Asia Times Online :: Southeast Asia news and business from Indonesia, Philippines, Thailand, Malaysia and Vietnam

Elections:

Unremarked, but remarkable, are the results from this week's elections in Thailand. Thailand is a "major non-NATO ally" of the United States, a diplomatic category inviting Thai purchases of some of our most advanced weapons. Thailand also faces a native, Muslim insurgency in its southernmost provinces. The Asia Times shows how poorly the government did in those provinces.

Those provinces aside, however, Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra's government did extraordinarily well. Thaksin is now the first Thai prime minister ever reelected. Not only that, but his party did so well as to be able to set aside any coalition government, and rule as a single party. Thaksin came under fire for his handling of the insurgency in the south, which opponents charge has been managed with unnecessary violence -- a charge, I think, which isn't entirely without merit.

Regardless, Thai voters returned him with an increased majority. In doing so, Thailand follows precisely in the footsteps of Australia, Afghanistan, Iraq, and the United States' electorates. There is a lesson here, and I think it is this: democratic bodies around the world are starting to look toward the challenge to democracy posed by Islamist extremism. There is forming a global, democratic reply. Only Spain, so far, has fallen outside this general trend: and, in their defense, they went first.

This is no small matter. What is being measured is the conglomeration of millions upon millions of individual wills. That is a terrible, an awe inspiring force. What comes next has all that force behind it.