; private members’ bills have predominantly been used to regulate incorporated bodies rather than for direct democratic engagement. 2,401 public petitions were submitted to the Committee by 181 out of 225 parliamentary members, but approximately half of those petitions were submitted by just 10 parliamentarians. Similarly, 2372 questions were raised by parliamentarians, but 56% were raised by just 10 members. These instruments are being used neither extensively, uniformly, nor effectively by Sri Lankan citizens.

There are three key challenges to using these instruments for direct democratic purposes. First, there are not mechanisms to trigger mandatory action by parliamentarians—instruments are only presented to parliament at the will of the member of parliament the citizens have approached. This is a problem similar to that of referendums, where the power to trigger a referendum rests solely with the President and excludes local issues. Second, accountability mechanisms are insufficient; for example, there is no way to track the status of a submitted petition, and no mandate for parliamentarians to regularly report their progress. Parliamentarians can therefore exercise discretion without sufficient checks, undermining the ability of citizens to fully make use of these instruments. Finally, there are systemic and structural issues inhibiting citizens’ access to mechanisms for direct engagement, including lack of women’s representation and inaccessibility of committee and subcommittee proceedings.

Aaseem provides three suggestions for areas for improvement. First, expanding the scope of the referendum: in Sri Lanka, referendums currently can only be called by the president—this could be resolved by adopting a system similar to Switzerland, in which citizens can trigger the introduction of a referendum upon endorsement/signatures from a sufficient portion of the constituency. He also suggests exploring introducing a referendum mechanism for resolving legislative and policy issues at the local level. Suggestions for areas of improvement. Second, the existing formal mechanisms of direct engagement currently have no threshold or trigger point at which they are mandatory for a member of Parliament to implement; he suggests introducing procedures that trigger automatic implementation of formal instruments under specific circumstances, such as a particular number of citizen signatures. Finally, he suggests introducing mechanisms to increase public representatives’ accountability. Though Sri Lanka currently recognizes these formal instruments, successfully using them depends on effective implementation and follow-up by parliamentarians. Aaseem proposes that Sri Lanka explore the systems to monitor how these formal instruments are being used, as well as to raise awareness of the utility of these instruments among the general public.

Thailand

“Referendums have become a political mechanism and no longer reflect the will of the public, […] and recalls seem to be impossible.”

Though Thailand’s Direct Democracy Practice Potential (DDPP) score is quite low, the country’s communication technology revolution spells out interesting possibilities for the future of direct democracy; direct democracy, in combination with technology, may provide unique opportunities for policymakers to acquire deep information from the public that experts cannot provide.

Thailand transitioned from absolute monarchy to constitutional (democratic) monarchy in 1932, but has since undergone thirteen military coups d’état, most recently in 2014. Prior to 1997, several versions of the Constitution allowed referendums for constitutional amendments. The Constitution of 1997, however, marked the beginning of direct democracy in Thailand by establishing an impeachment process and increasing allowances for citizen’s participation through the introduction of legislative initiatives and the addition of referendums for laws—in addition to the previously allowed constitutional amendments—affecting national interests.

There are now four primary mechanisms through which Thai citizens can participate in direct democracy: referendums, recalls, legislative initiatives, and unconventional political participation. Two referendums have been held in Thailand, each with greater than 50% voter turnout and each demonstrating political cleavage between the North/Northeast region and the rest of the country. The first approved the 2007 draft Constitution, and the second approved the 2016 draft Constitution and allowed senators to be included in the vote for Prime Minister. This decision has had a notable effect on Thai politics by forcing representatives in the Lower House to collaborate with the Senate in order to effectively support a Prime Ministerial candidate, a possibility which is more readily accessible to the pro-military party.

Legislative initiatives strengthen direct democracy by providing another mechanism for citizens to exercise their rights. The Constitution of 1997 allowed 50,000 eligible voters to propose laws related to public policy and the rights and liberty of the people. This number was reduced to 10,000 in 2007. Most recently, the 2021 Initiative Process Act has made it easier for citizens to submit legislation by allowing social media to be used for proposing bills virtually to Parliament. However, though citizens have submitted more than 100 bills to date, only a small fraction of them have been enacted into law. In addition to having to pass through Parliament, any bills that require use of the government budget must be approved by the Prime Minister; this requirement has brought many proposed initiatives to a halt.

Thailand has had two recalls—one of a member of the Human Rights Commission (unsuccessful), and one of the Prime Minister (recalled by the National Legislative Assembly). Political movements have also conducted informal recalls as petitions on change.org, which function as a signal to the Thai government. Finally, unconventional political participation (such as participating in demonstrations, protests, and marches) provides another means for Thai citizens to participate in direct democracy, and Thai law supports the right to demonstrate. However, only ~5% of people engage with democracy in this way.

Bureekul highlights a few key problems with Thailand’s existing direct democratic instruments. Referendums, she posits, have now become a political mechanism, and no longer reflect the will of the public. As for legal initiatives, though many bills are proposed, few pass through Parliament because of the Prime Ministerial endorsement requirement for budget-related bills, and the number of people required to support a bill is too high. Furthermore, people are limited by the amount of time they can dedicate to supporting their initiative. However, civil society helps strengthen Thai direct democracy by supporting law initiatives. Democratic action through change.org is popular and functions as an effective signaling mechanism for important issues, but it is not legal. Similarly, the role of unconventional political participation in Thai society is growing, but participating citizens risk violating the law.

As for positive trends in Thailand’s democratic development, there is already considerable public awareness of the lawmaking process. The use of technology—such as social media—not only for democratic education, but as a means in which to participate in direct democracy, will increase the importance of these direct democratic mechanisms. ■

III. Speakers and Moderators Biographies

■ Mohomed Aaseem graduated with a degree in Industrial Statistics and Mathematical Finance from the University of Colombo and has a Master’s in Development Practice from the University of Peradeniya. Aaseem has worked on a range of assignments covering electoral reform, parliamentary monitoring, transitional justice, ethnic violence and peace-building He also manages databases and provides support in data analysis for Manthri.lk and other web-based platforms at Verité. He is fluent in English, Sinhala and Tamil, and has extensive experience in working with Northern, Eastern and hill country communities.

■ Dolgion Aldar is a research professional focused on promoting evidence-based policy making in Mongolia. She spent five years as CEO of the Independent Research Institute of Mongolia (IRIM), one of the first organizations to promote independent and third-party research in the country. Under her leadership, IRIM was awarded the Anti-Corruption Agency’s National Annual Award in 2014 and was recognized as Mongolia’s leading non-government policy research institute in 2015. She was featured in the Forbes Mongolia “Class of 2016: 30 under 30,” an annual list of the brightest young leaders and change agents in country. She currently serves as a board member of the Asia-Pacific Evaluation Association and is a member of the Social Well-Being Consortium in Asia and the EvalGender global network. Dolgion holds a master’s degree in Political Science from the University of Manchester, and both a master’s and a bachelor’s degree in Sociology from the National University of Mongolia.

■ Kaustuv K. Bandyopadhyay is the director of Participatory Research in Asia (PRIA), a pioneer CSO, who has dedicated more than three decades to work on participation, democratic governance, and civil society development. He has twenty-five years of professional experience working with universities, research institutions, and CSOs. He serves on the Steering Committee of the Asia Democracy Research Network (ADRN) and the Asia Democracy Network (ADN). He holds a Ph.D. degree in anthropology for his work with the Parhaiya tribes of Chotanagpur in India.

