Thailand:
Paradoxes in Paradise
Satya Sagar
Hardly anyone
familiar with the life and times of Thaksin Shinawatra -
Thailand’s erstwhile Prime Minister, would lament his
recent ouster from power following a year of political
turmoil.
A former police
official turned telecom tycoon turned politician,
Thaksin was the epitome of everything that is wrong with
Thailand – where political connections, feudal loyalties
and big money combine to subvert every democratic
institution.
Yet the way he
went – through a military coup in mid-September endorsed
by the influential Thai monarch and a month before
national polls he was quite sure to win - is a deadly
blow to Thailand’s fledgling electoral democracy. A
democracy that till recently was the finest in all of
south-east Asia and one that will take many years to
regain credibility and vibrancy.
Before one gets
too pessimistic I also believe that the fight for true
democracy that goes way beyond the trappings of the
ballot box and puts power in the hands of ordinary
people, is only about to begin in Thailand. For at the
root of the country’s current political crisis was not
one single, wayward politician but a welter of social
and economic contradictions that still remain
unresolved.
Contradictions
that have, over the years, spawned the following
paradoxes:
A Billionaire
‘Champion of the Poor’:
The rise of Thaksin Shinawatra and his newly forged Thai
Rak Thai (TRT) party in 2000 was a truly unprecedented
phenomenon in Thai electoral history. In a country where
till then all elected governments had been large
unwieldy coalitions of five or more political parties at
the minimum the TRT swept to power with a clear
majority.
In that election
support came from the business-minded middle classes of
Bangkok, northern Thailand from where Thaksin hailed and
most importantly from the populous but poor and highly
neglected north-east provinces. In southern Thailand
the older Democrat Party, once the darling of the urban
middle-classes still dominated. All in all the 2000
polls handed enormous political power to someone who was
already the richest man in the land.
But in a country
yet to recover from the blows of the Asian economic
crisis Thaksin adopted a populist approach and played on
national sentiments hurt by the ravages of global
capital. Right from day one the Thaksin regime took a
strident line against the humiliating terms and
conditions imposed by the International Monetary Fund
soon after the 1997 crisis.
It repudiated the
neo-liberal ideas of curbing government expenditure and
instead poured billions of baht into schemes meant to
revive the rural economy and small and medium scale
industries. All these policies, together with his
occasional tirades against ‘Western values’ were also
part of a conscious effort by Thaksin to cultivate an
international image similar to that of Mahatir Mohammed
of Malaysia.
On the social
front the Thaksin regime came up with an instant hit
when it launched a universal health insurance scheme
that allowed Thai citizens to avail of any medical
service for just 30 baht per visit to the hospital.
Various scholarship schemes aimed at rural youth and
incentives for Bangkok’s taxi drivers further boosted
his popularity as a ‘champion of the poor’.
Whatever else it
may or may not have done the Thaksin regime with its
populism surely managed to woo the country’s rural poor
into believing it really cared for them, which was more
than what any previous Thai regime had even bothered to
do. Though urban middle class voters turned against him
in the past few years the poor continued to be his most
ardent supporters, providing a bulk of the votes he
garnered in three elections in a row.
Interestingly
enough, the brains behind the billionaire Thaksin’s
populism were a close set of his advisors, many of whom
had been leftwing student guerillas in the seventies.
The justification given by these ‘leftists’ for jumping
into bed with a monopoly capitalist was to fight
‘remnants of feudalism and imperialism by allying with
the national bourgeoisie’ in Thailand.
New Clothes,
Old Fashions:
While the
Thaksin phenomenon was certainly something new on the
Thai political scene at the core were values and
motivations not very different from the past.
Given the fact
that Thaksin had made money all his life through cozy
monopoly deals his own ascent to power meant corruption
was inevitable and it happened in good measure too. His
family-owned Shin Corporation, already one of the
country’s largest business houses, became bigger still
using new policies tailored to protect its financial
interests. In the meanwhile other members of his family
and close circle of friends too joined his orgy of money
making.
One of the issues
for example which aroused a lot of public anger against
Thaksin earlier this year was his US$1.85 billion sale
of Shin Corp to Temasek, a Singapore government owned
investment fund, without paying over US$450 million in
tax on the capital gains made. Many were also upset that
a premier with ‘nationalist’ pretensions sold an
important national asset to a foreign investor.
