I guess I’ll try to make myself a bit clearer, although I doubt it will change anything. So here goes.
I actually find your comments and opinions interesting actually, Republican. Useful to think with, even if I don’t always agree with them. You are clearly informed and intelligent, and have a position you vigorously present. It’s your attitude and ‘voice’ that I find annoying, distracting and ultimately detrimental to the substance of your arguments. You come across in your language and rhetoric as holier-than-thou, as far smarter than the rest of us, and as not particularly interested in or impressed by the thoughts of others. I’m not sure I can ever recall you changing your mind on a subject or acknowledging the value of someone else’s comments or perspective (unless it confirms your own ideas or arguments – i.e. your recent comments on Thongchai agreeing with you). You also have never, to my memory, acknowledged that you misunderstood what someone else was claiming or arguing previously, and thus have to adjust your position accordingly. You also never ask anyone for clarification regarding their position or stance; rather, you clarify their position for them, since you obviously understand it all already and don’t need to actually enquire any further. And you enjoy tossing around highly charged and polarizing adjectives and adverbs in your (often rather dubious and debatable) descriptions of others opinons and statement. Which is to say, you pontificate and lecture well, but as far as engaging in a discussion, I’m not so impressed. But then, as I’ve stated, you don’t seem very interested in changing anyone’s mind through persusasion. You debate well, if one restricts the sense of debate to dueling, but not so well if one imagines that means a calm, mutually informative dialogue of contrasting opinions and arguments.
I find it ironic that you appeal to an academic code of ettiquette, because your language, style, rhetoric and attitude would not – I believe – be particularly welcome in an academic conference, workshop or seminar room. Rather, it represents a style of presentation most academics would prefer to stop engaging with since the interactions are so uproductive. But there is a big difference – obviously – between an academic website of anonymously exchanged comments mediated by technology and an academic conference room of living, co-present people trying to hold a discussion.
And for the record (and as an example of the above):
1) I don’t find you terrifying. I find your language and rhetoric annoying and insulting.
2) I don’t think you intimidate people; I think you alienate them.
3) I thoroughly enjoy vigorous and opinionated debate. I just don’t see you actually doing that (but again, there are different styles of debate for different environments and venues…)
4) By “personalized rhetoric” I didn’t mean ad hominen attacks, I meant insulting characterizations (see #6 below). I wasn’t very clear there.
5) I’m not an expat, I’m an academic (and I obviously think your style of ‘academic’ exchange leaves much to be desired)
6) I’m not whining, I’m criticizing. Do you often accuse your fellow academic peers of whining to their face? Do you really have so little respect or consideration for them? Again, though, I don’t particularly see your communicative style or rhetoric as academic. They conform rather to the typical bombastic style and rhetoric of opinionated pontificators on weblogs and websites all around the world. I doubt you would use such language in either a live academic forum or in a published journal or essay. At least I presume you wouldn’t.
To Grasshopper (#27): well your post was mostly nonsensical. I wish you people would read more carefully. If you read the last paragraph of Thongchai’s post (#23) you would see that the issue IS about whether or not I had accused Thongchai of being a royalist (or, in your words, a “monarchist”). I denied the accusation, and explained why. And by the way, if you can’t tell the difference between a fascist and a liberal then you ought to go back and take Politics 100 again.
To amberwaves (#28): not a cheap shot at all. Unlike Republican, Thongchai and numerous other academics do not confine themselves to academic blogs but write for the media, with the obvious intention of influencing political discourse. If one wishes to be politically active (unlike me) then one of course should expect criticism. And the public (at least in a democracy) has the right to expect accountability. But political accountability is a concept that many academics in Thailand appear to be unfamiliar with. They love to pronounce from on high (the philosopher king) but when they are implicated in something unpleasant (eg. a coup) they refuse to accept any responsibility. Instead of calling on God to bless Thongchai you ought to be a little less starry-eyed.
To David W. (#30): I had to laugh reading your post. Republican “bludgeons his opponents into silence” …. what, on a webblog!!!??? Assuming that I am so terrifying that I intimidate people from tapping on their keyboard and pressing “send” then these people are obviously in the wrong place if they are unwilling to engage in vigorous academic debate. You say I use “personalized rhetoric”. Please tell me one instance where I have attacked the person and not the person’s political or academic stance? This is an academic website! If you prefer something more chummy and congenial then there are plenty of sites for expats to compare their Thailand stories. But if you are here to debate then quit whining about the terrifying Republican and defend your position.