■ Thawilwadee Bureekul is the director of the Research and Development Office at King Prajadhipok’s Institute (KPI) where she is involved in the planning, management, implementation, and coordination of the Institute’s research projects. In addition to her role at KPI, Dr. Bureekul is a professor at several universities in Thailand, including the Asian Institute of Technology, Thammasat University, Burapha University, Mahidol University, and Silpakorn University. She succeeded in proposing “Gender Responsive Budgeting” in the Thai Constitution and she was granted the “Woman of the Year 2018” award, and received the outstanding award on “Rights Projection and Strengthening Gender Equality” in the Year 2022 as a result.

■ Halmie Azrie Abdul Halim is a researcher for Democracy and Governance at the Institute for Democracy and Economic Affairs (IDEAS), a well-known and independent think-tank based in Kuala Lumpur. He was a student activist with the National Union of Malaysian Muslim Students (PKPIM) for over fourteen years, and got familiarized to public policy affairs during his internship at IMAN Research. He holds a Bachelor of Arts (Hons) in International Relations from Staffordshire University, UK. He has posited his thoughts on domestic political trends at various online portals, and represented Malaysia for several international youth conferences in Turkey, Thailand and Germany.

■ Francisco A. Magno teaches Political Science and Development Studies at De La Salle University (DLSU). He is the Founding Director of the DLSU Jesse M. Robredo Institute of Governance. He served as the President of the Philippine Political Science Association from 2015 to 2017. He finished his PhD in Political Science at the University of Hawaii.

■ Sri Nuryanti is currently a senior researcher of the research Center for Politics, National Research and Innovation Agency. She is the former Election Commissioner of the Indonesian General Election Commission 2007-2012, where she successfully oversaw the Parliamentary election and Presidential election 2009, as well as local elections from 2007-2012. She is an active participant in various academic activities at the national as well as the international level. She is a council member of APPRA (Asia Pacific Peace Research Association) and IPRA (International Peace Research Association). Dr. Sri Nuryanti can be contacted by email at yantijkt@yahoo.com

Video Script

i'm pleased to welcome you to this adrn online seminar series number 15. this is a jointly sponsored by the asia democracy research network or adrn and the east asia institute which serves as the secretary of adrn this afternoon we will discuss the topic exploring direct deliberative and participatory democracy in asia we have a stellar panel of this of speakers this afternoon let me introduce them to you one by one uh first i would call on dol john aldar who is consultant and board member of the independent research institute of

mongolia good afternoon doljon we also have sri nuriyati norianti researcher of the indonesia national research and innovation agency good afternoon after three we have researcher of the institute for democracy and economic affairs of malaysia we also have muhammad asim who is an analyst of verite research of sri lanka good afternoon good afternoon and after us we also have dr will vadi burikul we call her b who is the director of research and development office of the king rajyahid box institute of thailand

we also have on the list kaustubh banjo-padhai who is the director of participatory research in asia india i understand is currently in a remote area and will try to send a video recording so we'll we'll see if he'll be successful in sending the video recording of his presentation so uh let me uh just uh tell you uh a few things about this uh seminar this afternoon uh first of all let's define what is direct democracy direct democracy means involving the public directly in making decisions by contrast

representative democracy involves the public choosing representatives who make decisions on their behalf so this afternoon we'll focus on direct democracy although in the course of the discussion we will refer to representative democracy and the dynamics between the two strands or variants of democracy asian countries are incorporating mechanisms or ideas of direct direct democracy into their political system but may still face difficulties in implementing good governance in order to examine diverse backgrounds

and trends of democracy in asia the adrn has invited speakers from seven asian countries to speak about their country's direct democracy trends so this uh preliminary presentation would be based on research undertaken by our asian colleagues so this is an initial presentation because we will have a full-blown presentation with full analysis during the face-to-face workshop that the east asia institute will be hosting in august so uh good afternoon everybody so what i'll do is to present the case of

the philippines so i'll i'll serve as the first speaker and i'll i'll be moderating this afternoon's panel so i uh i have been designated to be the first speaker uh this afternoon so i'll just be sharing with you my screen so by the way each participant will be allotted 10 minutes to make a presentation so let me now start direct democracy in the philippines uh by the way i i am francisco magno i'm the founding director and current the senior fellow of the dlsu jesse and robredo institute of governance

and have been a long-time member of the asia democracy research network so let me start by citing a fundamental basis or fundamental anchor of direct democracy in the philippines a key provision in uh the constitution of the country or the fundamental law of the land is article 13 section 16 that emphasizes the right of the people and their organizations to effective and reasonable participation at all levels of social political and economic decision-making the state shall by law facilitate the establishment of adequate consultation

mechanisms so you can see in this uh constitutional provision that there is this enabling mandate for direct democracy in in the country i'll be citing other important laws in the country at the sub-national level or at the local level the 1991 local government code provides the formation of local development councils which are semi-autonomous components linked to local governments that allow for the representation of civil society organizations or non-government organizations in local development planning

and budget prioritization we should take note that the 1919 local government code came after the 1987 constitution so you would take note based on the historical trends in the philippines the 1987. constitution is a product of the people's power movement that re-established democracy in the country after long periods of authoritarianism there is also a law which provides for a system of initiative and referendum and so we have a system of plebiscites and uh referendum where people are asked directly

with respect to their approval of certain laws and at the sub-national or local level there is also prohibition were where people are asked to approve of uh of laws creating provinces and uh i'll cite examples uh for example there was a plebiscip for referendum that happened last uh 2019 for the approval of the bangsamoro organic law and this law created the bangsamoro organic or the bangsamoro uh region of muslim in the now so this is a product of the peace process between the philippine government

and uh in the bangsamoro uh milf moral islamic liberation front that led to a peace agreement and this is part of the peace process an ongoing peace process in the southern part of the philippines another example was an uh a recall election uh so a petition can be can be made by a certain percentage of voters in uh province or local government and this is an example uh where in 2015 a recall election was made to uh to hold uh an election for the mayor of of the city even though the regular elections are

not yet uh happening so we have this uh direct democracy mechanism uh aside from the referendum we have the recall election at the sub-national level now i'll go to some of the mechanisms under the local government code that i mentioned an example of this is the creation of the local people's council provided in several local governments that decided to have local policies creating local people's councils which is an addition to the local development councils that are already provided under the local government code

but the local government code also uh encourages local governments to develop other policies for public participation and this is a case of the creation of local people's councils in the city of naga and the people's council is empowered to observe vote and participate in the deliberation implementation and evaluation of projects activities and programs of the city government the people's council can designate representatives to all city council committees and suggest and vote on proposed legislation

at the committee level of the city council another important new development is the use of digital democracy and you can see here a photo of uh of a young mayor a mayor vico soto of the city of pasig who has allowed the use of digital platforms to get the opinion and approval of people with respect to certain policies for example you can see here in the screen the proposal of the city government to create uh new rules on speed limits or lowering down the speed speed limits in the streets of uh passive city but

this is done through the application of online online platforms so in a way it is a kind of a referendum but using online platforms in a particular city in the philippines now let me go to uh different mechanisms on participatory planning and budgeting because these are uh direct democracy mechanisms that have been uh introduced over the past several years and these are participatory planning and budgeting mechanisms throughout the budget cycle from budget preparation to budget approval execution

and implementation through the process of accountability so these are several types of mechanisms that have been introduced over the past six or seven years for example a budget partnership agreement the bottom-up budgeting and citizen participatory audit so you can see in this matrix these are the different activities in the budget cycle and if you see the x sign then these are the areas where these mechanisms are being undertaken so let me go uh now very fast on these mechanisms the bottom up budgeting

is one of the mechanisms were in a village level local governments we have village level local governments and they are elected they participate in uh identifying priorities of local governments and they are submitted at higher levels of government so village level residents are asked to identify budget priorities so a series of workshops assemblies are undertaken to ensure that budget priorities of local villagers are incorporated in the budget of higher levels of government including the municipality

