Please don’t write a fiction like Madam Anna did in the past century.Thailand have a special culture which is hard to foreigner’s perception.If you are not a Thai people,you don’t understand a Thai way.First you must trust in a Thai style that is very amazing for visitors.
while we are talking about amnesty can I garner support from readers for some forgotten individuals in Klong Prem Prison (and elswehere around the country) whom I visited last week: Nuttawut (with a possible minimum 14 year sentence in the making), Veera, Korkaew, many red shirt guards and others too numerous to mention incarcerated for simply carrying a UDD membership card on them…And a luckless Australian named Conor David Purcell who told me a story from the frontline; he needs help in particular because the Australian Govt seemingly does not give a rats as it tends to believe gullibly in the “terrorism” propaganda charge issued from the state. The trouble is Conor saw a lot. If anyone is on good terms with a local Polly please pursue this case on his behalf.
What else is happening? Remember paramedic Keng? he is (was) not even political -met him Sunday night at Wat Pathum and has an arrest warrant issued and is followed around by gestapo from DSI – he broke down and cried; Nuttawut’s driver was murdered a few days back (run over); level B and C regional core leaders have been told that the govt has now Ok’d local mafia to take them out under contracts (I was at a meeting when one member received the phone call); a number of core leaders in prison have been beaten severely including Udorn’s Kwanchai Praipana. Conor also has been beaten and when I queried the prison authorities they said it was the “army” not them. I met with recently released Somyot and Chula historian Suthachai last week: they urge continuing international pressure for the current political detainees. Meanwhile current defacto UDD leader Worawut says: “please tell the world that we did not accept amnesty after the crackdown under Abhisit’s terms because it would be tantamount to accepting that we are ‘terrorists'”. it would also provide a neat loophole to drop charges on real terrorists such as yellow shirts for destroying state documents in Gov House and taking over two airports (not that they will ever be called to account for this because as one military officer told me: “well, we have to move on”! [how convenient])
Abhisit’s Concentration Camps are overflowing – thank goodness he has some budget at the bottom of the treasury pot that is not already given to the army and his cronies for his ever tightening, ruthless and expanding witch hunt. So this is reconciliation? Read notices everywhere in Thailand: “together we can!” р╕гр╣Ир╕зр╕бр╕Бр╕▒р╕Щр╣Ар╕гр╕▓р╕Чр╕│р╣Др╕Фр╣Й (yep sure, now we- the amaat -have got the upper hand again, & the middle classess regained control of consumption and now it is on our own terms -so we “can” indeed!)
Even 78 years after the end of the absolute monarchy democracy has not won the hearts and minds of many of the Thai people.
This statement is wrong somewhat. 6 months after 1932 revolution, the People Party’s power quickly deteriorated and Phibun finally seize the power in 1938 till 1945. Then Thailand enjoy some shaky democracy (due to so many coup attempt) until Salit stage a successful coup in 1957. Thailand was under military dictatorship ever since from 1957 till 1973 and again in 1976 till 1988, so Thailand actually have less than 40 years of disjointed democracy. The period of on and off from democracy would not established proper democratic process, thus made many Thai lost faith in Democracy.
You made a very empirical statement (just to remind you): “I know some people involved with the reconciliation efforts and they are non-partisan. Just want to get involved for the love of their country.”
So, you should be able to back this up.
An unrelated note regarding reconciliation. The following quote might be interesting.
“As the facts become conclusive, any wrongdoers … must be punished. There must be no compromises in the name of reconciliation or national unity. If we cannot establish that laws will be enforced and that no one is above the law, a return to elections and a new constitution will be meaningless.”
Abhisit Vejjajiva
Special to The Nation, 18 November 2006
wenthworth: this is a touchy question to elucidate at the best of times, and one that I dared not broach with her, but it is assumed that she has been heavily influenced by yellow shirts earlier on and now connected more to a new media directed bourgeois Bkk group named Palang Buak (“Plus Force”), which is a tool of the govt to psychologise people into a state of passivity; basically yellow shirts are behind this media directed campaign to encourage Thais to think positively to “revitalise the nation” (remember Sondhi L’s campaign?) They have what they call a “Positive network” – using twitter, facebook and stage events called “ignite Thailand” and use heavily directed poll techniques to garner opinion. When I asked “Dear” is she would take over the leadership of her father’s Khattiya Tham party she said she was still considering this.
