Critics can be pessimistic about Thailand’s political future. But shouldn’t they take comfort from all the signs that Thai politics is returning to “normal” again? After all, since when did we not have vote-buying, political horse-trading and betrayal? They have all been part and parcel of Thai politics.So at end the day, there shouldn’t be anything alarming about the post-election scenario. There shouldn’t even be anything unusual about it because this is essentially the “Thai politics” that we all should have become accustomed to by now.
- Extracted from Thepchai Yong, “Don’t panic: It’s business as usual in Thai politics“, The Nation, 23 October 2007.
Thepchai is right, of course — to a certain extent. What outsiders hope for is a slight sign that overall some steps forward are made over time. Personally I don’t see that, in the constitution, in the renewed Prem-palace-army alliance, in the handling of the south, in the fight against corruption and for rule of law, and, most of all, in the management of the country by the bureaucrats and politicians. If Thaksin and the rest had been able to make a respect-worthy Suwannaphum airport arise out of Cobra Swamp, whatever the corruption, it might have demonstrated that things do get better. But it is a disaster. The south is a disaster. And, the (incompetent but maybe not so corrupt) Democrats aside, the political field is full of old emblems of corruption and mismanagement. The 1997 collapse showed what this mismanagement does, Thepchai — what happens when you are just happy with getting back to democracy and you don’t demand a little better each time. Thailand gets along, but so did Burma, for a time.
The only thing I see really improved is the state of Thai studies — there is a lot more realism about the thinness of the gold plating on Suwannaphum. Thepchai, perhaps too comfortable with the Nation having led the charge to oust Thaksin at any and all costs, apparently hasn’t noticed this.
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The Nation had worked hard to get this old situation back. Thus, Thepchai would be the last one who can complain about it.
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Thepchai and The Nation would be more credible about their outrage concerning “business as usual” politics if they actually did some investigative reporting to expose the corruption in Thai politics.
Notice The Nation never actually tells us how politicians are corrupt. It just says politicians are corrupt. No evidence, just opinions.
How many editorials and opinion pieces did we have to suffer through about Thaksin’s corruption after he was ousted? Again, no evidence, just opinions.
Easy to attack Thaksin once he was out of power and in a foreign country.
Interestingly, after the coup, The Nation could have actually reported how Thaksin suppressed the media when he was in power, and post on its website all those investigative reports it had to sit on because of pressure from the government. But it didn’t.
Currently, The Nation hasn’t done one investigative piece on the coup makers pre and post-coup assets.
General Sonthi is now part of the government. He is supposed to disclose his assets.
Has The Nation reported on it? Nope.
Has The Nation reported on all the wheeling and dealing going on in with the new political alignments and arrangements? Nope.
It prints, he said this, he said that. Any idiot can regurgitate what politicians say and put into print.
All we get from Thepchai and his cohorts are crocodile tears about dirty Thai politics.
Instead of wringing their hands, they should be investigating and reporting. In other words, they should be doing their jobs.
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(Gasp)…There was corruption, vote-buying, buying of politician, barter of minister seat, illegal, etc etc before TRT came to power?… (Shock! Horror!!!)
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Politicians good
Bureaucrats good
There. Now Thepchai does need to write another thing all year.
But as the two comments above touch on, it is the elite who condemn bad politicians and the elite that does nothing whatsoever to fix the problem.
A perfect analogy is the Bangkok bus system. In the early 1990s, the government pushed the BMTA to privatize. The BMTA cleverly dodged this by agreeing to privatize half the fleet as a test. They then proceeded to put everything bad in the private part and everything odd in the public part. Voila! Privatization failed.
Flash forward to now. The elite condemns politicians, then passed a constitution that rolls back all of the steps of the ten years to improve politics. The elite intentionally created an environment in which politicians will fail.
Thepchai is playing his role nicely. His masters will be pleased.
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“Interestingly, after the coup, The Nation could have actually reported how Thaksin suppressed the media when he was in power…” >> During the Thaksin government, I once attended a panel of Suranand Vejjajiva and The Nation’s Panya at the FCCT. When it came to the issue of media suppression, Suranand turned to Panya and asked him, “Do you feel threatened by me?” Panya’s answer: “No.” Was he so utterly horrified by Suranand as a representative of the tyrannical Thaksin system that he just did not dare saying anything more? But then Panya must have felt liberated by the coup and put everything on paper for the public to read in detail. As Tosakan says: nothing.
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“…party switching is integral to the democratic system and should not be seen as pathological” (Siripan Nogsuan Sawasdee, Thai Poltical Parties in an Age of Reform, Dec 2006, p. 107)
This statement is followed by almost an exact description and explanation of what was news last week, citing a paper from
The Party Switching Research Group:
http://faculty.virginia.edu/partyswitching/papers.html
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In Thailand, they do not switch parties, actually. They switch party labels and personal allegiances. If Siripan’s statement is true, then the degree of democraticness of Thailand is very high, while that of Germany or the UK is very low.
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“In Thailand, they do not switch parties, actually. They switch party labels and personal allegiances.”
That “party switching” is the same in Thailand as it is in other electoral democracies seems to be the implication of her statement and the paper she cites:
http://faculty.virginia.edu/partyswitching/papers/cv05-heller-mershon.pdf
She does credit Thaksin as the first with really national level policy platforms which later became very personal and less determined byu the party. Furthermore, she goes into the dynamics of the consitution and electoral system that led to the one party state. Her book is very interesting.
