Thanks for the fantastic article Kate! Hopefully one day it won’t be a matter of ‘eastern’ or ‘western’ norms, but rather universal acceptance of LGBT people.
“So how to play bravely against the junta? Create a mob?”
The classic either/or of the exhausted imagination: either empty, consciously false rhetoric, or send the servants out to die!
How very middle-class Thai!
It isn’t the junta that you need to play bravely against so much as the tissue of lies and half-truths that make up the dominant discussion around “democracy” in Thailand.
One way to begin would be to admit that the written constitution means next-to-nothing, that the human materiel that goes to make up the actual structure of so-called “independent bodies” is the problem, not the precise wording of the “law” that delimits them, and that for there to be a liberal democracy installed there needs to be a liberal democratic party offering itself to the voters.
It could be that they aren’t really all that interested.
In which case, who really cares whether government over-reach is “legitimized” by a piece of paper or by the operation of pure power as per usual?
But if there is a substantial constituency that would support a liberal democratic political party, why hasn’t one been formed?
I suspect it has to do with the canard that most middle class Thais, whether liberal, conservative or ultra-royalist, subscribe to: electoral politics and politicians are somehow dirty by their very nature.
And if as I suspect that is what keeps “liberals” from contesting elections, there is not much point even beginning to discuss “democracy”, because whatever else democracy is it takes place in the real world and has to be maintained by real people in real positions throughout the various institutions that paper constitutions propose. And that can get pretty dirty I suppose.
What a throwback to the last century this daft draft “constitution” is. Meanwhile very successful cyber attacks have happened against Prayut’s illegal junta. Not long now before the mother of all hacks totally disables the LM law. Meechai lives last century. Prayut is a dinosaur.
[…] decorated for gallantry in battles against the Kuomintang, is still talked about as a potential presidential proxy if Aung San Suu Kyi remains excluded from that high office. It would be a remarkable final chapter […]
Not just the Danes selling it but the Germans promoting a drink culture admittedly nurtured by none other than the military regime to start with.
The army’s drink culture is common knowledge but beer and barbecue restaurants did not start to mushroom until the nineties in the enlightened reign of Khin Nyunt with his espousing the ‘open market economy’ and conspicuous religiosity, seemingly paradoxical but perfectly natural if the leading liberal democracies are any guide.
A cosmopolitan outlook inviting a cosmopolitan culture is certainly a very positive development. Unfortunately human nature being what it is alcoholism and drink related social ills and crime will likely thrive the most unlike the other aspects of foreign culture.
Good to find myself broadly in agreement with the author’s firmly grounded prognostications.
One flawed hindsight:
“On these key questions, both the Thein Sein government and the army shied away from firm decisions, alarmed by the unexpected outbreak of communal violence in 2012.”
Surely it couldn’t have been unexpected when they themselves are believed by so many to have orchestrated the spread of communal violence that sparked from one tragic rape-murder. They certainly have form.
Prayuth and the military circles want a strong government as long as they are in charge. Thereafter they want a strong bureaucracy and non elected bodies to control a weak elected government. Back to pre-1997 situation.
The sort of “courage” required to make these boilerplate criticisms of yet another version of a junta-inspired constitution is in evidence all over social media in Thailand.
So, yes, it is an analysis shared by many, and not just many Thais. It has a sort of gleam of authenticity along the lines of “war is hell” and other such courageous criticisms of inevitabilities.
The problem is that stating the obvious is of little value in the political struggle that has been destabilizing Thailand for the the past decade or so.
The article begins with this:
“Thailand’s 1997 and 2007 constitutions both contained elaborate protections for the rights and freedoms of the people.”
Where is the courage for a Thai politician or academic to ask whether those “elaborate protections” actually translated into anything meaningful for the Thai people?
How did the 97 version protect those killed in the war on drugs? And how did the 07 version protect those killed in April and May 2010 or the many victims of LM charges? Have the guilty been punished or has a circus of impunity been arranged around their peccadilloes?
Did they curtail slavery and trafficking of people in Thailand? Did Thai courts and police start treating individual Thais according to their humanity rather than their family connections or their bank accounts?
I thought not.
Playing the constitution game is playing with the junta and the elites they represent, not “bravely” playing against them.