the province these are higher level governments and a national uh as also as part of national development budget plans now i want to share your mechanism on budget monitoring and budget auditing project auditing and this is the citizen participatory audit that was pursued almost two decades ago but it was only over the past several years that this kind of citizen mechanism has been incorporated in fact institutionalized in various agencies so the project was intended to reduce corruption in road projects so this is

the picture of the founder of this uh civil society organization that undertook uh road watch projects and uh this road watch experience has cor in has been incorporated in various platforms even in partnership with the national government so as i mentioned it is now uh streamlined in the commission on audit this is the state agency that has the power to audit government projects and programs and uh another important mechanism is the open government partnership that has enabled many of these direct democracy

mechanisms the philippines is a member of open government partnership in fact a founding member of the open government partnership since 2011. now i'll go to the last remaining slides because i'm given only 10 minutes for this presentation so in terms of the analysis of direct democracy in the philippines i discuss in this paper the enabling conditions or the supply side so i because i look at direct democracy as a combination of government enabling mechanisms as well as civil society demands in uh the process

so in terms of enabling conditions on the part of government we find uh the installation of democratic space since the replacement of authoritarianism in the late in the mid and late 80s the establishment of enabling rules and legislation i discussed the local government code the philippine constitution and other relevant laws the pursuit of open data citizens access to reliable public documents and data including the transparency sale in national agencies full disclosure policy applied at the sub-national levels

a right to information policy in the executive branch although we still don't have a freedom of information law that is applied throughout the government it's only at the executive branch and capacity building for government agencies on public participation so these are examples of open open data now provided through the website of the department of budget and management of the philippine government this is some kind of a citizen's budget infographics are used so that people can easily be informed about what's happening with

respect to the national budget so this is posted in the website of the department of budget and management and a full disclosure policy portal hosted by the department of the interior and local government were in all local government units from provinces cities and municipalities are mandated to share their financial documents online with their constituents so this is part of the open data process and recently the philippine government passed a law it's called the seal of good local governance but it started as a program

providing incentives for participatory government governance where the mandated functions of local governments are posted in local government units are supposed to uh perform all these functions of disaster preparedness social protection peace and order environmental management business friendliness and competitiveness tourism culture and arts but ensuring that there is transparency participation and accountability and also the department of the interior and local government is now providing data on how

infrastructure projects are being undertaken feedback on local infrastructure projects uh through online platforms it's called dev live so uh people can monitor the progress of infrastructure projects through this program it's um it's a way of leveraging technology for citizens and government in terms of enabling conditions on the demand side as i mentioned mentioned their supply side there is demand side on the demand side it's the availability and accessibility of independent media that enable the public to engage in

decisions pertaining to public issues, there's also the capacity, legitimacy, representativeness, responsiveness, and accountability of civil society actors. For example, I cited the case of the pork barrel scam, and this is an issue of corruption with respect to the funds of parliament or congress in the Philippines, where funds are channeled to non-existing NGOs. So, this was exposed through media, and Philippine Daily Inquirer is a media organization that exposed this pork barrel scam, and because of this

there was an online petition to probe the 10 billion peso pork barrel scam, refers to legislation to finance infrastructure projects. So, the online petition asked the anti-graft agency of the government to investigate the case, and there was a rally, a huge rally of people to join the protests against pork barrels. So, this is just an example of how direct democracy mechanisms were undertaken, and it goes at different levels. And in my analysis, I will explore the possibility of tying all these levels of direct democracy together.

and moving forward, these are my recommendations: a passage of the Freedom of Information Law; legislation of participatory budget mechanisms at national and sub-national levels; integrate citizen participation in civic education; promote open data; conduct data analytics and develop visualization tools for effective planning; build database on citizen participation to aid policy reform efforts. And as part of the analysis, is really a mechanism is needed whereby the full disclosure policy of the government can really be

operational. And one way to improve that is to bring in local knowledge stakeholders and developing platforms that can serve as information intermediaries in translating open government data into knowledge products that can be used for policy advocacy. So, as a final comment, in my paper, I will analyze how to bridge the gains from direct direct democracy and the challenges of representative democracy, because even though there are mechanisms for direct democracy where the public participates

in decision-making processes, the clear challenge is the persistence of political dynasties who are successful in representative democracy through elections, and the continuity of authoritarian populism in the country. So, thank you very much for taking time to listen to this presentation, and now I would like to call on Doljinsuren Aldar, who is a consultant and board member of the Independent Research Institute of Mongolia, to make her presentation. Hello, can you hear me? Yes, you can proceed now. Okay, thank you very much for the

very interesting presentation. Can I share my screen too? Yes, you can share a screen. Okay, yes. So, we are currently working on our working paper called "Direct Democracy: History and Trends in Mongolia" together with my colleague Tamir. On behalf of the Independent Research Institute of Mongolia, so glad to be presenting our progress so far. So, I prepared my presentation quite broadly, given that it's only 10 minutes, so we cannot go into detail that much. But during the Q&A session, if you have any specific questions

that we can discuss. So, first of all, long story short, the conclusion we are making: whether there are institutional mechanisms for direct terms in Mongolia, whether there is direct democracy in Mongolia, we would answer it's very limited. There is very limited space for direct democracy in Mongolia, especially when we consider the classical definition: whether people are directly voting about the issues that interest them or that affect them, relevant for them, are they voting? No, we don't see such direct working

so far. So, just black and white from that definition-wise, we do not have characters as much as we would like to. But first, when we talk about more broadly, maybe using less strict definitions, are public participating, citizens participating? Are there mechanisms allowing that kind of participation? Yes, there are some progress on that. Also, another thing I want to mention is that since the 1990s democratic transition, like the Philippines, many other countries in Asia, Mongolia was also an authoritarian regime for

more than 70 years. So, in that sense, since the transition in 1990s, there has been a lot of progress made. But since then, we still don't have any referendum that has taken place so far, which is also quite telling that yes, there is no broader national scale participation. And the key mechanisms for allowing public participation in decision-making or in various stages of governance such as planning, budgeting, monitoring, etc., exists very similar to the previous presentation made by Professor Magna.

For example, we have, unlike the Philippines, we have a national law on right to information and transparency by that in 2011, if I recall correctly. We have also several mechanisms allowing public hearings, petitions, and complaints, and making the government mandatory to respond to these complaints and petitions. We also have mechanisms to allow people in participating local budgeting, especially setting priorities for investments. But at the local level, we have a law on referendum; it hasn't been used yet.

for many reasons. We explore in a paper as well why the referendum has still not been used and not the popular option for direct democracy. Also, the latest related law was on deliberative polling, passed in 2017. So, in our paper, we briefly present future of how these laws and legislation mechanisms allow for public participation, but also we examine what are the challenges and how they could be improved. So, brief history about direct democracy. So, constitution of the first democratic constitution of 1992

sets the foundation for direct democracy. It recognizes that the people of Mongolia shall directly participate in state affairs. So, this clause is very important. Following that, in 1995, we had the Law on Referendum passed, and around 2010s, we had the surge of a lot of laws on allowing and expanding public participation in governance. So, in that sense, yes, Mongolia has the key mechanisms allowing for the direct democracy and daily laid out, but the general observation we have is that these laws are not fully implemented in

practice, or there have been a surge of other contradictory laws that restrict the implementation of these legislation and mechanisms that allow for direct democracy. So, this is the general progress so far. And in terms of trends, so what has been happening in the last 10 years or 20, even more in 20 years, is that like in many other countries, we are looking at digital transformation and the use of technology in the state-citizen regulating state-citizen relationships. Just this year, two months ago, the

parliament of Mongolia launched a new app application called the "Digital Parliament." We have a national program and even a separate committee, government body, focusing on digitalizing government services and speeding up the process of delivering services, etc. So, there are a lot of progress in terms of facilitating and making services easily accessible. But again, like in previous sections, I explained whether this digital transformation has contributed in people directly voting or

