DEMOCRACY BETWEEN CAMBODIA AND THAILAND: Civil and Political Participation

         Both Cambodia and Thailand may have some changes in civic and political participation due to globalization, modernization, education and so on. These development indicators are the diving behind actively participation from individual struggling for democracy. The civic engagement must be applied to interaction between government, civil society and citizens.

In case of Thailand, one significant change can be seen after introducing a new constitution of 1997. 1997 Constitution brought to electoral reform especially lowering the age of voting to eighteen year old. At that moment, citizen participation was up to 72 percent voter turnout. That was the highest rate of participation for the first general election in Thailand. This high rate make seen that people got much attention on politic and was aware of their role. Furthermore, people do not ignore and try to put the eye over political occasion and leader action that might put the country being away from democracy. Second election in 2005, the voting turnout was much in favor to Thai Rak Thai Party led by PM Thaksin Shinawatra. This development became a concerned to Thai people that Thai democracy might turn to single party regime. Therefore, activist wage the antigovernment protest. A sign of this public movement began in time of PM family sold the telecommunication company to Singapore without paying any taxes(Thananithichot, 2011). Antigovernment protestors claimed this property is the most important company which should not been sold to foreign power. However, public movement was not only antigovernment group, but also pro- government group was gathered to support Thaksin government as well. Antigovernment represents the middle class and rich people who mostly got negative impact on government policy. In contrast, pro-government group was organized by the lower middle class, working class as well as peasant from rural area who received benefit from this government. From that period on, there were many changes in Thai politic which people who got affected by regime were actively involved. For example, the red shirt was not satisfied with military regime as well as the other regime that in countering to democracy. Therefore, they have tried to go on the street to protest against the government regime. But their active engagement is banned either on the ground effort or media after PrayutRegime(Tisdall, 2015).

Looking at Cambodia, civic engagement was mentioned toward the group of youth rather than the older because youth is populated 59% against the old populated only 9.1% of total population as estimated in 2014(Indexmundi, 2015).Unlike Thailand, that political engagement of citizen mainly arrives from different interest on political regime, Cambodians faces the problem of democratic of governance(Wesh,2012). Democratic governance refers to challenges of government responsiveness and attention to people demand, particularly the inability of government in responding to poverty, corruption, unemployment and social justice. As cited in Reuters in 2013, young people demand for social justice, jobs, good education. Also, the 2013 national election in Cambodia has shown that citizen did not believed on government leadership anymore that why large proportion of voting turnout was share to the biggest opposition. The youth protestor indicated that Cambodian people does not present in traditional belief anymore. They are more aware of their right and their role to promote collective interest as well as paving the way for democracy in the country. Political participation is now spread among youth by social media. They mostly use social media to share their opinion as well as criticize the government work. Currently, the estimated of Facebook user are 2 million individuals (Meyn, 2013).


In short, both Thailand and Cambodia, civic participation is increasing from time to time. However, Comparing to Cambodia, Thai people has little chance right for political engagement because the government has strict control both street demonstration and media. At least, Cambodian can share their idea through media as well as some other activities creating by NGOs.