When a politician like Thaksin and his TRT gang corrupt and intimidate the poor, massively and pervasively, will that show in Transparency International Index? I wonder . .
Northern Thaiwoman (#16) above describes election corruption and coercion in her community that is more realistic than Andrew Walker’s romantic ‘rural constitution’, or James Haughton’s Transparency International Index.
If the wife of the ex-Thai Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra herself, Khun Potjaman, publicly acknowledging that Potjaman was the Finance-Man of Thai Rak Thai Party personally subsidizing the TRT’s annual and election expenses by as much as 50% or more; does this not speak louder than any Transparency International Index why Thailand’s dominant political party during Thaksin had been so deeply corrupted . . . thus merrily assisting Thaksin & Potjaman in their family wealth-enriching endeavors, including changing or circumventing rules to assist Thaksin’s Shin enterprises stock price to go up 3-1/2 times during Thaksin’s rule and its eventual sale?
To Bangkok Pundit and others Regarding Der Spiegel misquotes of Askew
Thanks to Bangkok Pundit for bringing the Der Spiegel passage to my attention – I have not encountered this piece, fortunately. In response to your query as to whether it represents my views – actually no – it is a complete mash of whatever I said to one Der Spiegel journalist in Pattani in June/July last. I have never laid the blame for the outburst of violence in the south to Thaksin, except to highlight that he laid a few of the immediate conditions. Strangely, this misrepresentation comes after I gave this journalist a copy of my monograph (Conspiracy, Politics and a Disorderly Border) where I question simplistic analyses like this.
Well I will later list the full amount of tricks, money and orders that my northern rural family are exposed to in the upcoming election.
It may well be worse than the last time when 800 baht per person was offered for a TRT vote with a lift to the polling station and of course the direct orders from the kamnan to vote TRT or lose all access to everything not only for yourself but also for the village and of course a pleasant reminder that how you voted would be monitored.
Quite frankly anyone who thinks a Thai election in the rural areas is clean does not know what they are talking about. On election day itself there is usually not so much direct coercion going on although the April 2 election was a massive exception to this rule. Even at the recent charter referendum nothing happened.
There is a hell of a lot that goes on both before and after an election and it is not all about just money but direct coercion, threats, scare tactics. Then there is the power of the patronage system, but that is another matter. In rural Thailand an election is not about considering all the issues and making even a semi-informed choice. At the April 2 election nobody was eevn allowed to talk about a no vote let alone campaign for it. that would have resulted in at least extreme violence by those that decide who the villagers will vote for. This time around things will not be clean. However, they may actually be fairer where I vote in allowing more choice than back in April 2 as the TRT guys are still there although their ability to totally intimdate has diminished and the opposition will be able to campaign without fear of death. That at least will allow anyone who is independent enough to actually make a choice.
If any foreign body monitors a Thai election they will not see what goes on anyway and nobody is going to run to them with a complaint. How many complained about the few hundred baht they got to vote no in the charter referendum? Some of my family wanted to vote yes but it was easier to do as told and take the money and vote no. It is quite dangerous to make complaints and most will just go with the flow anyway. Thai democracy has a long way to go and it is quite dangerous for academics to make assumptions about it so it fits their theory or political stance, but to suggest that it is actually clean is a long way from the truth. To suggest the EU monitors may declare it clean is almost certainly true, but that is because they wont see what happens. You need to live in a community and be part of it to understand how it works.
I thought I replied to Historicus already but Andrew Walker must have been on his deleting-censorious mood.
But OK Historicus if you say you did not mean to say or imply, by your poster, that Thaksin was Poor Isan’s champion, I believe you and I apologize for misreading your intent.
But I still maintain you deliberately lied when you tried to misrepresent the impending massive street protests in Sept-2006 when Thaksin was deposed by a coup.
I can see that Bangkok Pundit still looks for evidence – – on extrajudicial killings directed by Thaksin Bangkok Pundit?
James Haughton: I’m not Jeru, and I don’t claim that Transparency International is part of the sinister Thai-Australian Thaksin lobby.