Your position (with amberwaves) re. the “cheap shot” (…“discrepant public visibility”…) is absurd. As I said before, if you are active in the media then you should expect criticism because your actions will potentially influence the hundreds of thousands of people who read your columns – which is presumably why the politically-minded academics choose to write them. Republican writes occasionally on NM, for whom? … a few dozen academics and people interested in Thai Studies. Whose writings do you think are going to affect more people, and therefore whose writings are more in need of being held accountable? You are implying that because I did not write for the media before September 19 it is hypocritical that I criticize Thongchai now? What kind of ridiculous argument is that?
Please support Asst. Prof. Boonsong Chaisinghanon,
and oppose the threat to academic freedom
Dear Friends of Thailand,
Asst. Prof. Boonsong Chaisinghanon, a philosophy lecturer of the Faculty of Arts, Silpakorn University is reported to have received a letter from Asst. Prof. Maneepin Promsudhirak, Acting Dean of the Faculty, requesting the answer sheets and score details in Thai Civilization courses that Asst. Prof. Boonsong teaches. The letter reads;
“A request has been made by investigating officers of Muang District Provincial Police Station, Nakhon Pathom, for the answer sheets and scores given to students who sat the examinations for the Thai Civilization courses from the years of 2005 until the present. The documents will be used in the preparation of evidence for lèse majesté charges. Please send the said materials to the Faculty by 20 July 2007 for onward submission to the investigating officers.”
We the undersigned deem the move made by the investigating officers and the university administration an unprecedented gravest treat to academic freedom. Such an action also indicates that attempts to use lèse majesté charge as a tool to impede freedom of expression among Thai people still exist, and now they have encroached into the academic realm.
We the undersigned would like to send our moral support to Asst. Prof. Boonsong Chaisinghanon and demand that all attempts to severe academic freedom be immediately halted.
[…] puppet government really care what they say?) to make their judgement on the draft constitution. As argued on New Mandala last week, the explicit vote on the draft charter matters a lot less than the more […]
But I sense more and more people seem to be less willing to accept the flaunting of rules by a small group (be it TRT or the military).
Would be a welcome change, but I’ll believe it when I see it.
If there really is a move away from the patronage system, then the ground should be ripe for a new force to emerge and take the ground that the Octoberists lost when they threw their hats in with Thaksin.
That must be a great relief to his students … but every student who ever took that course with him must be worried.
What kind of dean would allow police to interview students about a professor? Without at least informing the professor? Would this be common or is it just a byproduct of the current era?
Was this style of repression the norm back in the 1960’s and 1970’s? The issue would never come up?
re Sawarin>Academics have no need to apologise for their consciences (be it Marxist or royalist).
Marxist or royalist? Are these are the only two ideological choices we have?
Oh dear, it seems Thomas Paine was right when he wrote: “Every spot of the old world is overrun with oppression. Freedom hath been hunted round the globe. Asia, and Africa, have long expelled her.”
I have drafted two page response to Republican, Somsak and the like-minded who have been attacking me and some others for months on Thai webboards. There are two main issues:
1) There was a difference between A. standing behind democracy and the democratic process, and B. standing behind Thaksin-as-the-only-defense-of-democracy. All the accusations are based on the B. view, therefore seeing everybody else as royalist opportunist, assisting the royalist, anti-democratic, etc. Even the fact that many who are under attacks from the B view were the main critics of the royalists in public, that doesn’t matter.
2) But the attacks are applicable to some of the 2NOs. The problem is that the “2NOs” category is a misleading, false category that lumps many stances together, from the not-pro-thaksin but anti-royalist, to the Thaksin-haters, the Thaksinophobics, who were not anti-royalist. The “2NOs” is a strawman for the sole purpose of the B view to attack its opponents, but serves no other useful purposes.
Given the clash in Bangkok a few hours ago, however, I felt it is a bad taste to post two page argument now.
I hope that by using a real name jumping in the middle of the polarized politics is in itself an invitation to being scrutinized. It won’t get much fame but get bruises and dirty. And lose lots of friends too. 🙁 It doesn’t need a PhD or a veteran to know this even before the jump. But there are good criticism and bad criticism, based on a variety of criteria. I never and will never call for a censorship of any bad criticism. But it is my choice and my rights to read or not to read, to dismiss those criticsm or to respond. If I choose to ignore it, it is not to avoid being scrutinized. On the contrary, it allows even a bad criticism to survive.