Isn’t the main flaw with the argument that authoratarian regimes may promote economic growth the fact that, without the checks and balances provided by a funtioning democracy, the government can be corrupt and disfunctional and yet remain in power? Then again, the problem in much of the world, including South East Asia, seems to be that those democracies that do exist tend to be corrupt and dysfuntional anyway, possibly because people do not vote according to the honesty or competence of their prospective leaders. It is also true that , generally speaking, people do not enter politics in places like Thailand for the good of the nation; in fact, most people enter politics to support their business interests. The combination of an elctorate culturally conditioned to vote for someone they pecieve as from “their group” whatever the cost and politicians who are in politics to make money is the kind of mess we see today in Thailand. Still, at least democracy leads to a regular change in the corrupt, useless and selfish crony capitalists that run the country. That way, statistically, their ought to be a chance that eventually an honest and competent leader will emerge.
While narrowly highlighting a single structural frame of reference (i.e. the hill – valley divide), James Scott has provided a romantic defense of morally unambiguous armed conflict. (It’s clear who the “good guys” are in the book). While intra-group politics and conflict among hill peoples and inter-group (hill-valley) solidarities were touches on in the book, neither were seriously explored as much as is called for.
A more critical approach would have engaged with concerns about the “ethnographic refusal” (Sherry Ortner) and the “resistance mentality” (Tim Forsyth) that exist in the anthropological literature on resistance.
What about Indonesia ?
It’s currently a surprisingly successful, functioning democracy – albeit within a context of oligarchical capitalism, and many layers of remnant feudalism.
@Steve Watson
Singapore is quite a special case as it is a city-state. You have a few more examples in the Middle-east. A city-state never have to worry about decentralization of political power to different parts of the countries, and there is no risk of neglecting remote areas as they don’t exist.
@David Brown
Be careful of simplifying governance into only two types; democracies and dictatorships. China, for instance, has a one-party system that has little in common with dictatorships such as the ones in North-Korea and Burma that are basically controlled by one leader. And when you talk about democracies using minimal brutality and repression, you likely refer to liberal democracies and exclude illiberal ones. As for stability, there are probably more unstable democracies than stable ones, but again these are easy to forget, as to most Westerners, democracy is synonymous to liberal democracy.
Was Singapore truly authoritarian, or since it did hold elections (although not meeting the standards of the West of being free and fair) which did seem to reflect the will of the people, should it have been classified as a democracy, in an Asian way? Japan also was ruled by a single party for decades even though it held elections that generally met the criteria of the West for being free and fair. Does the mean Japan should not be classified as a democracy because there was not a semi-regular exchange of power between political parties as expected in Western countries?
Also, can the lessons of a city-state (located in probably the world’s most ideal location for international trade) be applied to larger countries with an urban-rural mix?
I am not sure I know the answers to these questions, just some food for thought.
“We will discuss how to make our party a truly mass party ”
So get out there, en masse, and vote them in – so that they can disenfranchise you! It is pretty much assured that they will resort to (NM’s) voter motivation measures. Will they keep a database of those who they thus motivate? And will the info so-gathered be used as evidence that some people don’t deserve to keep their vote? More likely, I suppose, that they will be given elite privileges instead.
#68
“Do you think its possible Thaksin was taking some difficult initial steps towards this? And bearing furious PR attacks by the military, the monarchy and their agents as a result?”
If that had been the case, he should probably have taken the precaution of trying to explain his position to the public at the time. If that ever happened, we have yet to hear about it. It’s worth noting that he enjoyed a fairly tame and emasculated media at that time.
