Tantrums rack Asia's new democ-racies, showing how bad old habits die hard.

怒火破壞亞洲新興民主政體，顯示老舊的陋習有多麼根深柢固、牢不可破。

Even as China and Burma have struggled recently to rebuild from the Sichuan earthquake and Cyclone Nargis, disasters have struck a number of other Asian states. But these are shocks of the man-made kind.The countries in question, which include some of Asia's strongest economies, have suffered enormous street protests, parliamentary meltdowns, threats of military intervention and other forms of bare-knuckled politics. In South Korea, tens of thousands of angry demonstrators have paraded nightly through Seoul—the biggest protests in two decades—demanding the ouster of the new president, Lee Myung-Bak.

正當中國和緬甸最近仍努力試圖從川震和錫蘭納吉斯風災中重建之際，亞洲其他幾個國家正遭逢其他劫難，但這些是人為造成的震撼。這些出問題的國家，包括亞洲一些最強大的經濟體，它們為大規模街頭抗爭、國會癱瘓、軍方威脅干政及其他形式赤裸裸的嚴峻政情所苦。在南韓，成千上萬憤怒的示威者每晚在首爾街頭遊行，是20年來最大規模的抗爭行動，他們要求新選出的總統李明博下台。

Thailand has been racked by similar spasms, including massive marches and a parliamentary vote to censure Prime Minister Samak Sundaravej, which he only barely survived. Tai-wan's legislature broke into another of its famous melees in late June when screaming opposition M.P.s tried to physically block the foreign minister from speaking. And in India, talks on the U.S. nuclear deal collapsed yet a-gain thanks to the obstruction of communist parties.

泰國也爆發類似的陣陣怒潮，包括大規模抗議遊行和國會投票譴責總理沙馬，他差點被轟下台。台灣的立法院六月底再度上演早已聲名在外的互毆混戰戲碼，當時那些高聲嘶吼的立委試圖阻止外交部長上台。至於在印度，由於共產黨從中作梗，和美國的核子談判又未能達成協議。

In most of these cases, democratic excesses have undermined the na-tional interest. In South Korea, for example, President Lee is pushing free-trade deals on a nation that has benefited hugely from globalization. And for India, the nuclear deal offers access to U.S. technology and virtu-ally free membership in the club of nuclear-armed nations. Yet such goals are slipping away in states that are supposed to rank among the most successful democracies in the non-Western world. South Korea, Taiwan and India are often praised for their freewheeling public debates, broad press freedoms, expanding civil liberties and strong economic perfor-mances.

在大半例子中，濫用民主已經破壞國家利益。以南韓為例，李明博全力推動自由貿易協定，南韓本身受惠於全球化至巨。至於印度，核子協定將使印度得以使用美國的科技，及形同免費加入核武國家俱樂部。但這些目標，正在本應被譽為非西方世界最成功的民主國家中溜走。南韓、台灣和印度經常以百無禁忌、毫無約束的公共政策辯論、寬大的媒體自由、廣泛的公民自由及強勁的經濟表現備受讚揚。

So what explains the breakdowns While there are individual factors at work, the struggles share some under-lying common causes. First is a lack of democratic maturity. It's crucial to re-member that in South Korea and Tai-wan, democracy is barely 20 years old; in Thailand it's about 35, and even in India it's only 60. Habits formed under earlier periods of military or authori-tarian rule die hard. Traditions of cor-rupt,highly personal, big-man-dom-inated,winner-take-all politics persist, turning every political skirmish into a struggle for survival. The underlying forces that allow, even encourage, protest to paralyze reform in these na-tions remain. And that's bad news at a time when spiraling food and energy costs and a global economic slowdown make decisive action more important than ever.

