What does Thailand have in common with Russia under “Stalin”? Or China under Mao, Cambodia under “Pol Pot”, Burma under Ne Win and successors (just to mention a few near-neighbours).
No prizes for giving the answer “fear”.
If you’re deviant enough to support the “wrong” political party then have a care: don’t wear the wrong uniform, wave the wrong flag, chant the wrong slogan or make the wrong salute. That could well get you sent for “re-education” (remember that from another place?).
If you’re ungrateful or disrespectful enough to question why the king should be worshipped as a living god, just keep that to yourself in case it gets you locked up for five or 10 or 15 years.
If you’re revisionist-minded enough to debate the historical record of royal achievements from centuries past, do it in your head only. Nowadays that’s a really bad attitude.
Under a brutal dictatorship, dissenting deeds and words are punished brutally. Oh! Thai Citizens, protect yourselves by having right thoughts. Then you have nothing to fear.
Majority-Buddhist Thais are well schooled in the Noble Eightfold Path, the first four of which are Right View, Right Intention, Right Speech, Right Action.
Sadly, those in power have usurped and corrupted a noble doctrine of high moral values to legitimize and perpetuate their political hegemony.
Malaysia is long past 1984. The rhetoric of Malay NGOs, UMNO officials, and PM Najib’s ever-changing story lines about national larceny, mirror Germany in 1933. The rhetoric is the same, the scapegoats are the same, and the attempt to establish a mythic Tanah Melayu with purebred Malays (no such thing exists), pure Islam (no such thing exists) and the minorities satisfied with Dhimmi status in a soon-to-be Malay Islamic State (no such thing will exist) are all part of the dream world and unrealistic and immature expectations of many Malays, incapable of managing their own affairs, tied as they are, to UMNO, political bosses and delusions of a Malay Caliphate that will never come to pass.
“The electorate’s “counter control” technique after Thaksin sent death squads after drug dealers and assorted enemies of policemen around the country was a landslide victory for a 2nd term.”
“The electorate’s ‘counter control’ for the savagery re-ignited in the South by Thaksin’s authoritarian approach through his much-beloved police, including the disappearance of a human rights activist, was a landslide… blah blah blah.”
I don’t accept your interpretation of these historical events.
At the risk of imprisonment and/or deportation, I still feel compelled to remind Emjay that the extrajudicial killings of drug dealers/users, and the enthusiastic support for that policy by about 90% of the Thai population whom I talked to in 2003, was orchestrated and endorsed by someone far above Thaksin.
The Thaksin haters seem to want to hold him entirely responsible for the police death squads that killed an estimated 3,000. Thaksin acting by his authority alone could not have accomplished that atrocity without the charismatic support of “you know who” and the backing of the military.
Likewise, the same can be said for the disastrous events in the South that inflamed the insurgency in 2004, such as the piling of nonviolent protesters like cord wood onto trucks that resulted in the deaths of some 85 in Tak Bae. The RTA military commanders are as much to blame as Thaksin was. I really don’t believe Thaksin had as much control over the actions of the RTA in the south as you credit him with.
I was alarmed as you were by Thaksin’s landslide 2nd term election in 2004, but let’s remember that in 2004 Thaksin had not yet fallen out of favor with the monarchy network.
What can I say, RN? You invent an alternative history, make a series of bogus analytical judgements based thereon, and the Red Farang contingent gives you 12 Greens!
We were talking about liberal democracy though… Idiocracy is an altogether different thing.
Why all the sad faces over the apparent sell-out of NLD to SPDC? The Lady doesn’t want a bunch of outhouse radicals upsetting the apple cart. Why, she’s behaving just like the “Democrat Party” opposition in Thailand. Which is now serving as cover for the Thai SPDC as it rules unopposed.
Think global and act local, Mr. Hongsar!
Prevention is better than “disaster management”. Stop illegal logging, clear-cutting, deforestation, extensive mining, improper damming of rivers, soil erosion, …
These are local actions (climate change is more a global problem). It’s a question of modest sustainable ecological practices. Most Burmese farmers instinctively understand that, but there is too much corruption in the Burmese upper-classes and they are selling off the country’s natural resources for a quick Yuan.