My guess is that he was too inexperienced to realize how transparency could be made to work for him. Or was it just that he was too busy trying to acheive the hidden objectives of his PM-ship to bother with such democratic notions as transparency? One can’t really imagine Thaksin making a few tactical withdrawals in order to hammer home his honest intent to the public. That wouldn’t have projected the strongman image he so obviously wishes to cultivate. Indeed, it appears that he has never really attempted to demonstrate anything other than traditional skulduggery to the electorate.
Who knows what either the man or his elite detractors really think? By failing to communicate their position they leave themselves wide open to the accusation that they only represent more of the same old worn-out incompetence and sleeziness. In any case, any practically-minded and well-grounded local politician would have realised that it always takes decades to get rid of such entrenched interests. Thaksin should by now have realised that his obsession with the short-term fix has left him wide open to accusations of profiteering. If politicians prove themselves incapable of demonstrating honest intent in a transparent manner, they shouldn’t be too surprised if they thus leave themselves very vulnerable to both honest (and dishonest) criticism.
Thailand’s cultural hierarchy clings on to the status quo by actively preventing its citizens from intellectual emancipation; appalling schools, misinformation, censorship, low grade content etc. The internet must be their worst nightmare though time and again I see that it’s the people who seek information who are more interesting than the information itself.
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Thai media culture in the eyes of a foreigner
Please don’t write a fiction like Madam Anna did in the past century.Thailand have a special culture which is hard to foreigner’s perception.If you are not a Thai people,you don’t understand a Thai way.First you must trust in a Thai style that is very amazing for visitors.
From Village Scouts to Cyber Scouts
while we are talking about amnesty can I garner support from readers for some forgotten individuals in Klong Prem Prison (and elswehere around the country) whom I visited last week: Nuttawut (with a possible minimum 14 year sentence in the making), Veera, Korkaew, many red shirt guards and others too numerous to mention incarcerated for simply carrying a UDD membership card on them…And a luckless Australian named Conor David Purcell who told me a story from the frontline; he needs help in particular because the Australian Govt seemingly does not give a rats as it tends to believe gullibly in the “terrorism” propaganda charge issued from the state. The trouble is Conor saw a lot. If anyone is on good terms with a local Polly please pursue this case on his behalf.
What else is happening? Remember paramedic Keng? he is (was) not even political -met him Sunday night at Wat Pathum and has an arrest warrant issued and is followed around by gestapo from DSI – he broke down and cried; Nuttawut’s driver was murdered a few days back (run over); level B and C regional core leaders have been told that the govt has now Ok’d local mafia to take them out under contracts (I was at a meeting when one member received the phone call); a number of core leaders in prison have been beaten severely including Udorn’s Kwanchai Praipana. Conor also has been beaten and when I queried the prison authorities they said it was the “army” not them. I met with recently released Somyot and Chula historian Suthachai last week: they urge continuing international pressure for the current political detainees. Meanwhile current defacto UDD leader Worawut says: “please tell the world that we did not accept amnesty after the crackdown under Abhisit’s terms because it would be tantamount to accepting that we are ‘terrorists'”. it would also provide a neat loophole to drop charges on real terrorists such as yellow shirts for destroying state documents in Gov House and taking over two airports (not that they will ever be called to account for this because as one military officer told me: “well, we have to move on”! [how convenient])
Abhisit’s Concentration Camps are overflowing – thank goodness he has some budget at the bottom of the treasury pot that is not already given to the army and his cronies for his ever tightening, ruthless and expanding witch hunt. So this is reconciliation? Read notices everywhere in Thailand: “together we can!” р╕гр╣Ир╕зр╕бр╕Бр╕▒р╕Щр╣Ар╕гр╕▓р╕Чр╕│р╣Др╕Фр╣Й (yep sure, now we- the amaat -have got the upper hand again, & the middle classess regained control of consumption and now it is on our own terms -so we “can” indeed!)
Thailand: A Battle Ground for the New Cold War?
Even 78 years after the end of the absolute monarchy democracy has not won the hearts and minds of many of the Thai people.
