I don’t want (and see no need to) defend the PM-turned-fugitive Thaksin, but i couldn’t resist the urge to respond to matty’s comment #9. Was Thaksin the only one who expanded his wealth exponentially while in power? IMO this is also true for ‘the other person’, whose wealth we’re discussing here..
I absolutely agree with the second part of your observation, though.
Dear Dhamm Friend/Ven,
I would like to Triple Gem Bless you. I am very glad to you know in your
Shan Buddhism Culture conforence.I am Ven, Devamitra Theravada monk from India.I am studing in MCU.Studing about Buddhism Bangkok Thailand.I am very interesting Shan Buddhism culture conference.and I wanna attend conference.
I am kindly Requesting to you send me some information by emil me,
I have been waiting to hear from you. May Buddha Dhamma and Sangha
bless you. May you be happy and long lives.
1. Deeper knowledge of the royal’s wealth is a result of decision of CPB to be more transparent and allowing access to its information by researchers. This should be seen as a good step forward.
2. There are other assets which are still not included into the Forbes estimate, such as CPB’s land holdings located outside Bangkok (CPB estimates this at 12,500 acres) and personal holdings. However, I share matty’s point that the assets of the royalties of other countries may have also been left out of Forbes’ calculations which Forbes anyways admitted its calculations were “a blend of art and science”.
3. Pornphant estimates that in 2005 total income of CPB is $280 million (at current exchange rate), with $200 million from company dividends. So income from the real estate totaled around $80 million. This fits with what was reported in Bangkokpost that the CPB leases most of its land at low prices to state agencies, NGOs, for community housing and shophouses. Only about 7% of its land is leased at commercial prices . Porphant’s other research also found that many tracts of land were in old areas of the city with long-standing tenants, including several slum communities, and the CPB made no effort to re-develop such sites to reflect their rising commercial value. Other tracts were leased to government departments or state enterprises, often at “peppercorn rents”. For example, the large plot of prime land used as police headquarters across from Siam Paragon is leased at 1000 baht ($30) a year. Paul Handley also says that the CPB “still has a below-market-rent mentality for long-term stability goals,” and that the CPB has “no rate-of-return goals on some of their real estate, limited goals on others and nearly commercial on others.”
4. It is not known how much of the income goes to charity because how the income is spent is not disclosed. My own guess is that a good share goes to charity.
5. The goal of CPB is not strictly to earn the highest income but to aid the country’s development by investing in key industries and providing below-market-rate housing for low-income citizens. I think how far this goal has been achieved would be worthy of debate.
6. CPB is basically a “giant landlord”. Almost all the 600 CPB staff is engaged in property management, with fewer than 10 staffers managing the financial assets. Thus CPB is a long-term investor which isn’t concerned with short-term profits or losses. I think the long-term investment strategy should be good for the stability of the economy.
7. The law specifies that the use of CPB’s assets and income “depends totally on the royal inclination” and that the government cannot seize or transfer them, or tax them. The bureau doesn’t issue an annual report, except to the king. Especially after the succession, I think Thailand needs to revisit these provisions of the law and push for more transparency. P. Handley shares the concern: “I think Chirayu [director-general of CPB] is pretty shrewd,” he says. “The finance ministry and business community have always trusted Chirayu’s judgment, but now they must signal to the prince [that he must handle the fortune responsibly]” . If he doesn’t, Handley says, “Thailand’s economy could be irreversibly damaged.”
matty: But the Thai monarch was not a profligate and I could argue too of ‘moderation’ in his conduct and demeanor, as befit Thailand’s most revered king.
P. Handley argues the same in TKNS, eg.
– “His prestige has survived unscathed, by virtue of his sheer longevity and his personality – earnest, hardworking, gentle, and with an impeccably simple lifestyle.”
– “To be sure for more than five decades, Bhumibol has been genuinely dedicated to good works. He has tried to bring into Thai society the poor and marginalized. He quietly intervenes on behalf of those abused by Thai officialdom, and he has been a constant reminder against destructive greed. And all the time he – though not his family – has shown little interest in the luxurious trappings that a bejeweled crown could bring.”