However, please consider the following:
1. The index you linked to relates to ‘perceived’ corruption levels and therefore may or may not bear a relationship to ‘actual’ corruption levels.
2. The index only goes to 2005, which is before Thaksin’s tax free sale of Shin Corp an event that might have affected peoples perception of corruption during 2006 and prior years.
3. The index is also before the new airport opening in late 2006, and given the knowledge of the problems regarding the airport, peoples perception of corruption during 2006 and prior years might have changed.
4. I would be interested to know what the effect on the index would be if corruption amongst low level bureaucrats/police/military etc was reduced, but at the same time there was an increase in corruption by one particular group. In such circumstances, I imagine it would be possible to perceive that corruption levels have decreased even if the corruption by that one group was at a grand scale.
“… I fully agree with you that both Thaksin and the military must be criticized for a better future (along with numerous other actors like the media, academics, public intellectuals, etc), but it is a bit pointless trying to get either jeru or Republican to agree to that position…”
What a noble gesture. Your criticisms are not just academically motivated, but you actually aim to create a “better future” for Thailand. What a fearless, noble person you are. You are happy to criticize a former democratically-elected Prime Minister under attack by the royalists who are protected from criticism by lese majeste and a 50 year propaganda cult surrounding the king, but you omit to include the monarchy in the list of “numerous other actors” that should be criticized in order to bring about your “better future”.
What you and the other song mai ao academics can not seem to understand is that under the current censorship regime and propaganda surrounding the monarchy in Thailand today, your criticism of Thaksin automatically translates into rhetorical support for the royalists and the undemocratic political status quo they seek to achieve. And yet you posture as democrats wanting a “better future” for Thailand.
The outcome: the academics appear morally pure and high-minded, independent and above the dirty business of politics.
I’d like to point out to Jeru or whatever he’s calling himself that under Thaksin, Thailand improved its standing in Transparency International’s corruption perception indices from 3.2 (in 2001) to 3.8 (in 2005). By contrast, from 1996 to 2001, the rating dropped from 3.3 to 3.2.
Although any rating under 5 indicates a government, police, business sector, etc, that is more corrupt than not, a 0.6 out of 10 increase in 5 years is still a significant achievement that gives the lie to many of the claims made about Thaksin being unprecedentedly corrupt, and justifies the claim that his government and the electoral processes which brought him to power are “relatively” clean, i.e., they are clean relative to their predecessors.
I now look forward to Jeru’s claim that he’s never heard of Transparency International before coming to this site, and that they are part of the sinister Thai-Australian Thaksin lobby.
On that note, ‘democracy’ has sadly become a tainted concept since America tried to violently impose ‘democracy’ on Iraq.
Pakistan today, undermining Palestinian election results, support for Saddam in the 1980’s etc etc ?????
I suspect the ‘my enemy’s enemy is my friend’ policy still outweighs any real push for ‘democracy’.
If the leader of the free world played straight, and set a better example, then IMO, it would not be so easy to argue for ‘managed democracy’ against ‘full democracy’ .
Paul L: Ask yourself which manifestation of ‘democracy’ is better:
(1) a dominant party with an authoritarian/autocratic leader
or
(2) a choice of 2 or 3 major political groups
IMO neither is perfect, but there is reason to be optimistic that there will be less chance for the checks and balances to be subverted under scenario (2) above, especially when the leader under scenario (1) had no regard for the rule of law, authorized extra-judicial killings, pursued policies that enriched his family and friends, and avoided taxes by using tax havens, nominees and coercion of tax officials.
There is no need to run away and avoid the question (again).
IMO, it’s not people in brown uniforms you should fear, but rather people wearing white coats, if you still have the following opinion: “You have said Thaksin is greedy. I don’t think he was so I don’t need to reconcile it. ”
In post 51 I asked jeru, the accuser, to substantiate his claim that “Historicus and others always amuse when they attempt to portray Thaksin Shinawatra (the skedaddler with billions stowed in luggages in flight, the multi-billion offshore asset concealer, the head of the clan of tax cheaters, and the arguably biggest Thai mafia chieftain directing the corruption spree as head of that outlawed TRT party) as Thailand’s defender of the poor Isans.”
jeru hasn’t been able to show any evidence for this outrageous statement of my contributions to this blog.
