We could ask why? Why is autocratic rule so firmly embedded in mainland Southeast Asia in the period following independence after the Second World War?
I can think of two reasons. One reason is that all these countries in their pre-modern histories had absolute monarchies, and these monarchies did not tolerate, in fact they could not tolerate, a loyal opposition. In an absolute monarchy, to be in opposition is to be in rebellion against sovereign authority. Colonialism wiped away the monarchies for the most part, certainly the absolute monarchies, but here and there we find a little monarchy left over in the postcolonial period: Cambodia; Malaysia; and of course Thailand, where the monarchy, with the aid of the military and the political astuteness of the monarch, demonstrated remarkable resilience and capacity to re-build itself from its dire circumstances in the mid-1930s and again in the late 1940s.
The second reason is that colonial regimes also did not tolerate, they could not tolerate, a loyal opposition. To be in opposition during a colonial regime was also to be in rebellion against sovereign authority. To put the matter another way, legally it is not possible to be in opposition. To oppose sovereign authority is to act illegally, to commit a crime. Hence, we have the security laws that make criticism of government and political dissent a crime. All these mainland countries inherited their internal security laws from the Western imperial powers that colonized them – in the case of Thailand, from the Pax Americana in Southeast Asia that lasted from the end of the Second World War until the early 1970s.1 Colonial rule reinforced the monarchical tradition: anyone who took a stand against the government of the day is a rebel.