Our vocational college’s sector as we known as VET in Australia in Myanmar shall be reassess the teaching and learning capacity in terms of local land management, community led project development, farmer’s skills to development new agricultural business and other key skills required that enable them for flood management, disaster mitigation and so on. If our VET sector in the country are carefully developed the new training packages in 2020, we then able to be well prepared in all emergency matters. At least, bush fire management in rural areas. We, or the Australian VET sectors have to much more to offer by 2020. Thank for the ANU’s hard working academics on Burma / Myanmar.
South-east Asian nations bordering the South China Sea (it needs a new name) have themselves to blame. Instead of using the International Court of Justice to come to a solid agreement over marine boundaries years ago, they preferred the same lawless attitude to one another that China has now used to trump them all.
I guess the knack for manufacturing consent would still take a rather long and steep learning curve if at all for both the regime and the “loyal opposition”. One is authoritarian and paternalistic, not to mention insatiably greedy and habitually arrogant, the other opportunistic and elitist subservient to dynastic ambitions.
The Posh Lady should by now be suffering from cramps bending over backwards, she wouldn’t dare utter any tangible policies, let alone produce an election manifesto to challenge the ruling party. On their part the generals wouldn’t even throw her a scrap in the form of revoking Section 59(f) which still wouldn’t get her beyond a VP’s office.
Another crisis is in the offing, and this time the Lady and her party are more likely to become casualties rather than the beneficiaries unlike the fire last time in 1988.
Really… We all know how wonderful was the Republican 1970 coup in Cambodia, and how it paved the way for the Khmer Rouges’ victory in April 1975, which opened such a prosperous and joyful era for the Khmer People…
As you should know, the two kingdoms are historically and politically closely related. More, weapons are present everywhere in today’s Thailand… If you are hoping for a bloodbath, then cheers…
Burma is still more a feudal oligarchy than anything else. Burmese have a strong sense of hierarchy and social pecking order: suck up to the people above you (such as the rich Chinese) and bully the people beneath you (such as the wretched Rohingya). The rules of the ruling class (excuse the pun) are mainly based on medieval notions of patronage and “appanage” (bribery and nepotism). It would be very difficult for true democracy to take root in Burma, unless there is a “French Revolution” of sorts. The corrupt and arrogant ruling class which consists mainly of former generals, their families (even Suu Kyi is the daughter of a former general!) and their business cronies are becoming extremely rich in Burma, with bank accounts in Singapore, where they also go for medical treatment! It’s all about the web of connections. (“guanxi” in Chinese). A lot of smoke and mirrors, cloaks and daggers in Naypyitaw. In Burma people change names and clothes but the actors (and the marionettes) are the same.
Actually, the title should be “purges in NLD, by NLD (DASSK?)”.
It was a repeat of the 1990 elections. NLD gave promises to ethnic parties that it wouldn’t compete in minority areas. On the day the candidate lists came out, all parties were caught off-guard to hear that NLD was competing for all seats. It was ASSK herself who said “constitution must be drawn first”, and it was her again who argued constituent assembly elections as national elections and requested for immediate power transfer.
Now, NLD gave fake promises to 8888 in earlier negotiations, and guaranteed at least twenty seats, but when elections are in just a few months away, they backtrack their promises. There is a maxim in Burmese opposition moment that ASSK has exploited from time to time: “don’t criticize each other because the junta might take advantage of disunity within opposition”, in the other words, “don’t criticize me and follow me on my path to presidency”.
What Suu Kyi wants to have is an army of her cult followers who would take her words to heart. Older generations who struggled since 1988 are those on the same level with her in terms of political experience. So younger generation who knows nothing more than following what she says is preferred. We should have no doubt that any randomly chosen politician would do better than ASSK’s chosen hip-hopper, who, according to another MP, “has never spoken once in Hluttaw”.
So I don’t think she is toning down. She is toning up for another wasteful battle. She wants to fight full-scale assault by winning as many seats as possible with those who will take her words to heart, or she wants to install a puppet President. Maybe twenty years the Burmese have suffered under sanctions is not enough.