indirectly changing policy, recalling politicians, or their initiatives taken seriously and implemented in those kind of qualitative terms, it hasn't contributed so far. It has mostly helped state-to-citizen kind of one-way relationship, but not so much from citizen to state feedback, and especially influencing directly decision-wise, not so much progress so far. So, that's one trend we're observing, but we hope that if this digital transformation is taken seriously and focus more on providing actual empowerment to the people in terms of

decision making, there could be some opportunities. Another worrying trend we are observing since the late 2010s is that not just in terms of direct and acquisitive, but the overall democracy-wise, also there are some setbacks and steps back in terms of this mechanism. So, key examples are the Law on State and Official Secrets that significantly restrict the other law emission related right to information, for example, by allowing government to classify any type of almost any type of information to

classify as secret. As a result, not follow the processes required by the Right to Information Law. So, that's just one example. The current parliament does not have a dedicated standing committee on petitions and complaints. This was dissolved. For example, just one year, the parliament received, population size relatively slow, small, so the number might seem very low, but still it received around 2,000 complaints, proposals, and feedback and has addressed them. So, it shows that this was a direct mechanism between the

parliament and the people to connect and respond to people's needs, but this was dissolved. And instead, this "Digital Parliament" application came up, and especially given the lack of digital access and the widespread digital divide, and just people don't know that such application exists so far. So, we need to see a bit more how this the parliament application or other ongoing digital initiatives will unfold. But generally, what we observe is that there is the lack of proponents of our direct democracy. We have discussions and

ideas promoting democracy, but very few are saying when the people need to directly vote and people need to directly make decisions about key issues. So, this kind of discussion we are not observing. And instead, now there are a lot of efforts, for example, to do another constitutional amendment to change the electoral system and how to fix the parliamentary system. So, the discussion and focuses more on the representative democracy rather than directly so far. So, we also, the second part of our paper explores what are the popular claims for

democracy. We put in brackets the word "direct" because as I mentioned earlier, there's no really direct strong proponent for that. Due to lack of time, I'll skip that and I will focus on the popular claims against direct democracy. So, these include things like, there are a lot of national claims saying that those who are talking about democracy, especially even direct democracy, are so-called pro-American liberals, and they don't understand our culture and context, so they should be feared. So, now there's a lot of pushback against

kind of democratic movements or efforts. This kind of nation's claims becoming more popular. One of the foundations for that is national security concerns, saying we are, Mongolia is situated between two neighbors that are Russia and China, so we shouldn't talk about too much freedom, we should be careful when talking about these topics. So, this kind of justification is also used. Similarly, civil society organizations should be restricted, they should be controlled and regulated by the state is becoming another

movement. Democracy leads to inequality. So, here I put the picture, hashtag on top says "Democracy" and on the right hand side, you can see the democrats who are enjoying their lives, nearby before the card playing polo. On the left hand side, the voters of democracy living for life, crying and pollution. So, this is also a common explanation for lack of democracy not contributing to people's well-being and quality of life. Another popular claim is that now Mongolia needs to have a long-term vision and focus on prosperity rather

than keep focusing on issues, keep going back and forward talking about accountability and losing a lot of time in that. Instead, let's just focus and develop, which sounds really nice. But at the same time, the danger is that it is making a bit the process of the democratic, especially blurry, and the very popular idea is that the masses are inherently uneducated. They are the literal translations, black mass, they cannot make decisions for themselves. So, it's dangerous to include them in the decision-making process.

Yes, so here's just one example I used from the Asian Barometer Survey from 2018. Compared to other Asian countries, Mongolia is still relatively, well, in terms of if we have political leaders who are morally upright, we can let them decide everything, which is the opposite of direction. Let's say here, the mean score of the respondents who said strong closer to strongly disagree was the more people disagreed than agreed to this statement compared to some of our other countries in Asia. So, that's it for my

site and the habits of saving feedback. Thank you. Thank you very much, Doljinsuren, for that presentation. So, you clearly juxtapose those arguing for more direct democracy versus those who would like to make certain restrictions on direct democracy. So, we will have more discussions on that during the open discussion. So, thank you, Doljinsuren. Let me now call on Shreen Orianti, who is a researcher at the Indonesian National Research and Innovation Agency. Okay, good afternoon everyone. Well, my name is Shreen Orianti, and I

would like to share the presentation now. I will be a very quick one. Can you see my presentation? Yep, yes. Okay. Well, I actually put the title like this: "Examining Direct Democracy in Indonesia." And I write down the article with my colleague Davi Darmawan. As an introduction, in Indonesia, as a democratic country, has laws that regulate the working implementations of democracy. One of this law stipulates that Indonesia acknowledged the practice of direct democracy. Indonesia has implemented direct

democracy in the past in the form of referendum. Notable examples are the referendum to amend the 1945 Constitution and the referendum held by East Timor province to vote on their affiliation to Indonesia. East Timor province... now East Timor-Leste. So, if you see Timor-Leste, then it used to be part of Indonesia and it used to be part of our province, we call it East Timor. During the referendum, the people of East Timor were asked to determine their citizenship status. East Timor voters were asked whether they would like to remain affiliated

with Indonesia or become independent. The East Timor area was historically annexed by Indonesia during Suharto's presidency. Suharto is the second president of Indonesia. He used to be the president for 32 years. So, and he used to be the president during the New Order period. The referendum was the consequence of a UN resolution calling for the right to self-determination. So, this is part of how Indonesia actually agreed to have the referendum for East Timor, and I think it is facilitated by the economic crisis

that was happening in Indonesia, especially in 1997, and also the political reform that was happening in May 1998. So, we hold the referendum for East Timor under UN supervision. Theoretical framework, as I may quote here, I just put at least two things. Direct democracy is the implementation of democracy without proxy. So, I think I do agree with what Francisco mentioning earlier. And the second theoretical framework that I put is the most prominent form of direct democracy today in Indonesia is referendum and election

in which citizens are allowed to express and choose their preferences regarding the two referendum types. The electorates usually choose to answer simple questions offered by the referendum committee, whereby people choose their executive candidates directly. A popular referendum empowers citizens to make a petition that calls a popular vote over existing legislation. A special committee for hosting referendum formulates the time frame for a valid petition and the required signature. This is the process that I will mention a bit.

They may require signature from diverse communities to protect minority interests. This form of direct democracy effectively grants the public the option to veto laws adopted by the elected legislature. And the purpose of this paper, actually, this paper will analyze the implementation of direct democracy in Indonesian context. It will examine the mechanism of direct democracy in Indonesia, the historical context behind the call for the East Timor referendum, and its legal basis. We find that in Indonesia, the practice

of two forms of direct democracy in this example is referendums and general elections were practically happening in Indonesia. We focus particularly on the referendum to amend the 1945 Constitution and the referendum that held in East Timor, later we call East Timor province to become Timor-Leste. In general, in general election, Indonesia also directly elects its executive for the president and the vice president, the governor and the vice governor, the mayor and the vice mayor, the region and the vice region, and the head of the

village, also the representative in national and local level. So, we basically, we do have the direct election call for choosing directly at the executive level, the parliament and executive level. The referendum to amend the 1945 Constitution was a very crucial thing because we used to believe that the 1945 Constitution never been never been changed. But Presidential Decree Number 5 of 1985 laid out the requirements for a referendum for the 1945 Constitution, stating that such amendment would only be allowed through referendum.