An adequate reporting and monitoring system for hilltribe evictions from the land that they farm, does not exist, I believe. Even in this day of internet and RSS feeds where this information could quickly spread everywhere. Though it is another matter whether anyone would dare report such things.
Relevant example: a sniper once attempted to take out a powerful headman of an Akha village on the approach Maesai. Everyone close to the headman who could have been responsible was executed. This was drug related, but gives you a good idea of the fundamental lack of justice and due process in the hinterlands.
Recent evictions were, in fact, reported to me by someone, with great frustration that he could do nothing about them. So, depsite theoretical ruminations and healthy skepticism, I’d be willing to wager it’s still a problem.
“what passes for the state is often less coherent”
How can you know? There seem to be two issues here: 1. actually knowing fully what is going on (transparency), 2. whether what goes on, goes on according to a system (coherent action). Matthew McDaniel’s work clearly indicated that though the situation in the hinterlands lacked transparency, it clearly did not lack coherent and purposeful action on the part of elites and other powerful actors.
Who are some of these powerful actors. Large tracts of land registered in the middle of forestry lands, would provide a big hint, but this is a realm of investigative journalism where either you can’t tread because the info is not public, or perhaps one dares not treat.
The fact that sustained political action is a force that reduces evictions over time, I don’t believe was adequately stressed. If people are watching critically and there are no evictions, this does not prove their worries are illegitimate. There well could be if they weren’t critically watching. Thus the utility of seemingly crazy people like Sonthi, Chamlong Sri Muang, and (sorry Matthew) Matthew McDaniel.
This dog picture is awefil my seven year old was looking on line to look @ dogs or puppies and then she sees a picture from vietnam and dog eating?!!!!!! That’s so wrong that this is where a child c&n see!
I agree take then dam picture down. We don’t use dogs as catle in our country!!!
Bangkok Post has 2 articles + comments on this. Those with an interest in Lese Majeste would be well-advised to go to http://www.bangkokpost.com/topstories/topstories.phpid=129855
immediately, to see the comments from readers…A ‘first,’ I’d think.
Manning Sawwinner’s (#8) eyes, clouded by tears because of Thaksin’s downfall, are not seeing things too clearly. So some correction to his cross-eyed comment below:
“As long as someone did not expand his wealth exponentially while in power, the Thais do not mind and all is well. But ill-gotten wealth while sitting as Thailand’s Prime Minister, and evading taxes too to add insult to injury, is definitely NOT well.”
Thaksin Shinawatra is preparing to be forced off the Manchester City board under the Premier League’s fit-and-proper-person test. The former prime minister of Thailand, who has been advised to stay away from tomorrow’s home game against West Ham for his own safety, was described last night as “embarrassed” about the damage he had inflicted on City’s reputation but sent out a message, via the club’s executive chairman Garry Cook, that he was determined to remain the principal power behind the club.
Translation should be effective, I think, when you grasp the idea of the text in a source language and put it in a target language without going word by word from the source language to the target language. What we find as an unreadable translation is usually word-by-word translation. What I have found to be useful in translation is to put idea first and word-by-word equivalence second.
When we say that language is a system of complex mechanism, what is true of one language is also true of another. All languages are complex in their own ways. There is no such thing as a simple language. A language may be simple, however, if one relates to it easily. For example, a Thai would find Chinese simpler than English because Chinese is more similar to Thai than English is. But a language per se is never simple. The language of the Aborigines in Australia is no less complex than English.
Twenty to fifty acres is a small plot of land? In the area of the northern Shan State near Lashio where I briefly worked on an agricultural project that would be a huge farm. Also, while the behavior of the Army there did in some ways seem feudal, there was a crucial difference. The feudal system relied on customary law, which usually imposed some restrictions on what the nobility could extact from the serfs. Based on what I saw, the Burmese Army has no restrictions.
How to handle royal assets would present quite a dilemma for HMK and his advisers, and I can understand his reluctance to simply hand things over to politicians. The electoral cycle tends to make them somewhat short sighted, let alone the fact that many have clearly demonstrated they in politics for reasons other than helping people (apart from a select few)
🙂
IMO it is obvious that the various royal projects are done with good intentions as a way of trying to help people in need (although some are possibly misguided).
