Grand Harmony Restaurant, Chinatown, New York, 12/25/08

Following the Jewish tradition of eating Chinese food on Christmas brings to mind the year that I had the Worst Chinese Food in the World. We were vacationing in the Florida Keys a few years back, spending a couple of nights in each of a few, er,  key spots. On Christmas Eve, we settled in at a B&B in Big Pine Key, and had a great dinner at a nearby seafood restaurant. We spent Christmas day driving around, checking out the various sites on Big Pine and neighboring keys, and by evening we were famished. And in trouble. Big Pine, it turned out, was basically locked down for Christmas, and everything was closed. This was an eventuality that, as big city Jews, we hadn’t anticipated. After driving around for about two hours, and not finding anything at all to eat, we eventually landed in a strip mall that had an open restaurant. A Chinese restaurant. A terrible Chinese restaurant. I don’t remember the name of the place, but I do remember that the food bore about as much resemblance to real Chinese food as a Burger King bagel does to the real product of that name.  We left the restaurant relieved that we weren’t going to starve to death, but aware that the amount of time we had spent circumnavigating the middle keys could have just as easily been spent driving down to Key West, where we could have had a real meal. But it was a reminder of the historical roots of the Chinese Food on Christmas tradition; namely, that there are places where that’s really all that’s open on that day, and if your choices are bad Chinese food or fasting, well, Christmas ain’t Tisha B’av, so the sweet-n-sour something-or-other usually wins out. Thus are traditions—and serious cases of indigestion—born and propagated.

Back in the 90s, I interviewed a Hong Kong financier named Philip Tose for Asia Inc magazine. Tose—whose Peregrine Investment Holdings later went belly up amid charges of incompetence and negligence—had recently caused something of a stir in the local press by saying that “Western-style political democracy” was the root cause of many of the West’s problems, and that what Asia needed was “economic democracy,” and not lectures from “do-gooders.” In my interview, I asked Tose to expand on his statement, and he grudgingly admitted that “there are many great things that come out of democracy,” and that democracy is a “wonderful concept.” However, he insisted that, for the emerging economies of Asia, “most people are not interested” in voting, and that “the man in the street is more interested in a dollar in his pocket than a ballot slip.”

Tose’s ideas were certainly consistent with the values held by many Asian governments, including those of China and Singapore. And Asia Inc itself often flew the banner of “economic democracy,” talking up the reforms of leaders such as Deng Xiaoping, who famously declared that “to get rich is glorious.” Occasionally, we did hint at support for something more universal; at one point Sondhi Limthongkul, our Editor-in-Chief, praised the reforms of “enlightened capitalism” in his monthly column; the article linked from the column criticized Philippine oligarchs who wrecked the country with “disastrous political and economic decisions designed to benefit themselves.”

I was reminded of my interview with Tose—and of Khun Sondhi’s limited support for political democracy—by recent events in Thailand. For the third time in as many years, the People’s Alliance for Democracy (PAD) has succeeded in bringing down the country’s prime minister. I’m not an astute enough student of Thai politics to say whether or not elected prime minister Somchai Wongsawat deserved to be ousted. However, I do find some of the statements of my old boss—and current PAD leader—Sondhi Limthongkul, to be an unfortunate echo of Tose’s long-ago comments. Sondhi, who also helped overthrow elected prime ministers Thaksin Shinawatra and Samak Sundaravej, has stated publicly that, despite his organization’s name, “representative democracy is not suitable for Thailand.” Instead, he proposes a model in which the majority of the country’s parliament would be appointed officials, leaving a mere 30% to be elected. “Let’s not get democracy as you would go to McDonalds and order a hamburger, because democracy is still a Western export,” he has said in defense of his proposal.

I’m sorry, Khun Sondhi, but you’re wrong, just as Philip Tose was in 1992. Yes, democracy can be imperfect and messy, and can occasionally lead to the election of popular but corrupt officials. And even the most open and democratic nations have had to deal with electoral fraud and its consequences. But a democracy can also provide fair recourse; Thailand’s two most recent prime ministers were ousted not by PAD’s mass rallies, but by the county’s courts and judges. And if the judges and courts were influenced by PAD, that’s also a tribute to the democratic rights of free speech and assembly enjoyed in Thailand. As Aung San Suu Kyi—probably Asia’s best-known democracy activist—has said, the “struggle for democracy is a struggle for our everyday life.” On “economic democracy,” she has said that the idea that “man is primarily an economic animal interested only in his material well-being” is “too narrow a view of a species which has produced numberless brave men and women who are prepared to undergo relentless persecution to uphold deeply held beliefs and principles.”

That said, I do agree with another prominent Asian supporter of democracy, Gandhi, who said that “the spirit of democracy cannot be imposed from without. It has to come from within.” In that regard, Sondhi is right; imported or imposed democracy is doomed to failure. But Thailand’s democracy does come from within. The fact that the country has continued to embrace the electoral process in the face of decades of coups, corruption and failed governments is proof of that. The Thai people—or at least most of them—have embraced democracy. I hope that my old boss someday does the same.