In this decree, a referendum is defined as an act to directly ask whether the people agreed to with the wishes of the People's Consultative Assembly. But the referendum must be supported by at least 90 percent of public opinion givers or voters. As a result, we do have the amendment of the 1945 Constitution, and the referendum is actually only just some of the verses on referendum that held in East Timor. I would like to mention a bit on this. Under the leadership of Suharto, historically, Indonesia carried out a

military intervention that ended in the annexation of all for civil incorporation of Timor-Leste into Indonesian territory. At that time, we call East Timor a province. When Habibie became president, the autonomy of East Timor became a crucial issue. Demands were made by countries beyond Europe and Asia for Indonesia to carry out political reform and particularly to help Timor-Leste or East Timor determine its own destiny. In this regard, Portugal, as a former colony of East Timor or Timor-Leste, demanded the Indonesian government generally

determining the future of Timor-Leste. As a result, Indonesia and Portugal concluded an agreement on May 5, 1999, in New York, under the UN corridor. The agreement laid out the procedure for hosting public opinion in a confidential, direct, and universal manner. During the referendum, all of East Timor's people will be provided two questions: First, do you accept special autonomy for East Timor within the unitary state of the Republic of Indonesia? And the second, do you reject the proposed special autonomy for East Timor, which will

lead to the separation of East Timor from Indonesia? And the result of the referendum is like this. The result was announced in Dili, this is the capital city of East Timor, on September 4, 1999. Out of total 438,968 valid votes, 30... 344,1580 or about 78.5 percent people voted for independence, while about 21.5 percent people of East Timorese chose to remain with Indonesia. Therefore, we can call that the participation rate in the referendum was very high with about 98.6 percent of all registered voters casting the ballot.

The result of the referendum led to the official separation of East Timor province from Indonesia. The second direct election, the second direct democracy that I will going to explain is on direct general election. As I already mentioned a bit earlier, that Indonesia directly elects its executive of the president and the vice president, the governors and the vice governors, the mayor and the vice mayor, the region and the vice region, as well as the head of the village and the representative

in national and local level. We used to have the indirect election. We used to have the president and vice president elected by our MPs, not by us, not by the voters directly. Therefore, I think we have to put it as part of how Indonesia perceived that direct election as part of how we could survive with the direct democracy. So, it was started in 2005, and I think I need to mention here that in Indonesia, all the executives are voted are elected in fair. So, president and vice president, governor

and vice governor, mayor and vice mayor, rajan and vice regent, and only the head of the village that is elected on only one person. So, this is the practice of direct election in Indonesia. As a conclusion, various literature studies studying the advantage of direct democracy. However, the democratic transition in Indonesia has shown the pathway to consolidation by emerging the direct election not only for president and vice president, but also for the executive at local level. The strengthening of direct democracy

practices thus deemed the democratic institution to ensuring the well-functioning of civil society organizations and other interest groups to engage in decision-making policy. In the end, this direct democratic practice has successfully bring Indonesia to be resilient from democratic setbacks, whereas at the same time have to fight back for reducing the popular votes raising populism to expand their power. This is something that I think I need to present today. So, thank you very much for the time to listen to my presentation

and get back to you, Francisco. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you very much, Shreen, for the comprehensive presentation of the referendum process in Indonesia. So, I will have more discussions in our open discussion. So, thank you, Shreen. Let me now call Hami Asri Abdul Halim, who is a researcher of the Institute for Democracy and Economic Affairs, or IDEAS, in Malaysia. Hami, please limit your presentation to 10 minutes. Hi, good, good evening, good morning, for everyone wherever you are. Can you hear me clearly? Okay, I'll try to be as

brief as possible with my slides. I have about 12 slides to share with the group. Essentially, we talk about Malaysia. It has struggled in terms of its processes with democracy. All right. So, I hope the slides is viewable for everyone. So, basically, um, we talk about Malaysia, some of the challenges that we are facing would occur more recently with a lot of transition happening simultaneously within the space of two to three years. We've had three different governments going through at our

country. So, starting off, essentially, the paper that I put in terms of syntax is to mention that the Sheraton Move, which was a political move done by the existing government at that particular time, a coalition had broken up. So, they were doing a meeting at the Sheraton Hotel, that's why it's called the Sheraton Move, and also the simultaneous timing of it that occurred right before the COVID-19 pandemic hit Malaysia. That was in 2020, two years ago. So, there was a political and also a constitutional crisis

added with the public health situation that was continuously affecting everywhere around the globe. So, coming back to the issue of politics, whereby Malaysia saw its first transition in government from a 60-year rule by the former government known as the National Front. So, the first transition, democratic transition, occurred in 2018. So, we shifted our federal government, and unfortunately, that government did not last long. It only managed to stay in power for about a year and a half, and

therefore, they would be basically due to ideological splits within the party and also members of its MPs hopped into other parties. So, the general election was basically invalidated by many ways by the politicians themselves, and that led to a lot of frustrations amongst the voters who felt as though their vote, they voted in a different government, but instead, they were after one and a half years, another government came into power that were basically a coalition of the losers in the general election. So, coming

back, these are some of the, there is a timeline over there and some of the characters that are basically involved in the whole situation. So, whereas voters become more disillusioned, then mistrust towards institutions was also heightened with periods of uncertainty in terms of leadership, and that's where we talked about opportunities to explore other forms of democracy here, being the case of direct or participatory democracy. So, it's being discussed amongst

civil society members in Malaysia, and also there is a need to basically talk about lesser state interventions and greater civil society organization empowerment. So, Malaysia has always been historically a very top-down country, and now there are movements on the ground that basically talk about a bottom-up approach. So, yeah, next in the slide would be this. So, basically, this is the transition from government. So, on your left-hand side, you see the former coalition of government that basically ruled for

six decades, and then you had the short-lived Pakatan Harapan government, which was basically a coalition based on a very progressive politics of opposition that won but did not sustain. And now you have the Perikatan Nasional, a coalition formed from the losers of the previous general election that has essentially a breakaway or splinter parties from the previous two coalitions. So, you have parties from the National Front as well as Pakatan Harapan that deserted their parties and formed the

Perikatan Nasional under the current government. Okay, and moving on to this one. So, basically, in the paper, I talked about how there were basically the self-collapse of the Pakatan Harapan government. There was a lot of ambiguity, as well as we talked about how there was an undemocratic rise from the Perikatan Nasional, the new coalition that basically heads the government at the moment. That also did not sustain. The eighth prime minister basically was forced to resign or basically left

office, and basically now we have a minority government, and this government is very fragile, and it has been forced to sign a Memorandum of Understanding to carry out reforms. However, that Memorandum of Understanding between the political parties, between the opposition bloc and the very fragile government, has also garnered a lot of backlash. People were not happy because again, supporters from both sides of the party basically says that there's issues whereby they were not consulted, the public was not being

brought involved into the discussion. That politicians are determining the direction of the country, whereas it was the politicians themselves that created the mess or the crisis in terms of political and constitutional crisis. So, how can they be expected to solve? Why wasn't the people or the public consulted? So, those are some of the things that have been brought or discussed, and there were a lot of societal double standards occurring throughout COVID-19. So, the paper later goes on whereby I was detailing in terms of

how historically Malaysia has practiced a representative model of democracy. So, in direct democracy, there are many reasons to it. The paper touches on it. We also have a constitutional monarch, and we borrowed heavily from the Westminster model, which is an inheritance from the British colonization period. So, basically, Malaysia has a very complex power structure, diverse social makeup, and at its very top level, the monarch themselves also have a consultative, what do you call this, a format amongst themselves. So, among the king and the

monarch families, they have a consultative measure. But again, the discussion on democracy coming down to the ground level has been in Malaysia been very limited, as only the lower house parliament, obviously the state assembly men and women are elected. So, there's only one particular component within the three branches of government that are elected directly from the public. The rest are all either appointed or basically suggested by politicians to the king, and for the appointment, made by the king.