I seem to recall that Handley in TKNS mentions HMK’s concern that handouts do not work (presumably because he has seen how the money often gets wasted on various vices).
Given that mindset, I would be interested to hear of ways in which the the assets could be used to benefit those most in need.
At present I understand much of the property is not let at commercial rates – is that the best use, or would it be better to maximize potential income, and then use the funds to help in other ways?
Dog Lover raised a good point about taxpayer contributions to royal coffers, but the accounting for that could get messy – for instance, who should bear the cost of all the pageantry, pomp & ceremony?
Aside from how many planes and overseas trips etc they need, another contentious point is their tax exempt status – perhaps if everything was put on a commercial basis, the tax exempt status could be removed – it might also limit some of the snide innuendo!
At the risk of sounding like Da Torpedo, I think it’s about time all these matters were made transparent. (Lucky I’m not in Thailand or I might be in jail with no bail!)
My late mother told me often about a memorable scene from the last democratic election in Burma, between U Nu and Kyaw Nyein after their split of then ruling party AFPFL called Pha-sa-pa-la. U Nu was for Pha-sa-pa-la(Thant-shin) and U Kyaw Nyein the Pha-sa-pa-la(Te-mye). Army was the caretaker government then.
U Kyaw Nyein was openly supported by the Ne Win led army even though they were not supposed to do so. So in Middle Burma, where my mother was then, army actively canvassed for Kyaw Nyein and they basically tried to buy the rural votes. They paid money in advance to every village head that guaranteed their votes for Kyaw Nyein. Army even arranged the transportation for the whole villages to to nearest voting station well guarded by the same army.
The voting day came and the army trucks brought in loads and loads of villagers into the town. But once they entered the booth and saw the large photo of U Nu on his ballot box, they all lined up there and sat down on the ground and shitkhoede (similar to Thai wai) to his photo and voted for him en mass, of course to the frustration and anger of army officers supervising the voting process. The villagers had well forgotten their promises to vote for Kyaw Nyein, for they all innocently believed that U Nu was the Next Buddha.
The outcome was a landslide win by U Nu and two years later in 1962, wtih a clear support from Kyaw Nyein’s Socialist opposition, Ne Win led army staged a violent and successful coup. Burma was ruled by the same army since then. That basically shows the crucial role played by the Burmese villagers like what Thai villagers had done in Thailand for Thaksin’s Thai Love Thai party.
They used to say in eighties that Bangkok was Thailand and Thailand was Bangkok. But in the case of our country, Burma is villages and villages are Burma. The army knew it very well and they always reacted, for the villages are their main and probably only support base as almost all the soldiers and many of the officers come from the villages.
As anywhere else in the world, the two most important things for the Burmese Villagers are religion and their land. Army mainly used Buddhism to wipe the Burmese Communist Party out of the mainland Burma. Interesting thing is that the BCP knew it very well and they never aggressively pursued anti-Buddhism objective in the villages even under their control, but just being a Communist party didn’t really help when it comes to religion.
One young soldier gave me a simple answer in the eighties when I frankly asked him why they were willing to shoot the protesting students on the streets of Rangoon. He just simply told me that the students were Communists. He also believed that while they were risking their lives and limbs fighting the China-backed-Communists on the front line the students were trying to stab their backs. It was a bone-chilling statement and I will remember it for the rest of my life.
And land. When it comes to land and what villagers are allowed to do with it is quite complex but also very simple. Believe it or not, modern Burmese system is very similar to the medieval English system where all the land was owned by the lords and the clergy and the peasants worked the land but they had the basic right to hand it down to their offspring. They could also sell their crops in the market after giving a part of their crops to the landlord as a rent. Only difference in Burmese system is that the Lords and clergy are replaced by the State.
Theoretically in Burma, every inches of farmland is owned by the state. But at the same time the farmer who works a small plot of land, normally only about 20-50 acres in average, has the right to formally transfer his right to work that plot of land to another villager or hand it down to one of his sons or daughters.