The NLD has most definitely got an over-riding power complex, the probably want power more than the military (especially if rates of USDP figures who have any interest in turning up to Parliament are pretty small).
The reason I see it as being dictated in this circumstance by the USDP’s agenda though, is that military’s tend to step down on their own terms. Their greatest fear lies in their corporate interests being trampled upon (largely emanating from their sketchy borderland smuggling arrangements, human rights abuses, etc.).
Generally speaking, it is the military, as in Indonesia potentially, who are the ones who have the most to fear in a transition to democracy. The NLD’s Central Committee is probably actively recognising that the chances of military intervention in politics will increase should they actually stand what they stand for. Now they just stand for power, with a side-helping of a little patronage.
I don’t see any analysis or critique of the NLD’s internal power structure in your article above. You give agency to the USDP and the former junta agency while withholding it from the NLD.
However much Naypyidaw might resemble a Benthamite prison, the opposition has shown a chronic inability to react to the agenda set by the government since 2011. To believe that the latest internal party machinations have been precipitated by a desire to conform to the intentions of the constitution and match the USDP’s political brinksmanship gives too much credit to an inept organisation.
People here are going to be real cross when they figure out ‘democracy’ was just a figleaf for War of the Roses-style dynastic battles. Maybe I’m too cynical..
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Crime and punishment under the Thai junta
Nothing will begin to change until the king dies. And then the Thai people must rise up against the oppressors.
The taming of the NLD… by the NLD
Look >what just happened to her ally ex-general and USDP chairman Shwe Mann.
The taming of the NLD… by the NLD
Yeah, only she thinks it’s an apple cart.
Ah well, principles for position (call it pragmatism)…. arms for democracy…. all of that fits in seamlessly with profits before people. QED.
Crime and punishment under the Thai junta
What does Thailand have in common with Russia under “Stalin”? Or China under Mao, Cambodia under “Pol Pot”, Burma under Ne Win and successors (just to mention a few near-neighbours).
No prizes for giving the answer “fear”.
If you’re deviant enough to support the “wrong” political party then have a care: don’t wear the wrong uniform, wave the wrong flag, chant the wrong slogan or make the wrong salute. That could well get you sent for “re-education” (remember that from another place?).
If you’re ungrateful or disrespectful enough to question why the king should be worshipped as a living god, just keep that to yourself in case it gets you locked up for five or 10 or 15 years.
If you’re revisionist-minded enough to debate the historical record of royal achievements from centuries past, do it in your head only. Nowadays that’s a really bad attitude.
Under a brutal dictatorship, dissenting deeds and words are punished brutally. Oh! Thai Citizens, protect yourselves by having right thoughts. Then you have nothing to fear.
Majority-Buddhist Thais are well schooled in the Noble Eightfold Path, the first four of which are Right View, Right Intention, Right Speech, Right Action.
Sadly, those in power have usurped and corrupted a noble doctrine of high moral values to legitimize and perpetuate their political hegemony.
Peeling back the layers of Pekida
Malaysia is long past 1984. The rhetoric of Malay NGOs, UMNO officials, and PM Najib’s ever-changing story lines about national larceny, mirror Germany in 1933. The rhetoric is the same, the scapegoats are the same, and the attempt to establish a mythic Tanah Melayu with purebred Malays (no such thing exists), pure Islam (no such thing exists) and the minorities satisfied with Dhimmi status in a soon-to-be Malay Islamic State (no such thing will exist) are all part of the dream world and unrealistic and immature expectations of many Malays, incapable of managing their own affairs, tied as they are, to UMNO, political bosses and delusions of a Malay Caliphate that will never come to pass.
Hopes for democracy in Thailand
Re Enjay’s statements:
“The electorate’s “counter control” technique after Thaksin sent death squads after drug dealers and assorted enemies of policemen around the country was a landslide victory for a 2nd term.”
“The electorate’s ‘counter control’ for the savagery re-ignited in the South by Thaksin’s authoritarian approach through his much-beloved police, including the disappearance of a human rights activist, was a landslide… blah blah blah.”