Hi there, I’m sorry that you found the article judgmental. However, I do agree with you that ‘soft laws’ are just as important (if not, more so) when attempting to move a nation forward towards more efficient governance.
Yes, It’s a very good article, one that helps us ask the right questions. The most pressing one seems to me to be: which is the lesser of the two main evils, the entrenchment of Hun Sen’s patronage clique, or the establishment of a nationalistic, anti-Vietnamese, monarchy-peddling patronage clique? Cambodia is less advanced than Thailand in the gradual shift from patronage to rules-based political and economic behaviour that comes with universal literacy. For the time being I am inclined to support Hun Sen’s clique, rather than one that could (will?) persecute non-Khmers, precipitate dangerous conflict with Vietnam, and befuddle and oppress the people with the mumbo-jumbo of monarchy. Thailand provides strong evidence that than the re-emergence of monarchy would seriously hold up the development of rules-based political and economic behaviour, and the “culture of dialogue” that depends on it.
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Living in sin in Singapore?
Would you agree that the “heavy use of opium and hashish by regents, Emperors and Empresses were ubiquitous”. What are your thoughts on drug use.
Living in sin in Singapore?
Care to explain why you made such a comment in an article about shisha?
Hope and reality in a new Myanmar
And then some. National reconciliation but not as you know it.
Unity in (sexual) diversity?
Thanks for the fantastic article Kate! Hopefully one day it won’t be a matter of ‘eastern’ or ‘western’ norms, but rather universal acceptance of LGBT people.
Life under Thailand’s 2016 constitution
“So how to play bravely against the junta? Create a mob?”
The classic either/or of the exhausted imagination: either empty, consciously false rhetoric, or send the servants out to die!
How very middle-class Thai!
It isn’t the junta that you need to play bravely against so much as the tissue of lies and half-truths that make up the dominant discussion around “democracy” in Thailand.
One way to begin would be to admit that the written constitution means next-to-nothing, that the human materiel that goes to make up the actual structure of so-called “independent bodies” is the problem, not the precise wording of the “law” that delimits them, and that for there to be a liberal democracy installed there needs to be a liberal democratic party offering itself to the voters.
It could be that they aren’t really all that interested.
In which case, who really cares whether government over-reach is “legitimized” by a piece of paper or by the operation of pure power as per usual?
But if there is a substantial constituency that would support a liberal democratic political party, why hasn’t one been formed?
I suspect it has to do with the canard that most middle class Thais, whether liberal, conservative or ultra-royalist, subscribe to: electoral politics and politicians are somehow dirty by their very nature.
And if as I suspect that is what keeps “liberals” from contesting elections, there is not much point even beginning to discuss “democracy”, because whatever else democracy is it takes place in the real world and has to be maintained by real people in real positions throughout the various institutions that paper constitutions propose. And that can get pretty dirty I suppose.
Life under Thailand’s 2016 constitution
So how to play bravely against the junta? Create a mob?
Beer barons and ballads in Myanmar
There’s already a well beaten path for those who can afford to India for a new liver so a domestic market has yet to develop, but foreign based private healthcare enterprises are already making inroads. A welcome booster for the GDP?
Reminds me of the old Burmese expression: there are three places that ought not to be busy – law courts, hospitals and cemeteries.
Myanmar’s future can be built in the interim
Considering past examples of Myanmar government ways such as:
1) then ‘Burmese way to Socialism’
2) now /Discipline democracy’
do we need another reminder of what ‘Myanmar way to Federalization’ might entail?
Beer barons and ballads in Myanmar
Myanmar used to produce at governmental level a near 150 proof distillant (A yet phew).
It is .well known that concurrently the prevalence of Hep C is very hi at ~ 20%.
The combination of alcohol and Hep C induced end stage liver disease and related mortality are astoundingly tragic.
The baron of beer in and outside the country must also consider there is no age restriction in consumption.
The copyright issues are least of concerns withi Myanmar
The only real news is raw/ capitalism functioning .
May be ‘liver transplantation ‘ might take off in Myanmar too!
Forty years of Lao PDR: what’s next?