I personally owned a plot of land, about 80 acres in middle Burma as my inheritance from my late grandmother, but since I don’t live there I had to transfer the land to one of my cousins who still lives on and works the land. The elders and the village council sees to these matters so that the large scale commercial transfer of land doesn’t happen in the village, for it was against the law and it keeps the average villager happy as the system did for the English peasants.
Same as the medieval English peasants, the Burmese farmers have to
sell a part of their crops to the State cheaply as a rent, and only after that they are allowed to sell their crops in the market at the market prices.
The case is interesting and nicely provocative. First the “Karen Consensus” and now this, you (Andrew) are really out to endear yourself to the academics at Chiangmai University!
As one of the people cited on the specter of evictions, I do agree, the cases are few and far between. But on the other hand, my former research area in Phayao has been slated for eviction since 1992, with the pressure going up and down several times since. There, I think, the lack of actual evictions has partly to do with long term official residence by Mien highlanders (meaning “phaya” and “thao” titles to their leaders from the king of Nan as of the 1890s, a “kamnan” title in the 1940s, and a string of kamnan since, all Mien, it has had an OBT office since that became the norm). Because of this long term formal integration, most everyone in the subdistrict has been able to get citizenship — the kamnan went with people to the District Office and vouched for their Thai credentials — that is pretty rare. Also, as you cite me on, the government agencies (Forestry vs. Highways) have radically opposed agendas in the countryside.
The 1980s were quite different from the 1990s, and you would have more cases to play with (and less to poke fun at) if you had looked at Kamphengphet Province. A good number of Mien were encouraged to settle there in order to carve away at available forest for CPT camps. They were told they could grow corn and such, but had to buy the seeds themselves. Some of the people came from refugee camps (meaning they had been in Laos before 1973, 1975, and so on), others came from elsewhere in Thailand. Once the CPT units left the jungle in ’80 or ’82, the Thai authorities started kicking farmers out of that forest, in a full scale eviction of settlements. I came across about 100 people in a temporary holding camp (under armed guard) in Nan town in 1990, who had been evicted, at gunpoint and onto trucks) from one of the forest settlements of KPhPhet, and have learned of many more cases since. As far as I know, the only published mention of this is in a book by Prasit Leepreecha and colleagues, Mien, the changing life of highlanders in the city (roughly) (2547).
The specter of evictions is one way to draw up an image of communities under threat by the state. It is one way of assuming that there is a state and that it is coherent (and bad) — this is in part a mimetic construction that adds in lending coherence to its opposite, rural communities. On the ground, so to speak, what passes for the state is often less coherent.
The conciliatory tone at the end of the article (“by working together with state agencies fo foster a more collaborative and realistic regime of images…”) is fine, and might be applied to interactions with CMU academics, too.
Sadly for Burma this particular group of ruling class appears to have no political insight, programme or competence whatsoever even in their own interest in order to consolidate and sustain their power in the long run except how to crackdown on dissent and protest using a blunt instrument or rather fire power. Crony capitalism and strongarm civilian squads as an adjunct to the kleptocracy is unlikely to broaden their power base among the masses in any meaningful way. There is no one else to blame but themselves for the unabated social unrest in a nation where the traditional expression is “happiness is so long as you can eat some leftover rice and cool down with a fan in one hand”. Is that really much to ask?
And we should not neglect to add in the 6 billion baht (and that’s not the grand total for it excludes the seemingly secret amount for royal projects) that the Thai taxpayer forks over to the royals in 2008.
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Sufficient discipline, sufficient wealth
I don’t want (and see no need to) defend the PM-turned-fugitive Thaksin, but i couldn’t resist the urge to respond to matty’s comment #9. Was Thaksin the only one who expanded his wealth exponentially while in power? IMO this is also true for ‘the other person’, whose wealth we’re discussing here..
I absolutely agree with the second part of your observation, though.
Report on Shan conference in London
Dear Dhamm Friend/Ven,
I would like to Triple Gem Bless you. I am very glad to you know in your
Shan Buddhism Culture conforence.I am Ven, Devamitra Theravada monk from India.I am studing in MCU.Studing about Buddhism Bangkok Thailand.I am very interesting Shan Buddhism culture conference.and I wanna attend conference.
