In India, more than 380 million people turned out. So did tens of millions in Sri Lanka, Taiwan the Philippines and South Korea.
In staggering numbers, Asia has taken to voting this year. And if casting ballots doesn't equal quality governance, the elections highlight a dramatic change on the continent over the last 20 years: the spread of democracy.
Taiwan, the Philippines, Thailand, South Korea and Indonesia all have shed dictatorships and embraced the ballot box.
But democracy is by its nature unpredictable. Guided only by the often-whimsical views of the electorate, democratic countries are saddled with their election-winners -- whether brilliant statesmen or inept leaders who draw in voters with free beer. It's a system where corruption can thrive and demagogues often have broad appeal.
Witness the crime lords running for Parliament from Indian prisons, or the Indonesian general-turned-presidential candidate who's under indictment for human rights abuses, or the fist fights that occasionally break out in legislatures in the otherwise full-fledged democracies of Taiwan and South Korea.
"We all understand that building a democracy definitely won't be easy," President Chen Shui-bian said recently. "Since Taiwan walked away from authoritarianism and strode toward democracy, the road has been extremely hard."
Chen, the first opposition candidate to be elected Taiwan's president, would know. He won re-election in March by just 0.2 percent, his opponent -- chairman of the party that had held power for decades under a martial-law dictatorship -- claimed fraud and trickery, and protesters staged sometimes-violent demonstrations.
Complicating the situation was a bizarre election-eve shooting that slightly wounded the president and his running mate.
"We still need to walk carefully," Chen said.
But up to the mid-1980s dictatorships were the Asian norm, ranging from Beijing's ironclad rule to the kleptocracy of Ferdinand Marcos in the Philippines. India and Japan were the sole functioning democracies in the region.
These days, democratic governments are offering plenty of surprises: the near-tie in Taiwan, this month's defeat of the Indian government, the impeachment of South Korean President Roh Moo-hyun in March for a minor election law violation, followed by public outcry and his reinstatement by the Constitutional Court.
Certainly there are exceptions. China remains the elephant in the living room, its communist autocracy shielded from much criticism by its immense profit potential. Myanmar, formerly Burma, has become an international outcast under its military regime. Cambodia elects its prime minister. Communist Vietnam doesn't.
Nepal has seen nascent democratic rule reversed, with power returning to the king and riots shaking its streets. In Hong Kong, democratic hopes were killed after Beijing ruled that the territory can't directly elect its next leader. North Korea remains one of the most secretive dictatorships on Earth.
Still, with even China holding vaguely democratic local elections, the ballot box is clearly gaining ground.
"There's reason for what the diplomats call `cautious optimism,'" said David Steinberg, an Asia scholar at Georgetown University. "There has been progress in Asia, and, yes, we can expect more progress over time. But we can also expect backsliding."
Take the Philippines, where former longtime ruler Marcos was forced out in a peaceful 1986 "people power" revolt. It was a turning point in Asia, with popular sentiment chasing a dictator from power and ushering in rapid democratic expansion. But a tiny oligarchy still wields enormous influence, and traditional political clans dominate most elections.
President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo is in power because a second people-power revolt ousted former movie star Joseph Estrada from office. Then there's Indonesia, dogged by widespread corruption, military brutality and the still-powerful shadow of ousted dictator Suharto, whose former party won the most seats in April parliamentary elections.
Since Suharto was forced out in 1998, Indonesia has had a largely independent media and relatively free elections. But the ruling establishment -- the political, military and business elite -- has barely changed.
The process has been similarly muddled in Malaysia. It has the symbols of democracy -- elections, a legislature -- but few checks on a government that has been ruled, essentially, by the same parties since independence.
``We started out very bravely after independence 47 years ago, declaring ourselves as a democracy,'' said Lim Kit Siang, the parliamentary opposition leader. "Malaysia has slipped into a semi-democracy."
Where real change has come, it is in many ways a repudiation of the philosophy advanced by Chinese leaders, as well as Singapore's founding father Lee Kuan Yew and longtime Malaysian ruler Mahathir Mohamad, that Western liberal values lead to chaos and social decay.
To them, only so-called "Asian values" -- or, politically speaking, authoritarian governments -- could create stable, developed nations.
It was a philosophy with plenty of opponents, among them Jose Ramos-Horta, the foreign minister of East Timor, once ruled by Indonesia, now by its own freely elected government.
``The thousands of Asians who died in the streets of Manila, Bangkok, Jakarta, Rangoon, Beijing did not die for so-called `Asian values,'" he said recently.
CONFRONTATION: The water cannon attack was the second this month on the Philippine supply boat ‘Unaizah May 4,’ after an incident on March 5 The China Coast Guard yesterday morning blocked a Philippine supply vessel and damaged it with water cannons near a reef off the Southeast Asian country, the Philippines said. The Philippine military released video of what it said was a nearly hour-long attack off the Second Thomas Shoal (Renai Shoal, 仁愛暗沙) in the contested South China Sea, where Chinese ships have unleashed water cannons and collided with Philippine vessels in similar standoffs in the past few months. The China Coast Guard and other vessels “once again harassed, blocked, deployed water cannons, and executed dangerous maneuvers” against a routine rotation and resupply mission to
GLOBAL COMBAT AIR PROGRAM: The potential purchasers would be limited to the 15 nations with which Tokyo has signed defense partnership and equipment transfer deals Japan’s Cabinet yesterday approved a plan to sell future next-generation fighter jets that it is developing with the UK and Italy to other nations, in the latest move away from the country’s post-World War II pacifist principles. The contentious decision to allow international arms sales is expected to help secure Japan’s role in the joint fighter jet project, and is part of a move to build up the Japanese arms industry and bolster its role in global security. The Cabinet also endorsed a revision to Japan’s arms equipment and technology transfer guidelines to allow coproduced lethal weapons to be sold to nations
‘POLITICAL EARTHQUAKE’: Leo Varadkar said he was ‘no longer the best person’ to lead the nation and was stepping down for political, as well as personal, reasons Leo Varadkar on Wednesday announced that he was stepping down as Ireland’s prime minister and leader of the Fine Gael party in the governing coalition, citing “personal and political” reasons. Pundits called the surprise move, just 10 weeks before Ireland holds European Parliament and local elections, a “political earthquake.” A general election has to be held within a year. Irish Deputy Prime Minister Micheal Martin, leader of Fianna Fail, the main coalition partner, said Varadkar’s announcement was “unexpected,” but added that he expected the government to run its full term. An emotional Varadkar, who is in his second stint as prime minister and at
Thousands of devotees, some in a state of trance, gathered at a Buddhist temple on the outskirts of Bangkok renowned for sacred tattoos known as Sak Yant, paying their respects to a revered monk who mastered the practice and seeking purification. The gathering at Wat Bang Phra Buddhist temple is part of a Thai Wai Khru ritual in which devotees pay homage to Luang Phor Pern, the temple’s formal abbot, who died in 2002. He had a reputation for refining and popularizing the temple’s Sak Yant tattoo style. The idea that tattoos confer magical powers has existed in many parts of Asia