In other matters
too the Thaksin administration bore the stamp of
authoritarian regimes from Thailand’s past. In 2002 and
2003 as part of a so called ‘War on Drugs’ earned the
ire of human rights groups the world over by carrying
out a massacre of over 2000 suspected ‘drug dealers’.
Activists alleged that many of those killed, often in
cold blood, were either very small fry in the drug
business or completely innocent people framed by a
police force desperate to comply with government orders
to ‘show results’.
Soon after an
insurgency broke out in Thailand’s three Muslim
dominated southernmost provinces in early 2004 Thaksin
used the brutal might of the state to try and crush it
with appalling results in terms of the wanton killings,
arrest and torture of innocent civilians. Needless to
say the problem festers even now with daily killings of
Thai government officials and employees by Muslim
separatist groups and the tit-for-tat assassinations of
local Muslim leaders by the army and police.
Again on the
foreign policy front, for all his protestations against
Western domination, Thaksin made sure he was on the
right side of the US by sending a token number of Thai
troops to Iraq as part of the dubious ‘Coalition of the
Willing’. The Thaksin administration also became one of
the most ardent champions of the despicable military
regime in neighbouring Burma.
From
Collaborators To Critics:
One of the
primary reasons why many who are otherwise opposed to
Thaksin and his government have been uneasy with the
past year of public protests against him is that many of
those leading the dissident movement have either
collaborated with him in the past or are not really
known for their democratic credentials.
Thaksin’s first
foray into politics for example was as protégé of
Chamlong Srimuang, the quasi-Gandhian ‘hero’ of
Thailand’s pro-democracy movement in 1992 which humbled
the military regime of General Suchinda Krapayoon that
had taken power through a coup a year before.
Chamlong’s Palang Dharm party, which was a member of the
ruling coalition headed by then Prime Minister Chuan
Leekpai, appointed Thaksin as Thailand’s Foreign
Minister in the mid-nineties despite his complete lack
of qualification for the post.
For the past
year both Chamlong and Chuan’s Democrat party have
emerged as Thaksin’s strongest critics with zero
reflection upon their own role in bringing him to power.
The Democrats, electorally decimated by Thaksin in two
consecutive elections and in political wilderness for
the past six years have been of course hoping Thaksin’s
downfall will help them return to power somehow.
Another case in
point is that of Sondhi Limthongkul, a Thai-Chinese
media tycoon who started off the anti-Thaksin protests
late last year when his talk show on state-run TV was
pulled off the air for attacking the government. Since
then Sondhi almost single-handedly mobilized the public
against Thaksin by staging his former TV show on the
streets of Bangkok. All this at a time when the latter
seemed politically unassailable and all his usual
political rivals were clueless about how to take him on.
But till less
than a few months prior to turning foe Sondhi and his
media chain were among the staunchest supporters of
Thaksin condoning every act of corruption, violation of
human rights or suppression of media freedoms that he
indulged in.
Monarchy Vs
Monopoly Capitalism:
The current
undoing of Thaksin has nothing to do with its
corruption, contempt for human rights or any of the evil
policies his government pursued. All of these and more
are what successive regimes in Thailand have always
stood for and a staple part of the arsenal of sins in
the possession of the Thai elite.
The real reason
for his downfall has been, like in business, Thaksin
sought to operate in politics by setting up monopolies
over everything- the police, the army, the bureaucracy,
the underworld, the media, the list went on. He was of
course wildly successful in all this, using a
combination of money power, communication skills and
sheer guile to wipe out all competition from the field.
In the process he left little space for anyone else –
both friends and enemies- in a country where the motto
of the elites has always usually been to ‘live and let
live’ (or maybe ‘kill and let kill’).
Secondly
Thaksin’s success in both business and politics
ultimately went to his head and he started having
grandiose notions of his own ‘historic mission’ to
change Thailand. His air of being the most powerful
person in the land ruffled too many feathers within the
country’s traditional elite, especially Thai royal
circles, who saw him as a potential threat to the
institution of monarchy itself. In other words he got
too big for his boots in a country where the biggest
feet are reserved exclusively for the Thai King - on
paper just a constitutional monarch but with domestic
influence greater than most heads of state have in their
countries anywhere.
As part of a
bizarre historical coincidence Thaksin shared the name
and many of the characteristics of the first King of
Thailand from two centuries ago- a Chinese warlord who
rallied the Thais against Burmese invaders and set up
the new kingdom in Bangkok after the destruction of the
earlier capital in Ayuthaya. History has it that King
Thaksin was later deposed by two of his generals who
went on to start the Chakri dynasty that rules Thailand
till today. Sounds too familiar.