This statement is wrong somewhat. 6 months after 1932 revolution, the People Party’s power quickly deteriorated and Phibun finally seize the power in 1938 till 1945. Then Thailand enjoy some shaky democracy (due to so many coup attempt) until Salit stage a successful coup in 1957. Thailand was under military dictatorship ever since from 1957 till 1973 and again in 1976 till 1988, so Thailand actually have less than 40 years of disjointed democracy. The period of on and off from democracy would not established proper democratic process, thus made many Thai lost faith in Democracy.
Thailand in Crisis: Episode 6
Colin #17
You made a very empirical statement (just to remind you): “I know some people involved with the reconciliation efforts and they are non-partisan. Just want to get involved for the love of their country.”
So, you should be able to back this up.
An unrelated note regarding reconciliation. The following quote might be interesting.
“As the facts become conclusive, any wrongdoers … must be punished. There must be no compromises in the name of reconciliation or national unity. If we cannot establish that laws will be enforced and that no one is above the law, a return to elections and a new constitution will be meaningless.”
Abhisit Vejjajiva
Special to The Nation, 18 November 2006
Scenes from Saedaeng’s funeral
wenthworth: this is a touchy question to elucidate at the best of times, and one that I dared not broach with her, but it is assumed that she has been heavily influenced by yellow shirts earlier on and now connected more to a new media directed bourgeois Bkk group named Palang Buak (“Plus Force”), which is a tool of the govt to psychologise people into a state of passivity; basically yellow shirts are behind this media directed campaign to encourage Thais to think positively to “revitalise the nation” (remember Sondhi L’s campaign?) They have what they call a “Positive network” – using twitter, facebook and stage events called “ignite Thailand” and use heavily directed poll techniques to garner opinion. When I asked “Dear” is she would take over the leadership of her father’s Khattiya Tham party she said she was still considering this.
Thailand: A Battle Ground for the New Cold War?
Isn’t the main flaw with the argument that authoratarian regimes may promote economic growth the fact that, without the checks and balances provided by a funtioning democracy, the government can be corrupt and disfunctional and yet remain in power? Then again, the problem in much of the world, including South East Asia, seems to be that those democracies that do exist tend to be corrupt and dysfuntional anyway, possibly because people do not vote according to the honesty or competence of their prospective leaders. It is also true that , generally speaking, people do not enter politics in places like Thailand for the good of the nation; in fact, most people enter politics to support their business interests. The combination of an elctorate culturally conditioned to vote for someone they pecieve as from “their group” whatever the cost and politicians who are in politics to make money is the kind of mess we see today in Thailand. Still, at least democracy leads to a regular change in the corrupt, useless and selfish crony capitalists that run the country. That way, statistically, their ought to be a chance that eventually an honest and competent leader will emerge.
Review of The Art of Not Being Governed
While narrowly highlighting a single structural frame of reference (i.e. the hill – valley divide), James Scott has provided a romantic defense of morally unambiguous armed conflict. (It’s clear who the “good guys” are in the book). While intra-group politics and conflict among hill peoples and inter-group (hill-valley) solidarities were touches on in the book, neither were seriously explored as much as is called for.
A more critical approach would have engaged with concerns about the “ethnographic refusal” (Sherry Ortner) and the “resistance mentality” (Tim Forsyth) that exist in the anthropological literature on resistance.
Thailand: A Battle Ground for the New Cold War?
What about Indonesia ?
It’s currently a surprisingly successful, functioning democracy – albeit within a context of oligarchical capitalism, and many layers of remnant feudalism.
Thailand in Crisis: Episode 6
Srithanonchai,
I never said I knew anyone on the committee. I said, I know people involved in the effort.
They are actually journos if you must know, not politicians. You have assumed and you know what they say about assumptions? 😉
Now, can anyone tell me why the reconciliation is just a PR stunt, please, proof only?
Thailand: A Battle Ground for the New Cold War?
BKK Lawyer #5
thanks, correct, succinctly put
Review of The Art of Not Being Governed
Does anyone know if this book is available to buy anywhere in Thailand? Or is Amazon cheapest?
Thailand: A Battle Ground for the New Cold War?