He came up with a lame claim based on my posting of a piece of journalism. Worse, he claims I have lied on this blog and again came up with conjecture, not fact. So come on jeru, where is the evidence?
For once I agree with jeru, but not with his childish tone and name-calling. The election will not be clean. As well as TRT remnants, Samak, and the dinosaurs, the military is already pouring funds into rural areas (if their own words are to believed). This will probably be a rough and dirty election.
Didn’t Thailand send election observers to Cambodia in the early 90s, and possibly other places? If so maybe someone could point that out to the junta.
I’ll give you my bottomline assertion and then I will leave this forum for good because I think the guys in brown are coming for me.
I am surprised by the pro-coup group about their optimism for democracy in Thailand. I would assert in fact that Thailand is in a worse situation then ever in its entire history of democracy. I am worried because it now seems that the Thai Bangkok public can get their way through street demonstrations, and even so far as to ask the army to hold a coup in the name of good democracy.
I agree with Andrew Walker entirely except he needs to update himself on HMK and the fact that 99.9% of the population love HMK without conditions.
“I am more concerned about morality in the electoral process, and actually find ‘democracy’ quite scary….I am concerned that many people vote for whomever they think will ‘help’ them personally, and do not care about any negative or possible sinister characteristics of the politician.”
Me too, for example:
“The degree of freedom of political parties and candidates to organise, move, assemble and express their views publicly.”
Well, given the way that bigwig politicos divide up political turfs on a handshake, some of them being former mafia bosses, their behaviour indicates that they have certain vote returns locked in. This implies pressure on low level political bosses to return votes on target which implies social pressure, social pressure enforced by life enabling opportunities, after all, your village is the place where you and your family will remain ***for the rest of your natural lives***, not just some abstract temporary residence place as it is in the west. In the limit social pressure can even be enforced with violence and fear, although I really doubt if it would need much to be enforced in this manner, since people already know who to fear. The only posters I saw before the last abortive TRT election were threats, threats that you would lose your 30 baht healthcare if you didn’t vote TRT.
The whole thing presupposes **accountability*, if you don’t do your job, provide your service, you’re out and party x is in, whereas , most positions of economic sustenance of any sort that I have encountered are ***sinecures***, once you got it, it’s your’s by right, like Thaksin’s telecommunications concessions. If someone threatens your livelihood, watch out, then being an ex-police colonel comes in handy. TRT was quite effective in locking in sinecures.
Rarely in rural areas do you encounter the notion of service. As one very intelligent female professor and supervisor for short time at the university I taught at, explained to me, the head of HR considered herself the “Queen of Pencils” (her words, not mine). She would never accept that her job was to provide a service to others in the university. Accountability was something for people lower in the hierarchy. Economic rents and sinecures only, for those further up. Then there is the Banharn pork barrel model, politics is getting a lot of goodies for your locality, accountable (perhaps) goodie getters. IMHO people like Abhisit, Chuan Leekpai, and Anand, who form policy platforms in the best interests of the nation, that’s the only way that’ll make the country strong, then they need one more party to balance it, so it doesn’t suck up all power like the TRT.
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Observing an electoral fiction
When a politician like Thaksin and his TRT gang corrupt and intimidate the poor, massively and pervasively, will that show in Transparency International Index? I wonder . .
Northern Thaiwoman (#16) above describes election corruption and coercion in her community that is more realistic than Andrew Walker’s romantic ‘rural constitution’, or James Haughton’s Transparency International Index.
If the wife of the ex-Thai Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra herself, Khun Potjaman, publicly acknowledging that Potjaman was the Finance-Man of Thai Rak Thai Party personally subsidizing the TRT’s annual and election expenses by as much as 50% or more; does this not speak louder than any Transparency International Index why Thailand’s dominant political party during Thaksin had been so deeply corrupted . . . thus merrily assisting Thaksin & Potjaman in their family wealth-enriching endeavors, including changing or circumventing rules to assist Thaksin’s Shin enterprises stock price to go up 3-1/2 times during Thaksin’s rule and its eventual sale?