I am kindly Requesting to you send me some information by emil me,
I have been waiting to hear from you. May Buddha Dhamma and Sangha
bless you. May you be happy and long lives.
Friend a from Dhamma
Mettacitta
Ven,Devamitra.
Response to Kaplan on Burma
Thanks, Hla Oo, you certainly have loads to tell us from your own experience of life in Burma. I’d definitely love to hear more.
Sufficient discipline, sufficient wealth
http://www.forbes.com/magazines/global/2008/0901/032.html
What I think are important:
1. Deeper knowledge of the royal’s wealth is a result of decision of CPB to be more transparent and allowing access to its information by researchers. This should be seen as a good step forward.
2. There are other assets which are still not included into the Forbes estimate, such as CPB’s land holdings located outside Bangkok (CPB estimates this at 12,500 acres) and personal holdings. However, I share matty’s point that the assets of the royalties of other countries may have also been left out of Forbes’ calculations which Forbes anyways admitted its calculations were “a blend of art and science”.
3. Pornphant estimates that in 2005 total income of CPB is $280 million (at current exchange rate), with $200 million from company dividends. So income from the real estate totaled around $80 million. This fits with what was reported in Bangkokpost that the CPB leases most of its land at low prices to state agencies, NGOs, for community housing and shophouses. Only about 7% of its land is leased at commercial prices . Porphant’s other research also found that many tracts of land were in old areas of the city with long-standing tenants, including several slum communities, and the CPB made no effort to re-develop such sites to reflect their rising commercial value. Other tracts were leased to government departments or state enterprises, often at “peppercorn rents”. For example, the large plot of prime land used as police headquarters across from Siam Paragon is leased at 1000 baht ($30) a year. Paul Handley also says that the CPB “still has a below-market-rent mentality for long-term stability goals,” and that the CPB has “no rate-of-return goals on some of their real estate, limited goals on others and nearly commercial on others.”
4. It is not known how much of the income goes to charity because how the income is spent is not disclosed. My own guess is that a good share goes to charity.
5. The goal of CPB is not strictly to earn the highest income but to aid the country’s development by investing in key industries and providing below-market-rate housing for low-income citizens. I think how far this goal has been achieved would be worthy of debate.
6. CPB is basically a “giant landlord”. Almost all the 600 CPB staff is engaged in property management, with fewer than 10 staffers managing the financial assets. Thus CPB is a long-term investor which isn’t concerned with short-term profits or losses. I think the long-term investment strategy should be good for the stability of the economy.
7. The law specifies that the use of CPB’s assets and income “depends totally on the royal inclination” and that the government cannot seize or transfer them, or tax them. The bureau doesn’t issue an annual report, except to the king. Especially after the succession, I think Thailand needs to revisit these provisions of the law and push for more transparency. P. Handley shares the concern: “I think Chirayu [director-general of CPB] is pretty shrewd,” he says. “The finance ministry and business community have always trusted Chirayu’s judgment, but now they must signal to the prince [that he must handle the fortune responsibly]” . If he doesn’t, Handley says, “Thailand’s economy could be irreversibly damaged.”
matty: But the Thai monarch was not a profligate and I could argue too of ‘moderation’ in his conduct and demeanor, as befit Thailand’s most revered king.
P. Handley argues the same in TKNS, eg.
– “His prestige has survived unscathed, by virtue of his sheer longevity and his personality – earnest, hardworking, gentle, and with an impeccably simple lifestyle.”
– “To be sure for more than five decades, Bhumibol has been genuinely dedicated to good works. He has tried to bring into Thai society the poor and marginalized. He quietly intervenes on behalf of those abused by Thai officialdom, and he has been a constant reminder against destructive greed. And all the time he – though not his family – has shown little interest in the luxurious trappings that a bejeweled crown could bring.”
Northern Thailand’s specter of eviction
An adequate reporting and monitoring system for hilltribe evictions from the land that they farm, does not exist, I believe. Even in this day of internet and RSS feeds where this information could quickly spread everywhere. Though it is another matter whether anyone would dare report such things.