[…] : Nicolas Briand Source Oliver Tappe / New Mandala Forty Years of Lao PDR. What’s Next? Photo : Free Grunge Textures […]
Life under Thailand’s 2016 constitution
What a throwback to the last century this daft draft “constitution” is. Meanwhile very successful cyber attacks have happened against Prayut’s illegal junta. Not long now before the mother of all hacks totally disables the LM law. Meechai lives last century. Prayut is a dinosaur.
The president and the proxy
[…] decorated for gallantry in battles against the Kuomintang, is still talked about as a potential presidential proxy if Aung San Suu Kyi remains excluded from that high office. It would be a remarkable final chapter […]
Beer barons and ballads in Myanmar
Not just the Danes selling it but the Germans promoting a drink culture admittedly nurtured by none other than the military regime to start with.
The army’s drink culture is common knowledge but beer and barbecue restaurants did not start to mushroom until the nineties in the enlightened reign of Khin Nyunt with his espousing the ‘open market economy’ and conspicuous religiosity, seemingly paradoxical but perfectly natural if the leading liberal democracies are any guide.
A cosmopolitan outlook inviting a cosmopolitan culture is certainly a very positive development. Unfortunately human nature being what it is alcoholism and drink related social ills and crime will likely thrive the most unlike the other aspects of foreign culture.
Hope and reality in a new Myanmar
Good to find myself broadly in agreement with the author’s firmly grounded prognostications.
One flawed hindsight:
“On these key questions, both the Thein Sein government and the army shied away from firm decisions, alarmed by the unexpected outbreak of communal violence in 2012.”
Surely it couldn’t have been unexpected when they themselves are believed by so many to have orchestrated the spread of communal violence that sparked from one tragic rape-murder. They certainly have form.
Still better than Thaksin?
[…] Wongtibun, “Still better than Thaksin?” New Mandala, 26 November, […]
Life under Thailand’s 2016 constitution
Prayuth and the military circles want a strong government as long as they are in charge. Thereafter they want a strong bureaucracy and non elected bodies to control a weak elected government. Back to pre-1997 situation.
Life under Thailand’s 2016 constitution
The sort of “courage” required to make these boilerplate criticisms of yet another version of a junta-inspired constitution is in evidence all over social media in Thailand.
So, yes, it is an analysis shared by many, and not just many Thais. It has a sort of gleam of authenticity along the lines of “war is hell” and other such courageous criticisms of inevitabilities.
The problem is that stating the obvious is of little value in the political struggle that has been destabilizing Thailand for the the past decade or so.
The article begins with this:
“Thailand’s 1997 and 2007 constitutions both contained elaborate protections for the rights and freedoms of the people.”
Where is the courage for a Thai politician or academic to ask whether those “elaborate protections” actually translated into anything meaningful for the Thai people?
How did the 97 version protect those killed in the war on drugs? And how did the 07 version protect those killed in April and May 2010 or the many victims of LM charges? Have the guilty been punished or has a circus of impunity been arranged around their peccadilloes?
Did they curtail slavery and trafficking of people in Thailand? Did Thai courts and police start treating individual Thais according to their humanity rather than their family connections or their bank accounts?
I thought not.
Playing the constitution game is playing with the junta and the elites they represent, not “bravely” playing against them.
Living in sin in Singapore?
Hi there, I’m sorry that you found the article judgmental. However, I do agree with you that ‘soft laws’ are just as important (if not, more so) when attempting to move a nation forward towards more efficient governance.
Living in sin in Singapore?
Your article is full of judgmental commentaries. It is the “soft laws” you should be very concern about.You are teasing with the laws
Elections, parties and decentralisation in Cambodia
Yes, It’s a very good article, one that helps us ask the right questions. The most pressing one seems to me to be: which is the lesser of the two main evils, the entrenchment of Hun Sen’s patronage clique, or the establishment of a nationalistic, anti-Vietnamese, monarchy-peddling patronage clique? Cambodia is less advanced than Thailand in the gradual shift from patronage to rules-based political and economic behaviour that comes with universal literacy. For the time being I am inclined to support Hun Sen’s clique, rather than one that could (will?) persecute non-Khmers, precipitate dangerous conflict with Vietnam, and befuddle and oppress the people with the mumbo-jumbo of monarchy. Thailand provides strong evidence that than the re-emergence of monarchy would seriously hold up the development of rules-based political and economic behaviour, and the “culture of dialogue” that depends on it.