The electorate is smarter than you give them credit for, Srithanonchai. Most of them – whether rural or urban – do understand the significance of what is happening in the current struggle for power in Thai politics. Its just that a lot of them feel disempowered – they think there’s nothing they can do to effect the outcome.
But I sense more and more people seem to be less willing to accept the flaunting of rules by a small group (be it TRT or the military). There seems to be a growing sense developing at the grassroots level that all political players should ‘play by the rules’ – and surely this is a good thing to have come out of the debacle of the past 12-16 months. The ‘social contract’ is getting stronger.
Your comment about the discrepant public visibility of Thongchai and Republican’s political stances and arguments is not, in my opinion and as I’ve stated previously on this site, a cheap shot. Especially given the personalized rhetoric that Republican likes to employ to bludgeon his opponents into silence (for as Grasshopper points out, it clearly isn’t designed to persuade or conjole). It is certainly not an unfair question, I believe, to ask Republican what exactly he or she was arguing publicly and identifiably in the public realm before the Sept 19 putsch given his or her holier-than-thou moral-cum-political stance. I just wonder how large are the windows in the glass house he or she lives in….
So Thongchai failed “to support more strongly the democratically-elected Thai Rak Thai government in the face of the royalist-manipulated anti-Thaksin movement before September 19?”
Correct. He chose to support constitutional processes instead. That’s known as a principled position.
Republican’s arguments strongly remind me of the “more radical than thou” brickbats the Maoists used to toss at the Trots and others back in my college days.
As Republican notes, Thongchai’s positions are publicly available “in numerous columns and web blogs,” so people can judge for themselves.
Which – I can’t resist taking the cheap shot here – they cannot do for pseudonymous Republican, (or me, for that matter).
Thais have their back against the wall…They just want to get this whole process over with and have someone elected whoever they may be in office. It’s as simple as that. Does anyone really think the people here are going to sit and analyze the amendments when they don’t even have a functional government…In the end this is a cultural issue not a legal one. Thais want this settled.
Republican, don’t you see the response is not about whether or not he is a monarchist, but more to do with the language you’re using which has attempted to pigeon-hole a succession of people. In this, you are just as guilty as the people you are protesting against and you will not win any argument by virtue of being the other side of the polemic. Also, I wonder for my own indulgence, were you educated in America? I do like being vindictive about fascist liberals!
If you read my posts carefully nowhere did I accuse you of royalism. My “problem”, to use your words, is that for me, your declared anti-royalism today lacks principle and credibility, given your failure to support more strongly the democratically-elected Thai Rak Thai government in the face of the royalist-manipulated anti-Thaksin movement before September 19. Your repeated insistence, expressed in numerous columns and web blogs that the PAD had the right to express their political views in effect played into the hands of the royalists. Of course the PAD had the right to express their political views (even if they were, in fact, part of a larger plot to “topple” Thaksin), but then was not the time for anti-royalist academics to argue for the right to express those views, when it was forbidden (due to lèse majesté) to express one’s views against the royalists. By that time royalist discourse had taken hold of much of the media and the academic commentary. For those academics who choose to be politically active in the media, and who define themselves as anti-royalist, this was the time to stand firmly behind the beleaguered democratically-elected government, because the only way that Thaksin and Thai Rak Thai could have been overthrown, given their large majority in the National Assembly, was through royal intervention of some sort. But you – as well as Nidhi, Kasien, and many others – did not do that, which is why it is hard to take these academics’ democratic pronouncements seriously now. I wonder why you did not put more of your energies, at this particular time of political struggle, into insisting on the right of others to express their criticism of the king’s political interventions. Standing in the middle – declaring one’s opposition to royal intervention while insisting on the right of the PAD to express the views – was, as Somsak points out, disingenuous.
So either bad judgment, or bad tactics. You would be more credible if you admitted it.
Thongchai: Your efforts are much appreciated. As for the organizers of the conference, adopting a more transparent approach from the beginning would have been helpful. Only very recently, they announced who is on the committee.
nganadeeleg: Critical academic analysis will certainly not overlook Thaksin’s deeds, good or bad. It will put them into perspective. Your point of view will enter into the analysis as belonging to one set of elements in the overall complex of communications about Thaksin, the protests, and the coup.
