Comments

Amen to that. True it’s all been by the grace of the ‘benevolent’ military dictatorship embarking Gorbachev fashion on the path of reform for its own reasons as the Chinese road map closed and the Indonesian one beckoned.

True also …from the mountains of eastern Shan State to the swamps of northern Rakhine. People who have rarely felt included in Myanmar’s national project will be looking for reason to celebrate this result and hope for a better future. Their longstanding grievances about exclusion, chauvinism and conflict will take time to remedy. But a government elected by the people has a much better chance of writing a new chapter in the country’s history.

To paraphrase Alexis de Tocqueville a reforming govt is at its most vulnerable, and this has been the case from glasnost and perestroika to the Burmese Way to Democracy. The generals appear to have painted themselves into a corner, and found themselves locked into the process. Talk about best laid plans and unintended consequences.

Whether the Lady can find her own road map out of our generals’ Order Baru cum Reformasi process is another story about to unfold.

Bearing in mind the Indonesian precedent in history, can we hope to hold the military keep up its end of the ‘bargain’?

Hi @Risma, re the Indonesian media, I wrote my comment on this link

http://www.newmandala.org/2015/11/15/pernyataan-mendukung-michael-buehler/#comment-1926289

FRR you obviously have no clue. If you are in Bangkok or anywhere else in Thailand, strike a conversation with any Thai to inquire about what the inane ‘worse consequences of overlooking the playboy prince in favor of his more-regarded sister …” that Mr. Paul Sanderson authoritatively concluded, citing his article as a “collaboration between New Mandala and Policy Forum, Asia and the Pacific’s platform for analysis and discussion on public policy” just to make sure everyone understands the ‘deep research’ behind thereof.

I thought it was New Mandala’s (& ANU’s on the ground coverage) that put Jokowi in power in the first place — with articles such as this.

http://www.newmandala.org/2014/07/10/prabowos-game-plan/

Fred Riggs gave this same issue of “the revolving constitutions” of Thailand considerable attention almost half a century ago. He noted, “To political scientists who regard written constitutions as serious statements of the rules of the game, the parade of revolving charters under which the Thai government has operated since 1932 must appear astonishing indeed.” (Riggs, 1966, p.152)

Further in the same section, he interprets the political theatre enacted around the rapid appearance of new constitutions, thus: “Clearly these constitutional documents cannot be taken seriously as binding statements of the rules of the political game, as expressions of fundamental law. It is apparent that, whenever important shifts in the personnel of the ruling circle took place, the previous charter was suspended to permit the promulgation of new rules more compatible with the interests and inclinations of the winning group. The rules, no doubt, were followed, but only as they proved convenient for the power holders. Constitutionalism was not designed so much to constrain the rulers as to facilitate their rule. The charters, in other words, did not prescribe the effective norms of political behavior, but were used to cast a cloak of legitimacy over the operations of succeeding rulers and to set the stage for a play to be enacted by the extrabureaucratic performers – parliaments, political parties, electors. These performers played their parts, most of the time in cheerful conformity with the prescribed scenarios, although between 1945 and 1947 they almost succeeded in inverting roles with their bureaucratic protagonists. Had they really succeeded, the subsequent political history of Thailand may have been quite different.
As it was, Siamese political parties and parliaments were largely used to legitimize decisions previously taken in the bureaucracy by a ruling circle of military and civil service politicians. To some degree, these constitutional devices also provided a safety vent for criticism of the group in power, although this outlet could always be closed whenever the cries of protest became too vehement, or when those in power began to feel uneasy about the safety of their offices.” (Riggs, 1966, p.152-3).

Riggs, F. W. (1966). Thailand: The Modernization of a Bureaucratic Polity. (Honululu: East-West Center Press).

Given the many useful insights Riggs provides in his interpretation of past events and processes that seem to me, at least, to bear a close resemblance to the present, I would have thought it is probably a fine moment for political scientists and historians to revisit his work and see if there are still lessons to be learned in today’s context.

Headlines like “Thailand’s Rocky Road to Democracy” tend to imply that attaining a state of “democracy” is part of a linear process that Thailand is inevitably travelling towards, despite obstacles along the way, and is aspired to by all, rather than just one of several potential outcomes. Rather it seems to have rapidly been losing favour as desirable or attainable, at least with those holding the reigns of power during recent years, which must open the door to alternative explanations and interpretations of the Thai polity, some of which have been explored here on NM in 2015 I note.

@Rudy Harahap: It seems that this follow-up statement was released because the Indonesian media created a strawman (saying that Buehler claimed USD 80k had been paid by Widodo to meet Obama. Buehler never said this), which was then “denied” by the Indonesian govenrment.

“The best way to prevent abuses by those elected to power is to strengthen democratic institutions, foster a free press and hold consistent elections where the people can vote corrupt politicians out.”

Thailand is a developing country and thus unsuited to factional ‘democracy’, that’s why Thais are so relaxed about shutting down the worthless political farce and putting someone decisive in charge.