Relevant example: a sniper once attempted to take out a powerful headman of an Akha village on the approach Maesai. Everyone close to the headman who could have been responsible was executed. This was drug related, but gives you a good idea of the fundamental lack of justice and due process in the hinterlands.
Recent evictions were, in fact, reported to me by someone, with great frustration that he could do nothing about them. So, depsite theoretical ruminations and healthy skepticism, I’d be willing to wager it’s still a problem.
Northern Thailand’s specter of eviction
“what passes for the state is often less coherent”
How can you know? There seem to be two issues here: 1. actually knowing fully what is going on (transparency), 2. whether what goes on, goes on according to a system (coherent action). Matthew McDaniel’s work clearly indicated that though the situation in the hinterlands lacked transparency, it clearly did not lack coherent and purposeful action on the part of elites and other powerful actors.
Who are some of these powerful actors. Large tracts of land registered in the middle of forestry lands, would provide a big hint, but this is a realm of investigative journalism where either you can’t tread because the info is not public, or perhaps one dares not treat.
The fact that sustained political action is a force that reduces evictions over time, I don’t believe was adequately stressed. If people are watching critically and there are no evictions, this does not prove their worries are illegitimate. There well could be if they weren’t critically watching. Thus the utility of seemingly crazy people like Sonthi, Chamlong Sri Muang, and (sorry Matthew) Matthew McDaniel.
Lunch?
Senta // Aug 14, 2008 at 11:23 am
This dog picture is awefil my seven year old was looking on line to look @ dogs or puppies and then she sees a picture from vietnam and dog eating?!!!!!! That’s so wrong that this is where a child c&n see!
I agree take then dam picture down. We don’t use dogs as catle in our country!!!
Sufficient discipline, sufficient wealth
Bangkok Post has 2 articles + comments on this. Those with an interest in Lese Majeste would be well-advised to go to http://www.bangkokpost.com/topstories/topstories.phpid=129855
immediately, to see the comments from readers…A ‘first,’ I’d think.
Sufficient discipline, sufficient wealth
Manning Sawwinner’s (#8) eyes, clouded by tears because of Thaksin’s downfall, are not seeing things too clearly. So some correction to his cross-eyed comment below:
“As long as someone did not expand his wealth exponentially while in power, the Thais do not mind and all is well. But ill-gotten wealth while sitting as Thailand’s Prime Minister, and evading taxes too to add insult to injury, is definitely NOT well.”
Citeh Citeh on the Manchester City bid
Thaksin Shinawatra is preparing to be forced off the Manchester City board under the Premier League’s fit-and-proper-person test. The former prime minister of Thailand, who has been advised to stay away from tomorrow’s home game against West Ham for his own safety, was described last night as “embarrassed” about the damage he had inflicted on City’s reputation but sent out a message, via the club’s executive chairman Garry Cook, that he was determined to remain the principal power behind the club.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/football/2008/aug/23/manchestercity.premierleague1?gusrc=rss&feed=football
Genius at work
An innocent boy being played up by his no-credit parents.
On learning Thai
Translation should be effective, I think, when you grasp the idea of the text in a source language and put it in a target language without going word by word from the source language to the target language. What we find as an unreadable translation is usually word-by-word translation. What I have found to be useful in translation is to put idea first and word-by-word equivalence second.
On learning Thai
When we say that language is a system of complex mechanism, what is true of one language is also true of another. All languages are complex in their own ways. There is no such thing as a simple language. A language may be simple, however, if one relates to it easily. For example, a Thai would find Chinese simpler than English because Chinese is more similar to Thai than English is. But a language per se is never simple. The language of the Aborigines in Australia is no less complex than English.
Response to Kaplan on Burma
Twenty to fifty acres is a small plot of land? In the area of the northern Shan State near Lashio where I briefly worked on an agricultural project that would be a huge farm. Also, while the behavior of the Army there did in some ways seem feudal, there was a crucial difference. The feudal system relied on customary law, which usually imposed some restrictions on what the nobility could extact from the serfs. Based on what I saw, the Burmese Army has no restrictions.
