Comments on: (Thai) Democracy: Crisis and Renewal

By: Sidh S.

Sidh S. — Tue, 25 Nov 2008 05:44:29 +0000

Whoops, the reply to Doglover I referred to in #12 has not passed NM’s censors (yet)? (There was nothing controversial there).

Anyway, KhunJoy, thankyou for your comments – and I agree with your sentiments and that “national unity” should not exclude cultural diversity. And at the end of day, even if PMThaksin was originally from Chiang Mai, the current political civil war is between groups of Bangkok-based elites and their interests. The rest of the country is being held ransom as usual. Maybe this also reflects the failure of previous decentralizations of power and the local elections at the OrBorTor level – where line/layers of patronage always link back to manipulative Bangkok/urban Thai based elites? Perhaps until we have a strong laborers/farmers movement that translate into direct political representation, this will always be the case…

Ralph, religion was always there… Dhammakaya (pro-business) and Santi-Asoke (militant-prohibitionists)…

By: Ralph Kramden

Ralph Kramden — Mon, 24 Nov 2008 11:46:07 +0000

Sidh, not that it matters so much, but I believe the first suggestions of a division of the country came from the PAD stage as did suggestions of civil war. That these views are now taken up by some on both sides is interesting.

Nation and Monarchy seem to be in play. And religion as well following the peaceful red shirt rally at Wat Suan Kaew?

By: Joy

Joy — Mon, 24 Nov 2008 11:06:03 +0000

I’m from the North of Thailand but I’m not pro-taksin, and I don’t fancy having him as a top leader for Northerners at all.
However, I ‘m tempted to respond to the above post. I’m not sure if my following comment will outrage a lot of Thais or not. Well,.. I’ll give it a go though. I don’t think it’s that bad at all if the governing power is more decentralized than it is now.. Bangkok has been asserting firm control over other Thai regions for an age.. and whether u like it or not, local culture , language and way of life have been damaged by this ongoing hegemony.. I think the South is a more extreme case– I don’t think anyone can deny that the current violence and suffering in the South is largely a result of the imposition of BKK norms and standards on Southerners who hold on to different set of religious and cultural belief(s) and practice(s). Of course, maltreatment, bias, prejudice are part of this attempt to assimilate Southerners.
I don’t think ‘national unity’ is unproblematic. In fact, we really need to question this promotion of ‘national unity’ especially if it comes at the expense of regional/local autonomy, or if it requires the use of force to suppress local specificities and difference.

By: Sidh S.

Sidh S. — Mon, 24 Nov 2008 08:07:20 +0000

Srithanonchai #8 “Anybody for making the North and the Northeast independent from Bangkok and the South?”

As a Thai, I am totally against it of course. However, I just mentioned that possibility in an answer to Doglover on another topic. It came from a quote from a PPPLamphun MP in Thairath last week (with my rough translation):

“สำคัญจากปาก ‘ทักษิณ’”
in
http://203.151.217.76/news.php?section=politics&content=112086

ยังมีฮาร์ดคอร์กว่า กับคิวของนายสงวน พงษ์มณี ส.ส.ลำพูน พรรคพลังประชาชน ทะลุกลางปล้องเลยว่า วันนี้ประตูของสงครามประชาชนเปิดขึ้นแล้ว มีความเป็นรูปธรรมมากขึ้น และหากกระบวนการยุติธรรมยังไม่สามารถบังคับใช้กฎหมายได้กับคนทุกกลุ่ม

(… There are even more hardcore views from Saguan Pongmanee, PPP Lamphun MP, who without holding back, said that today the door to civil war between Thais is already opened and is getting more real. And if the judiciary process cannot enforce the law on every group…)

จุดสิ้นสุดคือความแตกแยกของประเทศ

(… the end point is the division of the country.)

“หากร้ายที่สุดอาจถึงขั้นแบ่งแยกประเทศ เช่นเดียวกับโซเวียตยุคสุดท้ายแน่นอน”

(”The worse possibility is the division of the country, surely like the final era of the Soviet Union”)

For me it is impossible because I believe (rightly or wrongly) that the overwhelming majority of Thais will be against it. Secondly, there a better chance of returning to a military dictatorship than a division of Thailand…

But, as an academic excercise consistent with the issues raised by this post, I think it is worth entertaining. The questions I pose:
- What kind of democracy would a country under PMThaksin/PPP/UDD, ruling over Thailand’s north and northeast and with the capital at Chiang Mai, turn out to be like?
- What kind of demcracy dominated by the Democrats/PAD in the central and south of Thailand turn out to be?
- They will likely be mortal enemies – what impact would this have on the geo-politics of the region?