Civil Society,
Uncivil Partners:
This is the most painful paradoxes of all in the current
Thai political crisis –the country’s civil society
groups playing into the hands of deeply conservative
forces due to their blind ‘Thaksin out at any cost’
strategy.
In the absence of
any organized left-of-centre political party
(historically suppressed due to Thailand’s long
anti-communist legacy) over the past two decades a rich
and diverse set of activist groups have emerged in
Thailand taking up causes ranging from human rights and
environmental protection to organic farming and public
health.
However, faced
with Thaksin’s unassailable hold over political power,
upset with his regime’s corruption and high handed
behaviour and lacking a coherent national level
organization of their own many of these forces jumped
onto the right-wing initiated anti-Thaksin movement out
of sheer desperation. The net result has been of course
the sorry spectacle of some of the most ardent champions
of democracy marching shoulder-to-shoulder with
advocates of authoritarian rule.
A crucial mistake
in particular was the support extended by many activist
groups to the opposition call for boycotting snap
elections called by Thaksin in April this year in
response to mounting street demonstrations against him
in Bangkok.
The Thaksin
regime was the first government to be elected under a
new Thai constitution adopted in 1997 that was fought
for and even framed by the country’s various civil
society groups. By asking people to stay away from
elections the message that went out was that methods
other than elections were needed to oust Thaksin and
that the country’s Constitution was useless in
protecting the rights of citizens. Not surprisingly one
of the first things the new military leaders in Thailand
have done is to trash the 1997 Constitution.
Commenting on the
takeover by the men in green the Bangkok based liberal
English newspaper ‘The Nation’ claimed that it was ‘not
a coup that, according to the traditional textbook sense
of the term, (that) should be roundly condemned. It is
justifiable - if it gives rise to a democracy that is of
a higher quality and a government that is much more
responsive to the concerns of citizens than what we used
to have.’ That this kind of non-biodegradable waste
comes from a newspaper that played a key role in the
pro-democracy movement of the early nineties against
military rule is indication of the political lows to
which sections of Thailand’s progressive community have
sunk.
Happy
Citizens Ready to Explode:
If you thought
there was no more space for paradoxes on Thailand’s
puzzle-wrapped-in-enigma-wrapped-in-mystery political
scene then watch out for the next big one - a happy,
smiling citizenry on the verge of a veritable social
explosion.
For what the
military coup in Thailand- ostensibly carried out to
‘maintain’ social stability and ‘protect’ the
institution of monarchy- is likely to end up achieving
is exactly the opposite. Notwithstanding pictures of
tourists and citizens posing with army tanks and handing
out flowers to soldiers on the streets of Bangkok the
current situation is fraught with potential for more
political turmoil.
There are
several reasons for this, the first among them being the
simple fact that the Thai military- while taking
advantage of public sentiment against Thaksin- may have
miscalculated badly by carrying out a coup. Military
coups, an over used form of effecting political change
in Thailand, are completely out of fashion and
unacceptable to even many Thais who were extremely keen
to get rid of the former Prime Minister.
Already there
are calls for the generals to give way to civilian
authority and lift curbs on media and other freedoms.
Several brave groups of students and other political
activists have even lodged public protests against the
coup- a trend that can only grow in the days ahead.
By tacitly
backing the coup and coming out so openly against
Thaksin the Thai monarchy has also damaged its carefully
cultivated image of being politically neutral –
something that would not have mattered so much if not
for the fact that the former premier still has huge
pockets of genuine support in the country. While the
ageing and highly regarded Thai monarch is not likely to
be affected personally so much the current events will
have a deep influence on the future role of the
institution of monarchy in Thailand- which all these
years has been a bulwark of continuity amidst rapid
change.
Thirdly,
in a country of
great inequalities today the masses think elections are
not enough to bring about the changes needed to give
them real power while the elites think elections already
give too much power to the population under them.
Such growing
disillusionment with electoral democracy is sure to give
rise to more confrontational social movements that seek
to address the historically skewed balance of power and
income between rural and urban Thais.
Movements with
the kind of consequences Thailand’s coup makers or their
backers can neither fully comprehend nor anticipate.
Watch out, the paradoxes in paradise are just about to
unravel.
Satya
Sagar is a journalist, writer and video maker, now based
in New Delhi after over a decade of stay in Thailand. He
can be reached at sagarnama@yahoo.com