Sufficient discipline, sufficient wealth
As long as someone wealthy is not Thaksin, then all is well.
Sufficient discipline, sufficient wealth
How to handle royal assets would present quite a dilemma for HMK and his advisers, and I can understand his reluctance to simply hand things over to politicians. The electoral cycle tends to make them somewhat short sighted, let alone the fact that many have clearly demonstrated they in politics for reasons other than helping people (apart from a select few)
🙂
IMO it is obvious that the various royal projects are done with good intentions as a way of trying to help people in need (although some are possibly misguided).
I seem to recall that Handley in TKNS mentions HMK’s concern that handouts do not work (presumably because he has seen how the money often gets wasted on various vices).
Given that mindset, I would be interested to hear of ways in which the the assets could be used to benefit those most in need.
At present I understand much of the property is not let at commercial rates – is that the best use, or would it be better to maximize potential income, and then use the funds to help in other ways?
Dog Lover raised a good point about taxpayer contributions to royal coffers, but the accounting for that could get messy – for instance, who should bear the cost of all the pageantry, pomp & ceremony?
Aside from how many planes and overseas trips etc they need, another contentious point is their tax exempt status – perhaps if everything was put on a commercial basis, the tax exempt status could be removed – it might also limit some of the snide innuendo!
At the risk of sounding like Da Torpedo, I think it’s about time all these matters were made transparent. (Lucky I’m not in Thailand or I might be in jail with no bail!)
Response to Kaplan on Burma
My late mother told me often about a memorable scene from the last democratic election in Burma, between U Nu and Kyaw Nyein after their split of then ruling party AFPFL called Pha-sa-pa-la. U Nu was for Pha-sa-pa-la(Thant-shin) and U Kyaw Nyein the Pha-sa-pa-la(Te-mye). Army was the caretaker government then.
U Kyaw Nyein was openly supported by the Ne Win led army even though they were not supposed to do so. So in Middle Burma, where my mother was then, army actively canvassed for Kyaw Nyein and they basically tried to buy the rural votes. They paid money in advance to every village head that guaranteed their votes for Kyaw Nyein. Army even arranged the transportation for the whole villages to to nearest voting station well guarded by the same army.
The voting day came and the army trucks brought in loads and loads of villagers into the town. But once they entered the booth and saw the large photo of U Nu on his ballot box, they all lined up there and sat down on the ground and shitkhoede (similar to Thai wai) to his photo and voted for him en mass, of course to the frustration and anger of army officers supervising the voting process. The villagers had well forgotten their promises to vote for Kyaw Nyein, for they all innocently believed that U Nu was the Next Buddha.
The outcome was a landslide win by U Nu and two years later in 1962, wtih a clear support from Kyaw Nyein’s Socialist opposition, Ne Win led army staged a violent and successful coup. Burma was ruled by the same army since then. That basically shows the crucial role played by the Burmese villagers like what Thai villagers had done in Thailand for Thaksin’s Thai Love Thai party.
They used to say in eighties that Bangkok was Thailand and Thailand was Bangkok. But in the case of our country, Burma is villages and villages are Burma. The army knew it very well and they always reacted, for the villages are their main and probably only support base as almost all the soldiers and many of the officers come from the villages.
As anywhere else in the world, the two most important things for the Burmese Villagers are religion and their land. Army mainly used Buddhism to wipe the Burmese Communist Party out of the mainland Burma. Interesting thing is that the BCP knew it very well and they never aggressively pursued anti-Buddhism objective in the villages even under their control, but just being a Communist party didn’t really help when it comes to religion.
One young soldier gave me a simple answer in the eighties when I frankly asked him why they were willing to shoot the protesting students on the streets of Rangoon. He just simply told me that the students were Communists. He also believed that while they were risking their lives and limbs fighting the China-backed-Communists on the front line the students were trying to stab their backs. It was a bone-chilling statement and I will remember it for the rest of my life.