那麼到底是什麼造成民主失序？雖然有些個別的因素，這些抗爭有些共同的原因。第一，民主成熟度不夠。別忘了，南韓和台灣民主幾乎只有20歲，泰國約35歲，印度也只有60歲。早期軍人或獨裁統治所形成的陋習牢不可破。貪汙、高度個人化、大人物專擅、贏家通吃的政治傳統持續不墜，把每個政治上的小爭執都擴大為存亡之爭。那股准許甚至鼓勵抗爭以癱瘓改革的潛在力量，仍在這些國家發酵。值此糧價和能源價格持續飆升，及全球經濟失速，使決定性的行動比任何時候都要重要之際，這實在不是什麼好消息。

On the surface, none of these crises had much to do with profound ques-tions of democracy. The Korean blowup started with a food fight. Protests first broke out in April after President Lee decided to resume U.S. beef imports after a four-year ban. Exaggerated media accounts of mad-cow disease drove ordinary cit-izens, including many high-school students, onto the streets for orderly candlelight protest vigils.

表面上，這些危機似乎都和民主這個更深奧的問題無關。南韓這場怒火始於食物之爭。在李明博總統四月決定，在禁止四年後，恢復美國牛肉進口，立刻引爆抗爭。媒體誇大狂牛病的報導，更驅使平民百姓，包括很多高中生走上街頭，參加燭光守夜抗爭。

A similar escalation occurred in Thailand. The protests started in May over economic concerns and expand-ed to include nationalist complaints over a border dispute with Cambodia. But these issues were proxies for a deeper struggle between supporters of Thaksin Shinawatra, the ousted pop-ulist prime minister, and his oppo-nents, who include monarchists, the military and others who see Thaksin's emphasis on rural and working-class empowerment as destabilizing.

泰國也發生類似的緊張情勢升高。抗爭始於五月，原本為了經濟問題，後擴及泰柬邊界等民族主義問題。實則這些問題是被罷黜的民粹總理塔信的支持者，和他的政敵，包括君主主義者、軍方及其他認為塔信強調給農工階級更大權力會危及政治穩定者之間，更深入的代理人權力鬥爭。

These campaigns expose the extent to which Asian democracies are still twisted by authoritarian traditions. Larry Diamond, a foremost democracy expert at Stanford University, traces the protest ringleaders in Korea to "a radical anti-American, left-wing generation that grew up during the 1980s in the resistance to military rule … and has now reached positions of leadership in civil society, the media and elsewhere." Today they use the same hardball tactics they honed a-gainst dictators to undermine demo-cratic leaders.

這些行動披露亞洲民主仍被獨裁統治傳統扭曲的程度。美國史丹福大學首屈一指的民主專家戴雅門追查發現，南韓這些帶頭抗爭的首謀，都是「激進反美左翼那個世代，他們在反抗軍事統治的1980年代成長…如今已躍居民間社會、媒體及其他領域的領導地位。」今天，他們以對抗獨裁者淬勵出來的那套強硬策略破壞民主領袖。

In Taiwan, the impulse to follow "an undemocratic path to pull some-one down" comes naturally to a soci-ety with "a long tradition of rule by humans, rather than rule of law," says Prof. Liao Da-chi of National Sun Yat-sen University in Kaohsiung.

高雄中山大學的廖達琪教授說，在台灣，走「不民主的道路拉下在位者」的本能，在一個「長期靠人治而不是法治」的社會中是很自然的事。

Asian leaders also fear retribution if they lose elections, which can inspire desperate measures. Two of South Korea's last five presidents were crim-inally prosecuted by their successors, and President Roh Moo Hyun was impeached just a year after winning office in 2003. Fortunately, there are recent signs that Asian voters are slowly starting to reject politics as blood sport. The real cost of the chaos, however, is the policies these nations have had to abandon in the process. South Korea's growth rate has slipped from 7 percent in 2002 to about 4 percent this year.

亞洲各國領袖也很怕，一旦選舉失利，可能會遭到報復，什麼事都做得出來。南韓過去五位總統有兩位被繼任者以刑事罪名起訴。盧武鉉總統更在2003年當選才一年就遭到彈劾。幸好，最近跡象顯示，亞洲選民慢慢開始拒絕再把政治當成流血運動。這些騷亂真正的代價是這些國家某些政策在抗爭過程中勢必被迫放棄。南韓的成長率就從2002年的7%下滑到今年的4%。

（取材自新聞周刊）