Awal Mula Permainan Bandarqq Online
To Bangkok Pundit and others Regarding Der Spiegel misquotes of Askew
Thanks to Bangkok Pundit for bringing the Der Spiegel passage to my attention – I have not encountered this piece, fortunately. In response to your query as to whether it represents my views – actually no – it is a complete mash of whatever I said to one Der Spiegel journalist in Pattani in June/July last. I have never laid the blame for the outburst of violence in the south to Thaksin, except to highlight that he laid a few of the immediate conditions. Strangely, this misrepresentation comes after I gave this journalist a copy of my monograph (Conspiracy, Politics and a Disorderly Border) where I question simplistic analyses like this.
Observing an electoral fiction
Well I will later list the full amount of tricks, money and orders that my northern rural family are exposed to in the upcoming election.
It may well be worse than the last time when 800 baht per person was offered for a TRT vote with a lift to the polling station and of course the direct orders from the kamnan to vote TRT or lose all access to everything not only for yourself but also for the village and of course a pleasant reminder that how you voted would be monitored.
Quite frankly anyone who thinks a Thai election in the rural areas is clean does not know what they are talking about. On election day itself there is usually not so much direct coercion going on although the April 2 election was a massive exception to this rule. Even at the recent charter referendum nothing happened.
There is a hell of a lot that goes on both before and after an election and it is not all about just money but direct coercion, threats, scare tactics. Then there is the power of the patronage system, but that is another matter. In rural Thailand an election is not about considering all the issues and making even a semi-informed choice. At the April 2 election nobody was eevn allowed to talk about a no vote let alone campaign for it. that would have resulted in at least extreme violence by those that decide who the villagers will vote for. This time around things will not be clean. However, they may actually be fairer where I vote in allowing more choice than back in April 2 as the TRT guys are still there although their ability to totally intimdate has diminished and the opposition will be able to campaign without fear of death. That at least will allow anyone who is independent enough to actually make a choice.
If any foreign body monitors a Thai election they will not see what goes on anyway and nobody is going to run to them with a complaint. How many complained about the few hundred baht they got to vote no in the charter referendum? Some of my family wanted to vote yes but it was easier to do as told and take the money and vote no. It is quite dangerous to make complaints and most will just go with the flow anyway. Thai democracy has a long way to go and it is quite dangerous for academics to make assumptions about it so it fits their theory or political stance, but to suggest that it is actually clean is a long way from the truth. To suggest the EU monitors may declare it clean is almost certainly true, but that is because they wont see what happens. You need to live in a community and be part of it to understand how it works.
Six threats and one opportunity
I thought I replied to Historicus already but Andrew Walker must have been on his deleting-censorious mood.
But OK Historicus if you say you did not mean to say or imply, by your poster, that Thaksin was Poor Isan’s champion, I believe you and I apologize for misreading your intent.
But I still maintain you deliberately lied when you tried to misrepresent the impending massive street protests in Sept-2006 when Thaksin was deposed by a coup.
I can see that Bangkok Pundit still looks for evidence – – on extrajudicial killings directed by Thaksin Bangkok Pundit?
Observing an electoral fiction
James Haughton: I’m not Jeru, and I don’t claim that Transparency International is part of the sinister Thai-Australian Thaksin lobby.
However, please consider the following:
1. The index you linked to relates to ‘perceived’ corruption levels and therefore may or may not bear a relationship to ‘actual’ corruption levels.
2. The index only goes to 2005, which is before Thaksin’s tax free sale of Shin Corp an event that might have affected peoples perception of corruption during 2006 and prior years.
3. The index is also before the new airport opening in late 2006, and given the knowledge of the problems regarding the airport, peoples perception of corruption during 2006 and prior years might have changed.