I don’t accept your interpretation of these historical events.
At the risk of imprisonment and/or deportation, I still feel compelled to remind Emjay that the extrajudicial killings of drug dealers/users, and the enthusiastic support for that policy by about 90% of the Thai population whom I talked to in 2003, was orchestrated and endorsed by someone far above Thaksin.
The Thaksin haters seem to want to hold him entirely responsible for the police death squads that killed an estimated 3,000. Thaksin acting by his authority alone could not have accomplished that atrocity without the charismatic support of “you know who” and the backing of the military.
Likewise, the same can be said for the disastrous events in the South that inflamed the insurgency in 2004, such as the piling of nonviolent protesters like cord wood onto trucks that resulted in the deaths of some 85 in Tak Bae. The RTA military commanders are as much to blame as Thaksin was. I really don’t believe Thaksin had as much control over the actions of the RTA in the south as you credit him with.
I was alarmed as you were by Thaksin’s landslide 2nd term election in 2004, but let’s remember that in 2004 Thaksin had not yet fallen out of favor with the monarchy network.
The taming of the NLD… by the NLD
They were all purged ahead of the list announcement.
Hopes for democracy in Thailand
What can I say, RN? You invent an alternative history, make a series of bogus analytical judgements based thereon, and the Red Farang contingent gives you 12 Greens!
We were talking about liberal democracy though… Idiocracy is an altogether different thing.
The taming of the NLD… by the NLD
Why all the sad faces over the apparent sell-out of NLD to SPDC? The Lady doesn’t want a bunch of outhouse radicals upsetting the apple cart. Why, she’s behaving just like the “Democrat Party” opposition in Thailand. Which is now serving as cover for the Thai SPDC as it rules unopposed.
Myanmar and the politics of disaster
Think global and act local, Mr. Hongsar!
Prevention is better than “disaster management”. Stop illegal logging, clear-cutting, deforestation, extensive mining, improper damming of rivers, soil erosion, …
These are local actions (climate change is more a global problem). It’s a question of modest sustainable ecological practices. Most Burmese farmers instinctively understand that, but there is too much corruption in the Burmese upper-classes and they are selling off the country’s natural resources for a quick Yuan.
The taming of the NLD… by the NLD
Well as far as your last paragraph is concerned, looks like you just got proven right!
The taming of the NLD… by the NLD
Muslims on the NLD list? My understanding is zip.
Myanmar and the politics of disaster
Dear Sir,
Our vocational college’s sector as we known as VET in Australia in Myanmar shall be reassess the teaching and learning capacity in terms of local land management, community led project development, farmer’s skills to development new agricultural business and other key skills required that enable them for flood management, disaster mitigation and so on. If our VET sector in the country are carefully developed the new training packages in 2020, we then able to be well prepared in all emergency matters. At least, bush fire management in rural areas. We, or the Australian VET sectors have to much more to offer by 2020. Thank for the ANU’s hard working academics on Burma / Myanmar.
War in ASEAN’s troubled waters
South-east Asian nations bordering the South China Sea (it needs a new name) have themselves to blame. Instead of using the International Court of Justice to come to a solid agreement over marine boundaries years ago, they preferred the same lawless attitude to one another that China has now used to trump them all.
The taming of the NLD… by the NLD
I guess the knack for manufacturing consent would still take a rather long and steep learning curve if at all for both the regime and the “loyal opposition”. One is authoritarian and paternalistic, not to mention insatiably greedy and habitually arrogant, the other opportunistic and elitist subservient to dynastic ambitions.
The Posh Lady should by now be suffering from cramps bending over backwards, she wouldn’t dare utter any tangible policies, let alone produce an election manifesto to challenge the ruling party. On their part the generals wouldn’t even throw her a scrap in the form of revoking Section 59(f) which still wouldn’t get her beyond a VP’s office.
Another crisis is in the offing, and this time the Lady and her party are more likely to become casualties rather than the beneficiaries unlike the fire last time in 1988.
The Republic of Siam?