Srithanonchai: Hopefully that critical academic analysis will not overlook the actions of Thaksin & TRT in their own demise.
When the history is written, I will be interested in how the democratic legitimacy given to Thaksin by the electorate will be reconciled with his kleptocratic tendencies.
– As we know, Handley’s book is banned in Thailand. But Handley’s article that has not been written yet cannot be banned. So, he is part of the monarchy panels. He will have a paper, but not about his book or on that panel. Let people talk about his book openly at the conference. He doesn’t have to respond.
– But is Handley a person non grata? Nobody knows. I am not going to ask him to take a risk finding it out at an airport. His paper will be read by somebody else at the conference. His name and paper title is in the proposal that has been approved.
– No, Sulak and Thitinan are not on the monarchy panels. Details of the progam (all accepted panels/papers) should be on the Conference web site in Aug, according to the organiser whom I asked. We (including me) will get a better sense of all panels by then.
If Republican, Somsak and else believe that I am a royalist under cloak or that I support the coup, it is not my problem to explain. Problems are in their own views, politics, and judgments.
–
Obviously, Thaksin and TRT opened themselves up for attacks. But arrogance, ego, stubbornness, superstition, autocratic style are hardly reasons to call for a nayok phraratchathan, much less for welcoming a coup and joining its plotters. I mentioned the positions of The Nation and Thirayut. Anyway, I am not very interested in politically or personally motivated myth building, from whichever side. Rather, I prefer critical academic analysis, regarding which a great deal more still needs to be done.
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Thongchai’s update on the Thai Studies conference
Republican,
I guess I’ll try to make myself a bit clearer, although I doubt it will change anything. So here goes.
I actually find your comments and opinions interesting actually, Republican. Useful to think with, even if I don’t always agree with them. You are clearly informed and intelligent, and have a position you vigorously present. It’s your attitude and ‘voice’ that I find annoying, distracting and ultimately detrimental to the substance of your arguments. You come across in your language and rhetoric as holier-than-thou, as far smarter than the rest of us, and as not particularly interested in or impressed by the thoughts of others. I’m not sure I can ever recall you changing your mind on a subject or acknowledging the value of someone else’s comments or perspective (unless it confirms your own ideas or arguments – i.e. your recent comments on Thongchai agreeing with you). You also have never, to my memory, acknowledged that you misunderstood what someone else was claiming or arguing previously, and thus have to adjust your position accordingly. You also never ask anyone for clarification regarding their position or stance; rather, you clarify their position for them, since you obviously understand it all already and don’t need to actually enquire any further. And you enjoy tossing around highly charged and polarizing adjectives and adverbs in your (often rather dubious and debatable) descriptions of others opinons and statement. Which is to say, you pontificate and lecture well, but as far as engaging in a discussion, I’m not so impressed. But then, as I’ve stated, you don’t seem very interested in changing anyone’s mind through persusasion. You debate well, if one restricts the sense of debate to dueling, but not so well if one imagines that means a calm, mutually informative dialogue of contrasting opinions and arguments.
I find it ironic that you appeal to an academic code of ettiquette, because your language, style, rhetoric and attitude would not – I believe – be particularly welcome in an academic conference, workshop or seminar room. Rather, it represents a style of presentation most academics would prefer to stop engaging with since the interactions are so uproductive. But there is a big difference – obviously – between an academic website of anonymously exchanged comments mediated by technology and an academic conference room of living, co-present people trying to hold a discussion.
And for the record (and as an example of the above):
1) I don’t find you terrifying. I find your language and rhetoric annoying and insulting.
2) I don’t think you intimidate people; I think you alienate them.
3) I thoroughly enjoy vigorous and opinionated debate. I just don’t see you actually doing that (but again, there are different styles of debate for different environments and venues…)
4) By “personalized rhetoric” I didn’t mean ad hominen attacks, I meant insulting characterizations (see #6 below). I wasn’t very clear there.
5) I’m not an expat, I’m an academic (and I obviously think your style of ‘academic’ exchange leaves much to be desired)
6) I’m not whining, I’m criticizing. Do you often accuse your fellow academic peers of whining to their face? Do you really have so little respect or consideration for them? Again, though, I don’t particularly see your communicative style or rhetoric as academic. They conform rather to the typical bombastic style and rhetoric of opinionated pontificators on weblogs and websites all around the world. I doubt you would use such language in either a live academic forum or in a published journal or essay. At least I presume you wouldn’t.