4. I would be interested to know what the effect on the index would be if corruption amongst low level bureaucrats/police/military etc was reduced, but at the same time there was an increase in corruption by one particular group. In such circumstances, I imagine it would be possible to perceive that corruption levels have decreased even if the corruption by that one group was at a grand scale.
Six threats and one opportunity
Historicus: I gave up a long time ago expecting such commentators to provide any evidence. I just ignore them.
Observing an electoral fiction
Below is a link to the report of the EU EOM on the commune council elections in February 2002.
ec.europa.eu/europeaid/projects/eidhr/pdf/elections-reports-cambodia-02_en.pdf
Six threats and one opportunity
Reply to David W (comment #14):
“… I fully agree with you that both Thaksin and the military must be criticized for a better future (along with numerous other actors like the media, academics, public intellectuals, etc), but it is a bit pointless trying to get either jeru or Republican to agree to that position…”
What a noble gesture. Your criticisms are not just academically motivated, but you actually aim to create a “better future” for Thailand. What a fearless, noble person you are. You are happy to criticize a former democratically-elected Prime Minister under attack by the royalists who are protected from criticism by lese majeste and a 50 year propaganda cult surrounding the king, but you omit to include the monarchy in the list of “numerous other actors” that should be criticized in order to bring about your “better future”.
What you and the other song mai ao academics can not seem to understand is that under the current censorship regime and propaganda surrounding the monarchy in Thailand today, your criticism of Thaksin automatically translates into rhetorical support for the royalists and the undemocratic political status quo they seek to achieve. And yet you posture as democrats wanting a “better future” for Thailand.
The outcome: the academics appear morally pure and high-minded, independent and above the dirty business of politics.
Observing an electoral fiction
I’d like to point out to Jeru or whatever he’s calling himself that under Thaksin, Thailand improved its standing in Transparency International’s corruption perception indices from 3.2 (in 2001) to 3.8 (in 2005). By contrast, from 1996 to 2001, the rating dropped from 3.3 to 3.2.
Although any rating under 5 indicates a government, police, business sector, etc, that is more corrupt than not, a 0.6 out of 10 increase in 5 years is still a significant achievement that gives the lie to many of the claims made about Thaksin being unprecedentedly corrupt, and justifies the claim that his government and the electoral processes which brought him to power are “relatively” clean, i.e., they are clean relative to their predecessors.
See Transparency’s website on corruption in Thailand here: http://www.transparency-thailand.org/en/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=13&Itemid=1
I now look forward to Jeru’s claim that he’s never heard of Transparency International before coming to this site, and that they are part of the sinister Thai-Australian Thaksin lobby.
Interview with Professor Kevin Hewison – Part Two
Only the first sentence in the above post was meant to be in italics
Interview with Professor Kevin Hewison – Part Two
On that note, ‘democracy’ has sadly become a tainted concept since America tried to violently impose ‘democracy’ on Iraq.
Pakistan today, undermining Palestinian election results, support for Saddam in the 1980’s etc etc ?????
I suspect the ‘my enemy’s enemy is my friend’ policy still outweighs any real push for ‘democracy’.
If the leader of the free world played straight, and set a better example, then IMO, it would not be so easy to argue for ‘managed democracy’ against ‘full democracy’ .
Six threats and one opportunity
Paul L: Ask yourself which manifestation of ‘democracy’ is better:
(1) a dominant party with an authoritarian/autocratic leader
or
(2) a choice of 2 or 3 major political groups
IMO neither is perfect, but there is reason to be optimistic that there will be less chance for the checks and balances to be subverted under scenario (2) above, especially when the leader under scenario (1) had no regard for the rule of law, authorized extra-judicial killings, pursued policies that enriched his family and friends, and avoided taxes by using tax havens, nominees and coercion of tax officials.
There is no need to run away and avoid the question (again).
IMO, it’s not people in brown uniforms you should fear, but rather people wearing white coats, if you still have the following opinion:
“You have said Thaksin is greedy. I don’t think he was so I don’t need to reconcile it. ”
Interview with Professor Kevin Hewison – Part Two
A fascinating interview – thank you.