Really… We all know how wonderful was the Republican 1970 coup in Cambodia, and how it paved the way for the Khmer Rouges’ victory in April 1975, which opened such a prosperous and joyful era for the Khmer People…
As you should know, the two kingdoms are historically and politically closely related. More, weapons are present everywhere in today’s Thailand… If you are hoping for a bloodbath, then cheers…
The taming of the NLD… by the NLD
Burma is still more a feudal oligarchy than anything else. Burmese have a strong sense of hierarchy and social pecking order: suck up to the people above you (such as the rich Chinese) and bully the people beneath you (such as the wretched Rohingya). The rules of the ruling class (excuse the pun) are mainly based on medieval notions of patronage and “appanage” (bribery and nepotism). It would be very difficult for true democracy to take root in Burma, unless there is a “French Revolution” of sorts. The corrupt and arrogant ruling class which consists mainly of former generals, their families (even Suu Kyi is the daughter of a former general!) and their business cronies are becoming extremely rich in Burma, with bank accounts in Singapore, where they also go for medical treatment! It’s all about the web of connections. (“guanxi” in Chinese). A lot of smoke and mirrors, cloaks and daggers in Naypyitaw. In Burma people change names and clothes but the actors (and the marionettes) are the same.
The taming of the NLD… by the NLD
Actually, the title should be “purges in NLD, by NLD (DASSK?)”.
It was a repeat of the 1990 elections. NLD gave promises to ethnic parties that it wouldn’t compete in minority areas. On the day the candidate lists came out, all parties were caught off-guard to hear that NLD was competing for all seats. It was ASSK herself who said “constitution must be drawn first”, and it was her again who argued constituent assembly elections as national elections and requested for immediate power transfer.
Now, NLD gave fake promises to 8888 in earlier negotiations, and guaranteed at least twenty seats, but when elections are in just a few months away, they backtrack their promises. There is a maxim in Burmese opposition moment that ASSK has exploited from time to time: “don’t criticize each other because the junta might take advantage of disunity within opposition”, in the other words, “don’t criticize me and follow me on my path to presidency”.
What Suu Kyi wants to have is an army of her cult followers who would take her words to heart. Older generations who struggled since 1988 are those on the same level with her in terms of political experience. So younger generation who knows nothing more than following what she says is preferred. We should have no doubt that any randomly chosen politician would do better than ASSK’s chosen hip-hopper, who, according to another MP, “has never spoken once in Hluttaw”.
So I don’t think she is toning down. She is toning up for another wasteful battle. She wants to fight full-scale assault by winning as many seats as possible with those who will take her words to heart, or she wants to install a puppet President. Maybe twenty years the Burmese have suffered under sanctions is not enough.
The taming of the NLD… by the NLD
Dear Sean
I do agree
The NLD has most definitely got an over-riding power complex, the probably want power more than the military (especially if rates of USDP figures who have any interest in turning up to Parliament are pretty small).
The reason I see it as being dictated in this circumstance by the USDP’s agenda though, is that military’s tend to step down on their own terms. Their greatest fear lies in their corporate interests being trampled upon (largely emanating from their sketchy borderland smuggling arrangements, human rights abuses, etc.).
Generally speaking, it is the military, as in Indonesia potentially, who are the ones who have the most to fear in a transition to democracy. The NLD’s Central Committee is probably actively recognising that the chances of military intervention in politics will increase should they actually stand what they stand for. Now they just stand for power, with a side-helping of a little patronage.
The taming of the NLD… by the NLD
Thanks for your reply, Tim.
I don’t see any analysis or critique of the NLD’s internal power structure in your article above. You give agency to the USDP and the former junta agency while withholding it from the NLD.
However much Naypyidaw might resemble a Benthamite prison, the opposition has shown a chronic inability to react to the agenda set by the government since 2011. To believe that the latest internal party machinations have been precipitated by a desire to conform to the intentions of the constitution and match the USDP’s political brinksmanship gives too much credit to an inept organisation.
People here are going to be real cross when they figure out ‘democracy’ was just a figleaf for War of the Roses-style dynastic battles. Maybe I’m too cynical..