Cambodia’s oil curse?
No, giving everyone a check from the oil profits is a horrible idea. Cambodia can instead create jobs and industries with that money.
Thongchai’s update on the Thai Studies conference
To Grasshopper (#27): well your post was mostly nonsensical. I wish you people would read more carefully. If you read the last paragraph of Thongchai’s post (#23) you would see that the issue IS about whether or not I had accused Thongchai of being a royalist (or, in your words, a “monarchist”). I denied the accusation, and explained why. And by the way, if you can’t tell the difference between a fascist and a liberal then you ought to go back and take Politics 100 again.
To amberwaves (#28): not a cheap shot at all. Unlike Republican, Thongchai and numerous other academics do not confine themselves to academic blogs but write for the media, with the obvious intention of influencing political discourse. If one wishes to be politically active (unlike me) then one of course should expect criticism. And the public (at least in a democracy) has the right to expect accountability. But political accountability is a concept that many academics in Thailand appear to be unfamiliar with. They love to pronounce from on high (the philosopher king) but when they are implicated in something unpleasant (eg. a coup) they refuse to accept any responsibility. Instead of calling on God to bless Thongchai you ought to be a little less starry-eyed.
To David W. (#30): I had to laugh reading your post. Republican “bludgeons his opponents into silence” …. what, on a webblog!!!??? Assuming that I am so terrifying that I intimidate people from tapping on their keyboard and pressing “send” then these people are obviously in the wrong place if they are unwilling to engage in vigorous academic debate. You say I use “personalized rhetoric”. Please tell me one instance where I have attacked the person and not the person’s political or academic stance? This is an academic website! If you prefer something more chummy and congenial then there are plenty of sites for expats to compare their Thailand stories. But if you are here to debate then quit whining about the terrifying Republican and defend your position.
Your position (with amberwaves) re. the “cheap shot” (…“discrepant public visibility”…) is absurd. As I said before, if you are active in the media then you should expect criticism because your actions will potentially influence the hundreds of thousands of people who read your columns – which is presumably why the politically-minded academics choose to write them. Republican writes occasionally on NM, for whom? … a few dozen academics and people interested in Thai Studies. Whose writings do you think are going to affect more people, and therefore whose writings are more in need of being held accountable? You are implying that because I did not write for the media before September 19 it is hypocritical that I criticize Thongchai now? What kind of ridiculous argument is that?
Academic freedom?
There is now an online petition on this issue:
Please support Asst. Prof. Boonsong Chaisinghanon,
and oppose the threat to academic freedom
Dear Friends of Thailand,
Asst. Prof. Boonsong Chaisinghanon, a philosophy lecturer of the Faculty of Arts, Silpakorn University is reported to have received a letter from Asst. Prof. Maneepin Promsudhirak, Acting Dean of the Faculty, requesting the answer sheets and score details in Thai Civilization courses that Asst. Prof. Boonsong teaches. The letter reads;
“A request has been made by investigating officers of Muang District Provincial Police Station, Nakhon Pathom, for the answer sheets and scores given to students who sat the examinations for the Thai Civilization courses from the years of 2005 until the present. The documents will be used in the preparation of evidence for lèse majesté charges. Please send the said materials to the Faculty by 20 July 2007 for onward submission to the investigating officers.”
We the undersigned deem the move made by the investigating officers and the university administration an unprecedented gravest treat to academic freedom. Such an action also indicates that attempts to use lèse majesté charge as a tool to impede freedom of expression among Thai people still exist, and now they have encroached into the academic realm.
We the undersigned would like to send our moral support to Asst. Prof. Boonsong Chaisinghanon and demand that all attempts to severe academic freedom be immediately halted.
Sincerely,
The Undersigned
Click Here to Sign Petition
Note: For further information about the case, please visit
http://www.prachatai.com/english/news.php?id=111
http://www.prachatai.com/english/news.php?id=115
No!
[…] puppet government really care what they say?) to make their judgement on the draft constitution. As argued on New Mandala last week, the explicit vote on the draft charter matters a lot less than the more […]
Thoughts on the referendum from Thongchai
But I sense more and more people seem to be less willing to accept the flaunting of rules by a small group (be it TRT or the military).
Would be a welcome change, but I’ll believe it when I see it.
If there really is a move away from the patronage system, then the ground should be ripe for a new force to emerge and take the ground that the Octoberists lost when they threw their hats in with Thaksin.