Six threats and one opportunity
In post 51 I asked jeru, the accuser, to substantiate his claim that “Historicus and others always amuse when they attempt to portray Thaksin Shinawatra (the skedaddler with billions stowed in luggages in flight, the multi-billion offshore asset concealer, the head of the clan of tax cheaters, and the arguably biggest Thai mafia chieftain directing the corruption spree as head of that outlawed TRT party) as Thailand’s defender of the poor Isans.”
jeru hasn’t been able to show any evidence for this outrageous statement of my contributions to this blog.
He came up with a lame claim based on my posting of a piece of journalism. Worse, he claims I have lied on this blog and again came up with conjecture, not fact. So come on jeru, where is the evidence?
Observing an electoral fiction
For once I agree with jeru, but not with his childish tone and name-calling. The election will not be clean. As well as TRT remnants, Samak, and the dinosaurs, the military is already pouring funds into rural areas (if their own words are to believed). This will probably be a rough and dirty election.
Six threats and one opportunity
In modern society, morality has as much space in politics as it has in journalism, law, medicine, education, research, or in the economy, I guess.
Observing an electoral fiction
Didn’t Thailand send election observers to Cambodia in the early 90s, and possibly other places? If so maybe someone could point that out to the junta.
Six threats and one opportunity
Nganadeeleg,
I’ll give you my bottomline assertion and then I will leave this forum for good because I think the guys in brown are coming for me.
I am surprised by the pro-coup group about their optimism for democracy in Thailand. I would assert in fact that Thailand is in a worse situation then ever in its entire history of democracy. I am worried because it now seems that the Thai Bangkok public can get their way through street demonstrations, and even so far as to ask the army to hold a coup in the name of good democracy.
I agree with Andrew Walker entirely except he needs to update himself on HMK and the fact that 99.9% of the population love HMK without conditions.
Gotta run.
Observing an electoral fiction
“I am more concerned about morality in the electoral process, and actually find ‘democracy’ quite scary….I am concerned that many people vote for whomever they think will ‘help’ them personally, and do not care about any negative or possible sinister characteristics of the politician.”
Me too, for example:
“The degree of freedom of political parties and candidates to organise, move, assemble and express their views publicly.”
Well, given the way that bigwig politicos divide up political turfs on a handshake, some of them being former mafia bosses, their behaviour indicates that they have certain vote returns locked in. This implies pressure on low level political bosses to return votes on target which implies social pressure, social pressure enforced by life enabling opportunities, after all, your village is the place where you and your family will remain ***for the rest of your natural lives***, not just some abstract temporary residence place as it is in the west. In the limit social pressure can even be enforced with violence and fear, although I really doubt if it would need much to be enforced in this manner, since people already know who to fear. The only posters I saw before the last abortive TRT election were threats, threats that you would lose your 30 baht healthcare if you didn’t vote TRT.
The whole thing presupposes **accountability*, if you don’t do your job, provide your service, you’re out and party x is in, whereas , most positions of economic sustenance of any sort that I have encountered are ***sinecures***, once you got it, it’s your’s by right, like Thaksin’s telecommunications concessions. If someone threatens your livelihood, watch out, then being an ex-police colonel comes in handy. TRT was quite effective in locking in sinecures.
Rarely in rural areas do you encounter the notion of service. As one very intelligent female professor and supervisor for short time at the university I taught at, explained to me, the head of HR considered herself the “Queen of Pencils” (her words, not mine). She would never accept that her job was to provide a service to others in the university. Accountability was something for people lower in the hierarchy. Economic rents and sinecures only, for those further up. Then there is the Banharn pork barrel model, politics is getting a lot of goodies for your locality, accountable (perhaps) goodie getters. IMHO people like Abhisit, Chuan Leekpai, and Anand, who form policy platforms in the best interests of the nation, that’s the only way that’ll make the country strong, then they need one more party to balance it, so it doesn’t suck up all power like the TRT.
Six threats and one opportunity
Srithanonchai: So does morality have any place in ‘democratic mass politics’ ?