And in terms of politics in Malaysia, we have a lot to the context. Many scholars such as Dr. Martin Luther, Dr. Meredith, and how do you call this, there are a few other political science lectures that talks about clientelism and patronage. So, in Malaysia, politics is done in a way that MPs or potential candidates would do public engagement with the local level by bringing goodies or aid or basic necessities for them to basically use and to garner votes. Moving on, the paper talks about external

developments. Malaysia being situated right in the middle of Southeast Asia allows us to be intact or basically aware of our surroundings, particularly about on the issues of democracy. So, countries such as Indonesia, such as the Philippines, the development of democracy in these two particular countries definitely affects Malaysia and how we have this bigger so-called powers like China and India, who also have challenges in terms of the democracy model, are also adopted or basically affect Malaysia indirectly

as new generations are also quite open to the conversations about leadership decisions. We are seeing the discussion on direct democracy being far more advanced this time around compared to what you have perhaps two or three decades ago in Malaysia, as people back then would prefer to pass over discussions on policy or leadership decisions to their elites or to their local community leaders rather than they themselves be involved. However, younger generations are much more aware, much more participatory, and

therefore, these are some of the trends that we are basically identifying in the paper, that technology also is one big factor that encourages for more democracy to take place in Malaysia. All right, moving on to the next slide. The paper also touches on recent issues. So, some of the things that could perhaps be challenges for this transition or acceptance of direct democracy in Malaysia would be on the issue of trying to capture a very large portion of semi-urban or rural constituencies in Malaysia. So, there are basically, as I

alluded to earlier, these communities in semi-urban rural constituencies in Malaysia would actually face much more difficulties in trying to get access to these courses to how to say, democratic awareness. So, they don't think about democracy that much. They rather think about the bread and butter issues, things that basically relate to their own and their family survival. So, we talk about inequalities. Therefore, they would definitely say that in terms of policy making, in terms of issues that are related to the national

level, it should be passed over or given to their representative. Hence, politicians and the local parties that are available at their areas. So, that's why they like to delegate those things. And also in Malaysia, there are the three things that are basically quite growing in rampant. Obesity has been in existence and it creates a very big challenge in terms of race, religion, and corruption. So, these three things makes a discussion about democracy slightly more problematic. And I also allude to obviously concur with some of our

previous speakers our friend from Mongolia was also saying that there was a label or basically how democracy is being labeled or treated by being labeled community that are very conservative let's say that if you talk about democracy you talk about liberty you talk about human rights these are all foreign these are all uh Western agendas and therefore it should be rejected and these are some of the narratives that makes it much more difficult uh we want to bring into democracy when uh it comes back to the issue of race and

religion social contract in Malaysia is being threatened these are some of the uh the narratives that have been played by the conservatives and uh in Malaysia when we talk about democracy they basically most Malaysians generally accept peace and freedom as being part of the process of benefits however they don't focus so much into greater detail in terms of good governance or justice uh for example so again the issue of democratic education needs to be far more advanced uh much more encouraged in Malaysia and that

would take time in particular so these are some of the challenges uh continuing on and normally when we talk about people who are very pro-democracy that basically support the elements or aspects of direct democracy in Malaysia they often belong to all these four types which are urban centric uh they have a background in activism they have exposure to multiculturalism and basically they belong into the young bracket in terms of age so if they do not belong to any four of this they would then they would have the tendency

to not support direct democracy and just maintain the status quo of passing over discussions legislations uh policy making to their representative rather than go through direct involvement however nevertheless when we talk about uh issues uh that are much more on the positive side uh there is a growth growth of CSOs uh civil society organizations to deliberate and descend in public spaces due to social media so there are spaces on the digital platform whereby we can see uh people talking about democracy in a very robust manner

uh and basically there is also a growing volunteer culture in Malaysia and the the the fact that current governments uh due to their instability due to their weaknesses of forming the majority uh they would are forced to basically come into consultations and do town halls with the NGOs so this shows an acknowledgement of the role of NGOs or CSOs in society that government that the age of government knows all has basically ended post GE14 so but however when you look at it from the timeline uh this has been going on ever

since 2008 whereby uh the opposition uh did a lot of effort to basically create more awareness so it has been a very long process to get to this stage and now governments do not bulldoze their policies but rather they take into consideration opinions from civil society members from community leaders and and the engagement or the decision making process is much more inclusive in many ways so these are some of the positives that you can see uh just a little bit more uh if I mean I mean the two last slides the four last

slides yeah so um some of the efforts uh we are also uh experimenting on a citizens assembly similar to what you have in Ireland or in Switzerland so there will be a pilot project done by the Malaysian Assembly uh in Johor which is a state in Malaysia uh this coming August online petitions has been very popular uh in terms of the usage of change.org recall elections by one of the CSOs bursting and also open budget transparency whereby public are invited to basically participate in uh monitoring state

budgets yeah uh okay um and a few final slides if I may uh yeah and emerging trends uh so when we talk about this uh there are more parties new parties being created uh there is talk about decentralization and also when we talk about political literacy uh there are also uh efforts by young groups talking about digital parliament being organized and in conclusion uh there is a weak government majority uh the opposition is this is in disarray and therefore uh public uh through CSOs can make better involvement however uh the threat

towards democracy is the return or potential potential return of corruption or basically the previous governments which are much more familiar uh among the voters uh and in terms of next analysis these are some of the things that we will be doing uh be in a team of research assistants will be participating to discuss further uh thank you Francesco I pass it over back to you thank you very much Almi it's very comprehensive presentation on Malaysia a lot has been happening as I can see in your presentation

now uh I'll call on Muhammad Asim analyst of Verité Research of Sri Lanka thank you Francisco I'm trying to share my screen so uh yes okay I think I can do it now yeah hope you can see my screen yes we can see yes okay yeah hi good afternoon everyone thank you very much for ADRN and EAI for this opportunity to present at this forum so I am here to share the Sri Lankan experience of promoting direct democracy through public engagement so first part of our paper deals with the definition okay so when

we look at the history the democratic government has mainly taken in two forms one is the direct democracy where the people as individuals participate in policy formulation and decision making process second representative democracy via policy formulation decision making up undertaken by representatives who are elected by people and when we look at uh when it comes to instrument of direct democracy we have looked at mainly in two ways first formal instruments which has been there traditionally such as you

know referendum and what recalled etc then second we call it here alternative instruments alternative instruments allow citizens to be directly involved in governance but it has not been traditionally perceived as an instrument of direct democracy but also loosely falls within the scope of the direct democracy and if we look into the context of Sri Lanka so when you look at the development of the Sri Lankan current constitution Sri Lanka got independent independence in 1948 and adopted the Soulbury constitution

which was in practice at the time of the independence Sri Lanka introduced its first republic constitution in 1972 and it was replaced by the second republican solution in 1978. there were no any formal traditional instruments of direct democracy in Sri Lanka except the referendum which was introduced in the 1978 constitution but the Soulbury constitution which was in effect at the time of independence had a bicameral parliamentary structure which was governed by the Commonwealth parliamentary traditions

these Commonwealth parliamentary traditions had instruments where citizens could directly engage in government through instruments such as you know private members' bills public petitions and parliamentary questions and these instruments had features that we would see in direct democracy so what we want to do is we want to look at these kind of instruments in detail and so one of the kind of you know the first instrument that we will be looking at is the referendum so so the essence of a referendum is that

it enables people to directly vote to decide on a law or a proposal as per the Sri Lankan constitution a referendum can be taken in three occasions first the constitution gives power for president to put forward as put forward a citizen any matter of public importance for the approval second there are entrenched articles in the constitution and if in the constitutional amendment proposed to make changes to those entrenched articles that also require to go through the different referendum thirdly if the

