Laos in 2012: In the Name of Democracy

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Introduction

“The Lao People’s Democratic Republic: Peace, Independence, Democracy, Unity, Prosperity”. Since the 1975 revolution, “democracy” has hung as an unfulfilled promise in both the official epithet and motto of the nation. Many previous chapters on Laos in Southeast Asian Affairs have speculated, mostly pessimistically, about when this repeated promise will be realized. Year after year we have read that Laos continues to be a one-party state ruled by a small, secretive elite resistant to international and internal pressures for reform. Just last year the contributor to this series wrote that “there is no credible challenge to its continued governance”.¹ But the events of recent years have suggested that a different reading might be possible. It is notable, for instance, that the titles of the entries for Laos in Southeast Asian Affairs for 2009 and 2010 contained the words “contestation” and “debate”² respectively. Stavrakakis³ defines democracy as a political system premised on recognition of imperfection, especially the inevitable failure to attain unity between different voices. Democracy by his definition is the never-ending and always-unresolved debate between differently held positions. This definition directs the analysis of so-called democratic polities to the question of the status differences of opinion in any given context: how is a space for argument facilitated or disabled? Cuing from this Stavrakakis definition, in this chapter I focus on forums for disagreement, debate, and complaint in Laos in 2012 as a means of taking the pulse of democracy there not as a name only, but as the systemic politics of disunity.

The definition of democracy has been debated and discussed critically within Laos, too. In one political theory handbook,⁴ true democracy was defined as the reorganization of class relations away from the ruling class towards society in general: this is the goal of the current regime’s political project. But the handbook also emphasized that “democracy” is a word that is used as an empty promise that stands in the place of this revolutionary prospect, and that in reality most so-called democracies do not grant political authority to the majority of people. In my discussions with Lao political leaders about the role of democracy and their hopes for the future of the nation, a similar ambivalence was evident. Although democracy is usually considered a core goal and an indisputable value, there is also a wariness that not everything done in the name of democracy is worth supporting. Some leaders suggested that a better educated population working from a base of secure development is needed first: until then the single party would lead on their behalf. One explained that without this, the field of democratic debate would just be senseless conflict and pointless argument, and the nation of Laos has already seen enough strife, war, and blood-shed in its recent history. Another criticism of multi-party democracy was that it is inherently unstable: invidious comparisons with the protests of Thailand are not uncommon. Some associate multi-party systems with tedious and drawn-out decision making, pandering to special interests and spending on immediate benefits rather than wise leadership for the long term. Another leader explained to me that steps towards democracy in Laos needed to be slow, incremental and balanced with other values, most notably equality (khwam samoephap) — especially between the various ethnicities and between genders — and unity (ekaphap). Other associated core political values that temper that of democracy include “harmony” (pongdong), “solidarity” (samakhi), and “consensus” (hendi).

There is a conflict here between the political value of democracy, which entails disunity, and the political values of unity, harmony, and solidarity.⁵ The tension between these two currents of Lao political expression can be seen in the striking contortions political language sometimes takes in order to present dissent, contestation, or criticism as in fact a manifestation of unity. For instance, one particularly common style of dissent seen in 2012 was the technique of appealing to the letter of the law of the existing regime and the promises it has made it order to launch...