Academic freedom?
Now Prof. Boonsong is refusing to turn over the exam papers or his grades to the police:
Lecturer refuses to hand over ‘lèse majesté’ examination papers
http://www.prachatai.com/english/news.php?id=115
That must be a great relief to his students … but every student who ever took that course with him must be worried.
What kind of dean would allow police to interview students about a professor? Without at least informing the professor? Would this be common or is it just a byproduct of the current era?
Was this style of repression the norm back in the 1960’s and 1970’s? The issue would never come up?
Thongchai’s update on the Thai Studies conference
re Sawarin>Academics have no need to apologise for their consciences (be it Marxist or royalist).
Marxist or royalist? Are these are the only two ideological choices we have?
Oh dear, it seems Thomas Paine was right when he wrote: “Every spot of the old world is overrun with oppression. Freedom hath been hunted round the globe. Asia, and Africa, have long expelled her.”
Thongchai’s update on the Thai Studies conference
I have drafted two page response to Republican, Somsak and the like-minded who have been attacking me and some others for months on Thai webboards. There are two main issues:
1) There was a difference between A. standing behind democracy and the democratic process, and B. standing behind Thaksin-as-the-only-defense-of-democracy. All the accusations are based on the B. view, therefore seeing everybody else as royalist opportunist, assisting the royalist, anti-democratic, etc. Even the fact that many who are under attacks from the B view were the main critics of the royalists in public, that doesn’t matter.
2) But the attacks are applicable to some of the 2NOs. The problem is that the “2NOs” category is a misleading, false category that lumps many stances together, from the not-pro-thaksin but anti-royalist, to the Thaksin-haters, the Thaksinophobics, who were not anti-royalist. The “2NOs” is a strawman for the sole purpose of the B view to attack its opponents, but serves no other useful purposes.
Given the clash in Bangkok a few hours ago, however, I felt it is a bad taste to post two page argument now.
I hope that by using a real name jumping in the middle of the polarized politics is in itself an invitation to being scrutinized. It won’t get much fame but get bruises and dirty. And lose lots of friends too. 🙁 It doesn’t need a PhD or a veteran to know this even before the jump. But there are good criticism and bad criticism, based on a variety of criteria. I never and will never call for a censorship of any bad criticism. But it is my choice and my rights to read or not to read, to dismiss those criticsm or to respond. If I choose to ignore it, it is not to avoid being scrutinized. On the contrary, it allows even a bad criticism to survive.
Thoughts on the referendum from Thongchai
The electorate is smarter than you give them credit for, Srithanonchai. Most of them – whether rural or urban – do understand the significance of what is happening in the current struggle for power in Thai politics. Its just that a lot of them feel disempowered – they think there’s nothing they can do to effect the outcome.
But I sense more and more people seem to be less willing to accept the flaunting of rules by a small group (be it TRT or the military). There seems to be a growing sense developing at the grassroots level that all political players should ‘play by the rules’ – and surely this is a good thing to have come out of the debacle of the past 12-16 months. The ‘social contract’ is getting stronger.
Thongchai’s update on the Thai Studies conference
Amberwaves,
Your comment about the discrepant public visibility of Thongchai and Republican’s political stances and arguments is not, in my opinion and as I’ve stated previously on this site, a cheap shot. Especially given the personalized rhetoric that Republican likes to employ to bludgeon his opponents into silence (for as Grasshopper points out, it clearly isn’t designed to persuade or conjole). It is certainly not an unfair question, I believe, to ask Republican what exactly he or she was arguing publicly and identifiably in the public realm before the Sept 19 putsch given his or her holier-than-thou moral-cum-political stance. I just wonder how large are the windows in the glass house he or she lives in….
Thongchai’s update on the Thai Studies conference
So Thongchai failed “to support more strongly the democratically-elected Thai Rak Thai government in the face of the royalist-manipulated anti-Thaksin movement before September 19?”
Correct. He chose to support constitutional processes instead. That’s known as a principled position.
Republican’s arguments strongly remind me of the “more radical than thou” brickbats the Maoists used to toss at the Trots and others back in my college days.
As Republican notes, Thongchai’s positions are publicly available “in numerous columns and web blogs,” so people can judge for themselves.
Which – I can’t resist taking the cheap shot here – they cannot do for pseudonymous Republican, (or me, for that matter).
No!