Supreme Court determines that a proposed bill is inconsistent with an entrenched article of the constitution will also require to go through a referendum however so as I mentioned earlier the the referendum was introduced in the 1978 constitution and it is not worthy to mention that you know Sri Lanka has gone for a referendum only once in its history and that was also 40 years ago it's the first and last referendum that was conducted was in 1982 that was to kind of you know uh to call off the

the parliament election and extend the the lifetime of the parliament by under six years and that kind of you know uh at that time the government which brought it they kind of know uh go through that referendum and they were able to kind of postpone the election for about six years uh there are two you know uh critical shortcomings in Sri Lanka's framework of referendum that undermines its ability to be able to be used as instrument of direct democracy the first of this shortcoming is that a referendum can only be called by the

president there is no modality by which the people can mandate a referendum the second shortcoming is that it is limited to approving bills at the parliamentary level and matters of national importance accordingly the framework on referendum has no application to matters at the local level they are by preventing communities from directly participating in policy making at the local government level on matters that are likely to impact them on a day-to-day basis then the second instrument that we are discussing in our

paper is the private members bill the private members bill is a formal instrument that has the potential to be used as a citizen used by citizens to directly be involved in legislative and policy formulation there are two types of private members bills and the first one is intended to affect or benefit a particular person association or a cooperative body we call it as incorporation based the second type which is we are kind of interested here is the bills that are intended to be advancing the public

interest so the modality of this using the private members bill is two step process first a citizen or a civil society organization must advocate for and gain the support of a parliamentarian who is eligible to be eligible to table a private members bill secondly the said parliamentarian must sponsor the bill proposed by the citizen in parliament once this process is completed the bill will be deliberated in parliament according to the generally accepted procedures however data collected by a parliamentary

monitoring platform called Verité Directory so which is also managed by the organization I I represent that between 2015 to 2021 during a six-year period they have a total of 209 private members bills presented in parliament yet only 12 of those bills concerned matters of public interest so rest of those private members bills were incorporation bills that were dealing with incorporating associations and cooperatives and so just it is evident that private members bills have been predominantly

utilized as an instrument to regulate the affairs of incorporated bodies rather than instruments to address issues of public interest so the the third instrument that we are kind of looking at enough people is public petition public petitions enable citizens to be bring to the notice of parliament the flaws in the administrative machinery of the government and seek redress for grievances suffered an aggrieved citizen can submit a petition to any parliamentarian requesting that matter contained in the petition be

considered and resolved then the parliamentarian can endorse the petition and refer it to a committee of public petition in parliament once looking at the content of the petition if public petition committee thinks of the view there has been an infringement of citizens fundamental rights or if any other injustice has been caused to the citizen then the committee will do an inquiry and may grant a due relief again a statistic published by Verité that parliamentary monitoring platform reveals from 2015 to 2020

during the period there were total of 2,400 public petitions submitted to the committee on public petitions by 181 parliamentarians out of 220 225 members we have of the 2401 petitions a total of 115 petitions that's close to 50 percentage of the petitions were presented by just only 10 parliamentarians this indicates that public petitions are neither extensively nor uniformly used by citizenry of Sri Lanka as an instrument of directly engaging with the government and administration so the final instrument that we are kind

of discussing in the paper is the parliamentary questions so when it comes to parliamentary questions there are so parliamentary questions another instrument that have the potential to enable citizens to directly engage with parliament in order to utilize the instrument an individual or a group of individuals are required to advocate for and obtain the support of an eligible parliamentarian for the purpose of posing question on their behalf so the very common type of question is called written questions for oral or

written answers this enable any member of parliament who doesn't hold any ministerial post to pose a question to the government those questions have been placed on the order paper and this will take a minimum of two weeks to a month to get a response but the standing orders of the parliament also allows the party leaders to ask question on matters of public importance without waiting it to be included in the order paper and get a prompt response from the government moreover parliamentarians are also

entitled to direct up to four questions per month to the Prime Minister on the government policies accordingly citizens can urge the representatives to take advantage of the opportunity to ask parliamentary questions and hold government and held government answerable and accountable again statistics by Verité that during 2015-20 a total of 2,372 questions were raised by parliamentarians of this question 1,234 questions that approximately 56 percentage of the questions are raised by just 10 parliamentarians

uh the the similar to private members bill and public petition the instrument of parliamentary question also appears to be inadequately and ineffectively used for the purpose of direct engagement with the matter of governance so next section of the paper looks at the challenges in using these instruments for direct democracy in Sri Lanka so the first challenge that the public identifies is the absence of mechanism to maintain the implementation of the instruments although parliamentary standing orders

provide for presenting a private member's bill public petition in parliamentary questions this instrument will be presented to parliament only if the parliamentarian who has been approached by citizen agrees to submit before the parliament none of the framework of these instruments contemplate a mechanism by which that is a citizen or group of citizen can trigger a mandatory action by parliamentarian this challenge also arises with regard to referendums as the ability to call a referendum is vested solely in the president and it

cannot be triggered by people with respect to matters of national or local importance so the second uh challenge that we have identified is the the inadequate mechanisms to improve parliamentary accountability there is a lack of mechanism that improve and assure the accountability of the parliamentarians for instance there is no mechanism by which the petition submitted by a citizen can be tracked and the concerned citizen to know they know the status of the petition further Sri Lanka is yet to implement a

mechanism that calls parliamentarians to report their progress on a monthly or annual basis as a public representative these gaps in holding parliamentarians accountable enable them to exercise discretion without sufficient checks they are by undermining the ability of citizens to fully instrumentalize the framework of private members bill public petitions and parliamentary questions then the third challenge that the people has identified is the systemic and structural issues that inhibit access to

instruments of direct engagement in Sri Lanka certain systemic issues have significantly inhibited access to such institutions and instruments for example though parliamentary proceedings are physically and virtually accessible for public these proceedings are limited to proceedings of the main chambers of parliament proceedings of the numerous committees and subcommittees of parliament which deliberate on matters of public interest are not accessible to the public the other systemic issue is lack of

women representation in formal politics which inhibits female citizens from exercising their democratic rights by effectively engaging with the country's democratic institutions these are just two examples that can you know include there are more systemic issues and the final section of the paper uh gives kind of you know suggestions for areas of kind of improvement and the first suggestion is that you know expanding the scope of the referendum as I mentioned earlier at the moment referendum can be called

only by the president so Sri Lanka could resolve this problem by adapting a system similar to that of Switzerland where people can trigger a referendum Sri Lanka can also explore introduction of referendum for restoring legislative and policy issues at the local government level by allowing citizens to trigger referendum through proposals once they receive an endorsement or signatures from a sufficient portion of the constituency then the second suggestion for the improvement is introducing mechanisms to mandate the

implementation of formalized instruments so as discussed can be as we discussed before currently the former mechanism of direct engagement have no threshold or trigger by which they are mandatory implemented therefore citizens should introduce procedures therefore Sri Lanka should introduce procedures that trigger the automatic implementation of such formalized instruments in specific circumstances such as when a petition or proposal has been endorsed or signed by a specific number of citizens then the final

suggestion that we have made in the paper is introducing mechanisms to increase accountability of public representatives so although Sri Lanka recognized private members bills public petitions and the parliamentary questions as formalized instruments that allow citizens to directly engage with parliament the successful implementation of all of such instruments is contingent on effective implementation and follow-up by parliamentarians thus Sri Lanka can explore the possibility of introducing mechanisms that permit the monitoring of

utilization instruments by citizens and parliamentarians while also raising general awareness of the utility of such mechanism among the general public so actually our paper kind of concludes this with this kind of this recommendation and yes kind of thank you very much for listening to this you know presentation thank you very much Muhammad Asim for that good presentation and also proposals to improve direct democracy in Sri Lanka so let us now go to our last panelist member Tawilwadi from KPI Thailand