And land. When it comes to land and what villagers are allowed to do with it is quite complex but also very simple. Believe it or not, modern Burmese system is very similar to the medieval English system where all the land was owned by the lords and the clergy and the peasants worked the land but they had the basic right to hand it down to their offspring. They could also sell their crops in the market after giving a part of their crops to the landlord as a rent. Only difference in Burmese system is that the Lords and clergy are replaced by the State.
Theoretically in Burma, every inches of farmland is owned by the state. But at the same time the farmer who works a small plot of land, normally only about 20-50 acres in average, has the right to formally transfer his right to work that plot of land to another villager or hand it down to one of his sons or daughters.
I personally owned a plot of land, about 80 acres in middle Burma as my inheritance from my late grandmother, but since I don’t live there I had to transfer the land to one of my cousins who still lives on and works the land. The elders and the village council sees to these matters so that the large scale commercial transfer of land doesn’t happen in the village, for it was against the law and it keeps the average villager happy as the system did for the English peasants.
Same as the medieval English peasants, the Burmese farmers have to
sell a part of their crops to the State cheaply as a rent, and only after that they are allowed to sell their crops in the market at the market prices.
Northern Thailand’s specter of eviction
The case is interesting and nicely provocative. First the “Karen Consensus” and now this, you (Andrew) are really out to endear yourself to the academics at Chiangmai University!
As one of the people cited on the specter of evictions, I do agree, the cases are few and far between. But on the other hand, my former research area in Phayao has been slated for eviction since 1992, with the pressure going up and down several times since. There, I think, the lack of actual evictions has partly to do with long term official residence by Mien highlanders (meaning “phaya” and “thao” titles to their leaders from the king of Nan as of the 1890s, a “kamnan” title in the 1940s, and a string of kamnan since, all Mien, it has had an OBT office since that became the norm). Because of this long term formal integration, most everyone in the subdistrict has been able to get citizenship — the kamnan went with people to the District Office and vouched for their Thai credentials — that is pretty rare. Also, as you cite me on, the government agencies (Forestry vs. Highways) have radically opposed agendas in the countryside.
The 1980s were quite different from the 1990s, and you would have more cases to play with (and less to poke fun at) if you had looked at Kamphengphet Province. A good number of Mien were encouraged to settle there in order to carve away at available forest for CPT camps. They were told they could grow corn and such, but had to buy the seeds themselves. Some of the people came from refugee camps (meaning they had been in Laos before 1973, 1975, and so on), others came from elsewhere in Thailand. Once the CPT units left the jungle in ’80 or ’82, the Thai authorities started kicking farmers out of that forest, in a full scale eviction of settlements. I came across about 100 people in a temporary holding camp (under armed guard) in Nan town in 1990, who had been evicted, at gunpoint and onto trucks) from one of the forest settlements of KPhPhet, and have learned of many more cases since. As far as I know, the only published mention of this is in a book by Prasit Leepreecha and colleagues, Mien, the changing life of highlanders in the city (roughly) (2547).
The specter of evictions is one way to draw up an image of communities under threat by the state. It is one way of assuming that there is a state and that it is coherent (and bad) — this is in part a mimetic construction that adds in lending coherence to its opposite, rural communities. On the ground, so to speak, what passes for the state is often less coherent.
The conciliatory tone at the end of the article (“by working together with state agencies fo foster a more collaborative and realistic regime of images…”) is fine, and might be applied to interactions with CMU academics, too.
Response to Kaplan on Burma
Sadly for Burma this particular group of ruling class appears to have no political insight, programme or competence whatsoever even in their own interest in order to consolidate and sustain their power in the long run except how to crackdown on dissent and protest using a blunt instrument or rather fire power. Crony capitalism and strongarm civilian squads as an adjunct to the kleptocracy is unlikely to broaden their power base among the masses in any meaningful way. There is no one else to blame but themselves for the unabated social unrest in a nation where the traditional expression is “happiness is so long as you can eat some leftover rice and cool down with a fan in one hand”. Is that really much to ask?
Sufficient discipline, sufficient wealth
And we should not neglect to add in the 6 billion baht (and that’s not the grand total for it excludes the seemingly secret amount for royal projects) that the Thai taxpayer forks over to the royals in 2008.