@Steve Watson
Singapore is quite a special case as it is a city-state. You have a few more examples in the Middle-east. A city-state never have to worry about decentralization of political power to different parts of the countries, and there is no risk of neglecting remote areas as they don’t exist.
@David Brown
Be careful of simplifying governance into only two types; democracies and dictatorships. China, for instance, has a one-party system that has little in common with dictatorships such as the ones in North-Korea and Burma that are basically controlled by one leader. And when you talk about democracies using minimal brutality and repression, you likely refer to liberal democracies and exclude illiberal ones. As for stability, there are probably more unstable democracies than stable ones, but again these are easy to forget, as to most Westerners, democracy is synonymous to liberal democracy.
Thailand: A Battle Ground for the New Cold War?
Democracy is not about promoting economic growth. It is merely a system of self-governance by free people.
Disparaging democracy on the ground it is not the best way to economic growth is just a disguised argument against allowing people to be free.
Thailand: A Battle Ground for the New Cold War?
Steve
Thanks for your comments
Was Singapore truly authoritarian, or since it did hold elections (although not meeting the standards of the West of being free and fair) which did seem to reflect the will of the people, should it have been classified as a democracy, in an Asian way? Japan also was ruled by a single party for decades even though it held elections that generally met the criteria of the West for being free and fair. Does the mean Japan should not be classified as a democracy because there was not a semi-regular exchange of power between political parties as expected in Western countries?
Also, can the lessons of a city-state (located in probably the world’s most ideal location for international trade) be applied to larger countries with an urban-rural mix?
I am not sure I know the answers to these questions, just some food for thought.
New politics, new leader
What goes around comes around: Sondhi Lim-
http://www.bangkokpost.com/breakingnews/185007/sondhi-charged-with-lese-majesty
Review of The Art of Not Being Governed
Suzie, JSC does not intend his book to be read with reference to “this day and time”.
New politics, new leader
“We will discuss how to make our party a truly mass party ”
So get out there, en masse, and vote them in – so that they can disenfranchise you! It is pretty much assured that they will resort to (NM’s) voter motivation measures. Will they keep a database of those who they thus motivate? And will the info so-gathered be used as evidence that some people don’t deserve to keep their vote? More likely, I suppose, that they will be given elite privileges instead.
Jakrapob on the state within the state
#68
“Do you think its possible Thaksin was taking some difficult initial steps towards this? And bearing furious PR attacks by the military, the monarchy and their agents as a result?”
If that had been the case, he should probably have taken the precaution of trying to explain his position to the public at the time. If that ever happened, we have yet to hear about it. It’s worth noting that he enjoyed a fairly tame and emasculated media at that time.
My guess is that he was too inexperienced to realize how transparency could be made to work for him. Or was it just that he was too busy trying to acheive the hidden objectives of his PM-ship to bother with such democratic notions as transparency? One can’t really imagine Thaksin making a few tactical withdrawals in order to hammer home his honest intent to the public. That wouldn’t have projected the strongman image he so obviously wishes to cultivate. Indeed, it appears that he has never really attempted to demonstrate anything other than traditional skulduggery to the electorate.
Who knows what either the man or his elite detractors really think? By failing to communicate their position they leave themselves wide open to the accusation that they only represent more of the same old worn-out incompetence and sleeziness. In any case, any practically-minded and well-grounded local politician would have realised that it always takes decades to get rid of such entrenched interests. Thaksin should by now have realised that his obsession with the short-term fix has left him wide open to accusations of profiteering. If politicians prove themselves incapable of demonstrating honest intent in a transparent manner, they shouldn’t be too surprised if they thus leave themselves very vulnerable to both honest (and dishonest) criticism.
From Village Scouts to Cyber Scouts
Thailand’s cultural hierarchy clings on to the status quo by actively preventing its citizens from intellectual emancipation; appalling schools, misinformation, censorship, low grade content etc. The internet must be their worst nightmare though time and again I see that it’s the people who seek information who are more interesting than the information itself.
Interesting post.
New politics, new leader
A brief discussion on ABC Radio Australia is available here.