you may proceed be please unmute yourself be uh can you see the screen yes okay uh the the paper is the exploring direct deliberative and participatory democracy in Asia we have been conducting these research based on the framework that given to us the democracy here is a form of democracy beyond representative democracy and the elected democracy seem to be very interesting here because it's part of the communication technology revolution in Thailand and it seems to be the better to win policy making

process require deep information that the experts do not know but we can hear from the public and it's the institutionalized process that the people can express their opinion on specific issue via the ballot consisting of initiatives or referendums and practices okay twice sorry with the mechanism okay so let's look at this figure from the from the score of the late democracy uh that study by the uh I think yeah this illustrates that uh the maximum score is uh 0.849 and the minimum score is zero and

the Thailand score is uh 0.088 that's the score of the late democracy so it seems to be very low here we would like to see that to what extent that the democracy is practiced in Thailand and how it can be improved in the future so the objective of this study are to study the state of direct democracy in Thailand and to propose mechanism for strengthening direct democracy and the methodology that we use uh the literature survey from various sources and also interviews with key informants and also we have a

participant observation and focus group among the people related because at KPI we we uh have had some experiences with the process of the late democracy that I will mention afterwards so it's part of the methodology that we use and the list of questions are that how to describe the elected democracy in Thailand how the late democracy uh is a pride in the Thai society and what are the mechanisms for strengthening dialect democracy in Thailand and let's look at the history of the elected magazine uh Thailand changed from absolute

monarchy to constitutional monarchy in 1932 and so far we have around uh 13 coups d'état so we we see that the democracy go backwards and forwards from time to time and the most important part that I would like to mention is that before 1997 there was people uprising and then we had the constitution constitution 1997 that's very important because it's mandate a lot of uh elected democracy before 1997 there were several constitutions that provide for referendums for the constitutional amendments the 1949 constitution the 1968

uh the 1974 and 1991 constitutions and also the amendment of the constitution in 1996 that also required the referendum but after 1997 okay so after 1997 uh the constitution is beginning of the late democracy in Thailand we can say because this constitution provides an impeachment process and also allow the people participation especially the people participation in legislative process through legislative initiative and also allow helping level endurance on law between the referendum or law affecting

the interest of the country from the previous limit to the questionable amendment only so after 1997 we can see that uh there are a lot of mechanisms that can identify the elite democracy in Thailand starting from referendums recalls also at least in the constitution and also law initiative as well as unconventional political participation and this is the first referendum on the Thai history that seem to be very important and show the direct democracy that effective because we need the new constitution that mandate a lot of

public participation and good governance so the first referendum under the constitution of the kingdom of Thailand aimed to allow people to vote for approval or disapproval of the constitution so the result comes out that 97 of the people of Thailand your eligible voters approved the constitution and uh 42 percent disapproved and we can see that uh there's a cleavage among the uh region because the north and uh northeast mostly disapproved the referendum so and then Thailand uh is divided accordingly

and the second referendum occurred in 2016 this is the one that also allow people to vote on Thailand's draft 2016 constitution so uh 59 of the people turned out to vote and there were two issues for the referendum the first one is for uh approval of the draft constitution and the second one allow the people to make decision whether they will allow the senators to vote for the prime minister this is the first time in Thailand and since then we have a lot of problems accordingly because the 2050 senators

can vote for the prime minister so it becomes majority party in the parliament because the member of the parliament or the lower house cannot have enough vote so if they would like the leader to be the prime minister they have to work in collaboration with the senators and certainly the military supported party uh have this uh opportunity so the results come out like that the 61 of the people approved the constitution uh mostly uh the the area of the yellow one and the people in the northeast uh that support

the former uh party or Thaksin you know the former prime minister of Thailand who exiled in Dubai I mean the the favor for Thaksin disapproved with the draft constitution and 58 percent of the people approved that uh senators can vote for the prime minister and another mechanism for the elected democracy in Thailand is law initiatives this is very important for strengthening the elected democracy because if the mechanism that the people can practice their right is starting from the 1997 constitution that uh allow 50,000 eligible voters

to be able to propose a law the law that related to uh right and liberty of the people and the public policy so uh according to the 1997 constitution there were 16 bills proposed to the parliament and only one bill that passed the parliament and we came the law that is the uh health excellence law because the it support the policy of the government so they allow these people's bill to pass the parliament and then in 2007 constitution we also have a referendum before that and this time we see the problem with 50,000 eligible

voters uh it's very difficult to to get all these numbers so uh the question drafting uh member uh revised it to only 10,000 eligible voters that's enough for proposed the bill and there were 51 bills proposed to the parliament and only eight bills were adopted and promulgated by the parliament and enacted into law so it you see uh however we also allow the people to uh to propose for amendment of the constitution also that means 50,000 eligible voters can propose to amend the constitution and then for the recent

uh constitution uh that means to the constitution uh 10,000 eligible voters can propose the law and according to this 71 bills were proposed because the the long period of time that we were under the uh military government the people were really frustrated so they tried to propose their own idea and propose their own laws so they uh get a lot of signatures and documents to prepare for proposing to the parliament and so that they can have the new law that support their way of life but unluckily until now

no bill has become into law so bills will adopt and communicated by the parliament and enact into law and many bill many bills uh could not pass the parliament because uh the problem with the financial issue in the law in financial issues in the bill if the bills propose to use some budget from the government then those bills have to be approved by the prime minister whether he agree uh with the bill or not so many bills were rejected by the prime minister himself so and uh now we have actually we have a

specific law or organic law according to the constitution we call initiative process act we just passed it last year and it made it easier for the people to bring in the legislation because uh we allow social media to be used for submitting the uh the bill to the parliament so we don't uh need some document anymore uh so the people can propose the bill online for example the signature we don't need the document into paper but we we need them to just submit by electronic uh mechanism

for this part and uh this is the uh example of the bill that are under the consideration of the parliament the indigenous people rights protection law initiative this is the one that KPI support according to the 2017 constitution so it uh guaranteed the right of the people to propose the law so that's why the the indigenous group the hill tribe and also ethnic groups they form uh the the association to propose the bill and now there are five draft laws so there are many group that would like to have such

kind of law so five go propose the bill into the parliament and now on the process so it's very interesting this is the uh the picture that they propose the bill and uh promote this bill among the public and also try to convince the prime the member of parliament to support and also convince many group of people to support this bill IV can you wrap up in a minute okay yeah yeah yes okay another another one is recalls recall posted in Thailand we we had first recall uh the recall for the prime minister the second one is

recall prime minister the first recall is the recall member of human rights commission but it's not succeeded and another informal recall by using the platform change.org this is the one that the people sign petition and show the signal to the parliament and also to the government and this is the unconventional political participation that allowed the people to demonstrate to protest uh against the government and there's another law that support this yeah this is the part that uh people uh only five percent of the people that

participate in unconventional political participation so they still have a lot of problem in Thailand because referendum has become the political mechanism and no longer reflect the will of the public because it's refreshing the will of the politician instead and a number of people are still high to be able to be enough to propose the bill and also the recall seem to be impossible and the other form is uh is increasing uh more importance I mean yeah like change.org but it's not legal and so the trend of Thailand that means

we see the positive side of the late democracy in Thailand we because there are a lot of public awareness on law making and social media become the mechanism for helping the people know about this mechanism okay I would like to end here thank you thank you very much we for that uh presentation on Thailand and it's unfortunate we don't have uh time left for our discussion but uh we can continue doing so online and of course we'll have our face-to-face conference in Seoul in August so I would like to thank uh

my my fellow panelists for this very engaging presentations and I've learned a lot from all your sharing and thank you to the East Asia Institute for serving as our secretariat