From the Nation this insight into the mind of the junta and the ideological role of sufficiency economy:
The prime minister and the chief Army officer have both told us that we are facing a “new kind of threat”. It sounds frightening. It is supposed to wake us up from our complacency, and it surely has sparked a new round of heated debate.
But what precisely is it?
Asked for a definition, Council of National Security (CNS) chief, General Sonthi Boonyaratglin, described this threat as “a new danger not found in textbooks”.
He said it’s nothing like the security threats of the past such as border violations or narcotics trafficking. However, General Sonthi did not point specifically to the series of bombings on New Year’s Eve or the subsequent series of bomb threats directed against certain targets in the capital.
He then added to the confusion by explaining: “It’s a threat that comes with vote-buying in elections and the rural people’s lack of understanding about democracy and appreciation of the sufficiency economy principle.”
Read this in the context of another interesting comment from The Nation’s Kavi Chongkittavorn:
Some legislators and officials have already spoken of “sufficiency democracy” as part and parcel of the sufficiency economy. In Thai pracha thippatai poh peang might sound pleasing and reassuring but in English it is an antonym to freedom. Thai bureaucrats and developers have already treated the two concepts as mutually inclusive, which is extremely dangerous. Conservatives and royalists might want that to happen, citing the sufficiency economy as the bedrock for all blueprints.
Frankly speaking, sufficiency economy is a self-defence response to predatory globalisation practices and it should not be mingled with politics.
2 responses so far ↓
1 Jon Fernquest // Jan 12, 2007 at 3:29 pm
“Frankly speaking, sufficiency economy is a self-defence response to predatory globalisation practices and it should not be mingled with politics.”
Seems to me it’s Thai elites predating on themselves. Like Thaksin using his connections as a police colonel and civil servant to buy government computer and then telecommunications concessions. What pray tell is global about that? Except that is where the technology originally came from.
“Sufficiency economy” as it is being developed by Thai elites (not in its original form as the words of His Majesty the King) seems to be just another form of Thai Ruk Thai (not Farang) clearly implying: Thai Ruk Farang (too much).
It is the Thai elites that employ whatever opportunities are exploitable in the international marketplace against other Thais in the domestic marketplace. It was Thaksin who used the tighter security worldwide after 9/11 to increase the power of the police who in the same breath accused liberal-progressive NGOs from outside the country usurping Thailand’s sovereignty and declaring that the UN “was not his father.” All this clearly looked like Thai (not) Ruk Thai and THai (pretend to) Ruk Thai.
One must distinguish the public transcript and ideology from the hidden transcript. In the university I taught at, foreign teachers were not given the same treatment as Thai teachers. They were not given health insurance or on campus housing or long contracts. They were disposable teachers, few of which chose to remain there for long and contribute even if they really were truly of the Farang Ruk Thai variety. Meanwhile the BOI offers huge incentives to companies with lots of money to blow and luxury condomiums in Bangkok are thriving, a huge fraction of which are bought by wealthy foreigners. Education is a force that can change rural thought and participation in democracy.
Exclusive focus on isolating and lassooing large globs of money as they run around loose on the free range of the international market place just solidifies Thai elite status quo and rural backwardness.
2 Jon Fernquest // Jan 12, 2007 at 7:24 pm
Bird watching in the jungle (with trees)
Rent seeker watching (in the urban jungle with tall buildings)
http://www.readbangkokpost.com/business/corporate_governance/the_bts_debt_restructuring_con.php#intro
Note the phrase: “I think they have the legal right to file charges against anyone alleging wrongdoing”
To question, sometimes means to go to jail or lose all your worldly possessions, just like Socrates with his little cup of hemlock.
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