[There is still the issue of whether economic development proceeds better under democracy or not. South Korea and PRC are cases where democracy clearly played only a marginal role, in Korea's case only very late did it play a role.
Perhaps Thaksin strove to be a forceful Park Chung Hee type (Korea) of leader, which certainly seems to be the case reading Pasuk and Baker's biography, but ultimately important and large parts of society (NGOs, media, middle class, etc) rejected this approach. The military just finalised this rejection with the coup which everyone grudgingly accepts with the stock phrase: "I'm anti-Thaksin, but also anti-coup"....implying I'm not going to protest anymore because I basically got what I wanted.]
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“That ‘party switching’ is the same in Thailand as it is in other electoral democracies seems to be the implication of her statement and the paper she cites.” >> Yes, this might be the implication. The question is whether this is correct or not. In the past decades, where have you seen Thai-style party switching in Europe, and where, in Europe, do you find Thai-style party and electoral structures (Southern Europe, Germany, Denmark, UK?)?
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It is hard to disagree with the point that Thai politics has not moved forward since the miliary junta took over that Thepchai Yong made. I would not call the return to the corruption of ten years ago a success for the Junta.
But not matter how much corruption there is and how how deaths happen as Buddhists are driven out of the South while the Military idly stands by, or how poor the economy performs, many will be continue to bask in their “happiness” because the Thaksin is no longer in charge.
Now according to today’s news, the dictators have made plans to ensure the PPP doesn’t come to power regardless of the actual voting or will of the people. This along with the crack down on Democracy supporters must have the Col. and other anti-democracy posters smiling from ear to ear
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“That ‘party switching’ is the same in Thailand as it is in other electoral democracies …The question is whether this is correct or not. ”
Well, besides Europe there is also Latin America and other probably more comparable places than rich western Europe.
I would suspect there to be similarities with some other electoral systems somewhere, and perhaps with past systems in more economically developed western states like the US, and from these similarities insightful comparisons, that might show that Thailand’s system isn’t as bad or as abnormal as people think, comparatively speaking that is, vote buying was quite a big issue in Taiwan, for instance.
A search with “party switching” on the KPI database did not produce much:
King, Dan. 1999 . “Thailand.” In Democracy , Governance , and Economic Performance : East and Southeast Asia. Ed. by Ian Marsh, Jean Blondel, and Takashi Inoguchi, pp. 203-229. Tokyo, New York, Paris: United Nations University Press.
http://www.leeds.ac.uk/thaipol/k.htm
http://www.leeds.ac.uk/thaipol/thaibibl.htm
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Ex-Ajarn we should all relish our small victories every time one mega-corrupt leader bites or almost bites the dust! These mega-corrupt leaders like Thaksin or Marcos or Mobutu are specially dangerous, and they ride roughshods over rules of law and will extra-judicially kill on whim or prejudice.
Why cheer for PPP whose leader is one mega-corrupt himself Samak? Surely Ex-Ajarn you will not be voting for PPP whose primary platform is to “pardon Thaksin Shinawatra” if elected to power?
Ahhh . . . Ex-Ajarn, that corrupt Philippine leader Joseph Estrada’s most recent PARDON must be giving you hope . . .
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Jonfernquest: Thanks for referring to my Thai Politics Bibliography. Please note that the version on the Leeds web site is very much outdated. The version on KPI’s web site is more than two years old. The 2006 version is available as PDF file at Southeast Asian Studies, University of Passau, German at http://www.iseap.de/images/PDF/Workingpaper/polthai%5B1%5D.pdf I have just finished the up-dated 8th version with 383 pp. (the additional 82 pages with Thai-language material will be left out). Hopefully, it will soon be posted on all three sites. However, I doubt that you will find plenty of articles on party switching in there, simply because political parties are not a favorite subject of those doing research on Thai politics.
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I am not enamoured by PPP and despise Samak, but does the good Colonel have evidence for his claim that Samak is “mega-corrupt”? Maybe I have missed a trial or a court case?
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Historicus,
The elite don’t need proof of their accusations. “It is well know”, or “it has been frequently mentioned” is usually just fine.
Often works like this:
1) Junta crony suggestions, for example, that Isaan was ripe with vote buying in the constitutional vote.
2) Second Junta crony notes that it has been suggested
3) Third junta crony says it is commonly discussed.
4) Fourth junta crony says it is well known.
5) No one can dispute the slur, since it is now a fact.
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Will it satisfy Historicus sense of metrics if I demote Samak to midi-corrupt? How about if I call Banharn a midget-corrupt? And should I call Chalerm an honest policeman then?
Jeez! Mobutu of Zimbabwe has NOT yet been judicially tried Historicus, then I am NOT entitled to hurl my favorite insult CORRUPT to this ugly? You sound just like Grasshopper . . .
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Michael H. Nelson: “I doubt that you will find plenty of articles on party switching in there, simply because political parties are not a favorite subject of those doing research on Thai politics.”
Thank you for this wonderful bibliography. The annotations/reviews in the bibliography are great (and really state of the art to be emulated, along with its online available to everyone nature).
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Col. Jeru: I take it that you you have no evidence for such accusations. Not wanting to confuse you, I was actually asking for evidence in general. There are plenty of pretty solid works on Mobutu, but there seems little available on Samak’s alleged corruption. It does seem odd to me that you want to hurl insults that are dubious when there are plenty of other insults that do have some basis in fact that could usefully be hurled at someone like Samak. But maybe Observer has got it right.
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