By: Srithanonchai

Srithanonchai — Sat, 22 Nov 2008 11:00:46 +0000

Readers might want to compare Ginsborg’s essay with a similarly-focused earlier text:

Benjamin R. Barber. 1998. A Place For Us: How to Make Society Civil and Democracy Strong. New York: Hill and Wang. 166 pp.

By: chris baker

chris baker — Sat, 22 Nov 2008 01:42:48 +0000

Ginsborg’s book on Berlusconi and ours on Thaksin were reviewed in tandem in a couple of journals. In 1966, he had supervised me in my first term in Cambridge when he had just finished his PhD and was not yet the famous historian of Italy that he has since become. He was a superb teacher. After the reviews, I sent him the Thaksin book and we talked about something collaborative but it came to nothing.

I haven’t read this essay, but I’ve read several of his books on Italy. He’s brilliant at combining national-level political and economic analysis along with evocations of everyday individual and family life – a sort of leftist-humanistic historiography which draws on Gramsci but also on Habermas and similar thinkers. As with most modern historians of Italy, the issue of Fascism is never very far from the surface of his writings, especially the question of conformity – how Fascist regimes thrived on the passive conformity of so many ordinary citizens. Remember Bertolucci’s wonderful film The Conformist. Ginsborg’s yearning for an active citizenry should probably be seen in this context.

He’s not the first to write about Europe on this theme. There’s now a big literature about the domination of formal politics by business and technocracy, and the eruption of wayward movements of popular and populist protest in reaction. What seems interesting from Andrew’s short summary is Ginsborg’s attempt to expand this theme to the globe.

It’s difficult to think of Thai politics being “hollowed out” since that assumes that it was once “filled in” or “solid” in the past, whereas what seems to me to be happening right now is exactly such a process of “filling in” something that was earlier rather sparse and empty. People are being mobilized to contest for rights, budgets, and other political goods in ways that are quite new.

Thanks for this, Andrew. I look forward to reading it.

By: Joy

Joy — Fri, 21 Nov 2008 10:40:49 +0000

I had a chance to listen to a lecture by Paul Ginsborg a while back at Sydney Uni. He discussed two concepts of freedom: positive and negative freedom and argued that what is lacking in Italian democracy is the promotion of positive freedom (by positive freedom, he means the people ’s capacity to participate in setting up rules or system that work for the benefit of the people as a whole, and the ability to adhere to this agreed upon rules or laws. Negative freedom, on the other hand, is the ‘freedom from’– or in other words, the freedom to do what one pleases– a privilege, in short, and clientism (patron-client relationship) can enhance negative freedom, but damage positive freedom). I think these two concepts of freedom have relevance to the Thai political life. Thailand also has a long history of clientism, and poor development of ‘positive freedom” ( grassroots people are not familiar with decision-making or genuine democratic process, democratic ideals are not made part of everyday life). I tend to agree with Sindh s. — that Taksin didn’t try to promote positive freedom but rather undermine it. On the other hand, the one who has consistantly tried to promote ‘positive freedom’ or participatory democracry at the local level is Dr Prawese Wasi. I see so many parallels in Dr Prawase’s concepts of grassroots democracy and Paul Ginsborg’s idea of positive freedom.

By: Srithanonchai

Srithanonchai — Fri, 21 Nov 2008 08:31:37 +0000

Let’s see how the renewed “Thai democracy” will look like after the PAD’s attempt this Sunday to bring down not only the “puppet government of tyrants” but also the “Thaksin-system slave assembly” (aka the “democratically elected House of Representatives”).

The good news is that the ECT can limit its role to overseeing local elections, while it can save about two billion baht for national elections, because the PAD will appoint members of their bed-fellow Democrat party, and some sympathetic members of the Bangkok elite, to the House. That’s what the PAD calls “Thai-style People’s Democracy.”

Anybody for making the North and the Northeast independent from Bangkok and the South?

By: Docdiogenes

Docdiogenes — Fri, 21 Nov 2008 07:19:20 +0000

What ‘democracy’? Surely what we have here in Thailand is a kind of mentality of governaning through interminable crisis-Thai-ness, civility under attack- and emergency whereby the norm of Thai insecurity and politicsis a state of exception, exceptional state wherein he who ‘defines’ the emergency is sovereign’ which rather expends those candidates liable to ‘lese majeste’ accusations?

By: Srithanonchai

Srithanonchai — Fri, 21 Nov 2008 06:20:11 +0000

This June, I happened to have bought and read the German translation of this essay (on the recommendation of a left-leaning German friend). It is well written, but idealistic and intellectually thoroughly uninspiring. So, I still regret having spent the Euro 9.90 it cost me.