Thais have their back against the wall…They just want to get this whole process over with and have someone elected whoever they may be in office. It’s as simple as that. Does anyone really think the people here are going to sit and analyze the amendments when they don’t even have a functional government…In the end this is a cultural issue not a legal one. Thais want this settled.
Thongchai’s update on the Thai Studies conference
Republican, don’t you see the response is not about whether or not he is a monarchist, but more to do with the language you’re using which has attempted to pigeon-hole a succession of people. In this, you are just as guilty as the people you are protesting against and you will not win any argument by virtue of being the other side of the polemic. Also, I wonder for my own indulgence, were you educated in America? I do like being vindictive about fascist liberals!
Thongchai’s update on the Thai Studies conference
If you read my posts carefully nowhere did I accuse you of royalism. My “problem”, to use your words, is that for me, your declared anti-royalism today lacks principle and credibility, given your failure to support more strongly the democratically-elected Thai Rak Thai government in the face of the royalist-manipulated anti-Thaksin movement before September 19. Your repeated insistence, expressed in numerous columns and web blogs that the PAD had the right to express their political views in effect played into the hands of the royalists. Of course the PAD had the right to express their political views (even if they were, in fact, part of a larger plot to “topple” Thaksin), but then was not the time for anti-royalist academics to argue for the right to express those views, when it was forbidden (due to lèse majesté) to express one’s views against the royalists. By that time royalist discourse had taken hold of much of the media and the academic commentary. For those academics who choose to be politically active in the media, and who define themselves as anti-royalist, this was the time to stand firmly behind the beleaguered democratically-elected government, because the only way that Thaksin and Thai Rak Thai could have been overthrown, given their large majority in the National Assembly, was through royal intervention of some sort. But you – as well as Nidhi, Kasien, and many others – did not do that, which is why it is hard to take these academics’ democratic pronouncements seriously now. I wonder why you did not put more of your energies, at this particular time of political struggle, into insisting on the right of others to express their criticism of the king’s political interventions. Standing in the middle – declaring one’s opposition to royal intervention while insisting on the right of the PAD to express the views – was, as Somsak points out, disingenuous.
So either bad judgment, or bad tactics. You would be more credible if you admitted it.
Thongchai’s update on the Thai Studies conference
Thongchai: Your efforts are much appreciated. As for the organizers of the conference, adopting a more transparent approach from the beginning would have been helpful. Only very recently, they announced who is on the committee.
nganadeeleg: Critical academic analysis will certainly not overlook Thaksin’s deeds, good or bad. It will put them into perspective. Your point of view will enter into the analysis as belonging to one set of elements in the overall complex of communications about Thaksin, the protests, and the coup.
Thongchai’s update on the Thai Studies conference
Srithanonchai: Hopefully that critical academic analysis will not overlook the actions of Thaksin & TRT in their own demise.
When the history is written, I will be interested in how the democratic legitimacy given to Thaksin by the electorate will be reconciled with his kleptocratic tendencies.
Thongchai’s update on the Thai Studies conference
– As we know, Handley’s book is banned in Thailand. But Handley’s article that has not been written yet cannot be banned. So, he is part of the monarchy panels. He will have a paper, but not about his book or on that panel. Let people talk about his book openly at the conference. He doesn’t have to respond.
– But is Handley a person non grata? Nobody knows. I am not going to ask him to take a risk finding it out at an airport. His paper will be read by somebody else at the conference. His name and paper title is in the proposal that has been approved.
– No, Sulak and Thitinan are not on the monarchy panels. Details of the progam (all accepted panels/papers) should be on the Conference web site in Aug, according to the organiser whom I asked. We (including me) will get a better sense of all panels by then.
If Republican, Somsak and else believe that I am a royalist under cloak or that I support the coup, it is not my problem to explain. Problems are in their own views, politics, and judgments.
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Thoughts on the referendum from Thongchai
“Most Thais recognise that the country is at a crossroads.” I really doubt this.
Thongchai’s update on the Thai Studies conference
Obviously, Thaksin and TRT opened themselves up for attacks. But arrogance, ego, stubbornness, superstition, autocratic style are hardly reasons to call for a nayok phraratchathan, much less for welcoming a coup and joining its plotters. I mentioned the positions of The Nation and Thirayut. Anyway, I am not very interested in politically or personally motivated myth building, from whichever side. Rather, I prefer critical academic analysis, regarding which a great deal more still needs to be done.