The rest of your examples are post-coup and so confirm what I said.
You continue insisting that only by hangin’ with your homies and grooving on the “internal discourse” can anyone get a sense of what’s what in Thai politics. I am sure there are plenty of Yellows and various other “internal discourse-gossip” purveyors who would love to compare notes with you.
“Anti-coup” does not equal “pro-democracy” when we define democracy in a larger sense than “elected budget dispensers”.
You can’t learn to understand that difference by hanging out with the people whose political existence depends on obscuring it.
“The only force that has emerged that has proven durable enough to challenge the military royalist complex in recent years is the Red Shirt/Thaksin coalition.”
There is a difference between “durable enough to challenge” and “willing to sell their supporters down the river to be allowed to join”.
That is the “cold, hard political analysis” that the Thai situation calls for.
As Giles points out in a recent post, both the military and the Thaksinites rely heavily on the institution of the monarchy to legitimize elite rule: in Thailand, neither the gun nor the ballot box is aimed in a liberal-democratic direction.
The sooner we all recognize that, and allow the cold hard fact of the immense difference between electoralism and liberal democracy to sink in, the sooner an effective and meaningful movement for democracy can begin to gain traction.
“Dagon Myint”?
River is pronounced “Myit” in Burmese nowadays and there is no “n” (although it is correctly written with an “r”)
The river near Rangoon is called “Hlaing” if my memory serves me right (Hlaingthaya township didn’t even exist when I was growing up in Rangoon)
Why are you always defending China? I didn’t say anything about the Chinese this time, but since you reminded me, let me say that I have been consistent about my conviction that “China’s Rise” and the voracious Chinese appetite for natural resources (and endangered species) have been ecologically damaging, not just for Burma, but also for many other poor countries in Southeast Asia and Africa (I’m not so sure about the impact of the mining industry in Australia)
I am not an “elitist” (I don’t have an Oxford accent!) but I am a “green globalist” in the sense that I worry about the impact of human greed and stupidity on the fragile ecology of this planet (and that includes climate change and global warming). By the way, your last sentence would be considered an “argumentum ad hominem” in “elitist circles” lol
Do you think/believe that blaming the previous transgressions of a government and its cronies is enough to absolve one from the ongoing crises?
Is there room in your elitist mind to realize real solutions such as infrastructure improvements, such as roads and bridges similar to Thailand and Vietnam?
Do we need to be reminded of the real cause of current ongoing disaster, which might just be earlier and longer monsoon which is almost provident other than blaming the Myanmar and Chinese government?
May I and my ilks suggest humbly advocating for alleviating the immediate and long term consequences instead of pontificating as a professor/elitist?
And please do not invoke global warming that you know little of.
It depends whether the malignancy is Mahathir. In that event, with appropriate chemotherapy, Malaysia may recover. The likelihood of tumor metastasis is significantly lowered with the demise of Mahathir, and full recovery is possible with the establishment of civil laws in Malaysia. Given that UMNO, PAS and even the opposition want to use Islam and multiculturalism as a cudgel to defeat perceived and actual opponents, Malaysia is unlikely to change for the better, because Malaysians are unwilling to protest vehemently enough (like in Indonesian and in Thailand and in the Philippines) that they are willing to trade blood and even death, for a cause that is worth far more than one’s life: Truth and liberty in Malaysia. As Malaysians are not ready for this, apparently, Malaysia will be a dead patient within 2-5 years. Those Malaysians that only serve self-interest only defeat the purpose of democratising Malaysia. The level of immaturity and venality in Malaysia, on several levels,
inhibits any positive trajectory for Malaysia’s future, which is very bleak, indeed.
One “problem” is a figurative speech. The other is a literal fact. (Part of the fun of reading is to figure out which is which.) Literally, there are thousands of Najib’s in Umno, and many in the opposition parties. Getting rid of a cancerous tumour doesn’t necessarily mean getting rid of cancer. Does it??
These 14 students must be applauded for their efforts and supported as much as is possible.
However, that shouldn’t then stop cold, hard political analysis of their potential role in taking on the might of the amaart/military.
The only force that has emerged that has proven durable enough to challenge the military royalist complex in recent years is the Red Shirt/Thaksin coalition.
Of course, as some have pointed out, this coalition is very far from perfect and at times seems very far from democratic.
Yet it remains the single best hope of challenging the hegemony of the military royalist complex.
The idea that the “better educated” students can lead the “uneducated masses” towards democracy is fraught with all kinds of tensions not least the fact that the emerging petit bourgeoisie that make up large parts of the Red Shirt movement are no longer willing to be spoken down to.
They are willing to form coalitions though – as has been shown by their willingness to work with Thaksin.
My hope would be that the students – rather than distancing themselves from this coalition in a self-defeating attempt to appear “pure” and “good” – firmly link up with the broader Red Shirt movement. That way these students could then provide a counter-balance to the authoritarian elements with the Red Shirt/Thaksin coalition.
If the students stand apart from this coalition they will be picked off one by one and their nascent movement curtailed.
The only way to defeat the fascism of the Thai military royalist complex is via unity of those opposed to them.
Once this complex is defeated is the point when the real discussions can begin to take place.
This is correct, indeed. When Dao Din first appeared on the scene many, both in the UDD and in free Red Shirt groups, had strong reservations about this group, for the reasons you mentioned, and some others, such as supposed links to yellow leaning NGO’s. This perception has to a large degree changed though since recent events, and both the Dao Din students and the Bangkok based students are seen as an independent pro-democracy group by most.
Emjay, as usual you are quite wrong in your facts, leading as usual to mistaken conclusions. Several of the Bangkok based students i have seen and photographed long before the coup, mostly in non-UDD free Red protests and pro-democracy protests. They didn’t just pop up. In addition to that, many of the Bangkok based students led the first anti-2014 coup protests, such as the first one (the better known BACC protest the same evening was *not* the first such gathering, but came after the student protest and different small gatherings by local Red Shirts) on the morning after the coup on May 23, 2014, where they gathered at Thammasat and walked towards the Democracy monument, where still quite a few PDRC protesters remained and a uncomfortable face off between these students and PDRC protesters and military took place.
Basically, what i try to say here is that following things on social media is simply not sufficient as a base to judge.
Your comment appears to rely on the identifications that you have in inverted commas. Those seem based on assumptions rather than an assessment of rural, red shirt, village or worker politics.
As mentioned by one of the members interviewed, apart from supporting villagers that are suffering social and environmental injustice issues in the Northeast, they have been active opponents of the privatization of Khon Kaen University, which has been a serious internal conflict issue for many years, leading to the marginalisation of several lecturers who stood up to the privatization process, including a court challenge against a past KKU President through the Constitutional Court.
Newsahape: It’s impossible of course to deny that the 97 Constitution embodied some “good” intentions and pointed in the right direction for a move towards more liberal and even more democratic government in Thailand.
But Thai constitutions are just about worth the paper they are printed on and the ’97 version should be known as the “Good People’s Constitution” and not the rootsy sounding misnomer that gets tossed around in contemporary discourse.
While it is true that functioning liberal democratic states depend on strong institutions, the Thai case proves beyond a shadow of a doubt that, at least in the early stages of development, institutions are only as good as the people who comprise them in reality.
It’s why people like the Dao Din students and their families and academic supporters are more likely to bring forth democratic development than any billionaire-funded Democratic Front.
Emjay, you are right, but the 1997 constitution gave birth to several channel to give more voice to the people and local communities regarding their real issues. For example, compulsory public hearings for potentially harmful projects, a sort of co-management of protected areas by local communities… Although the previous governments (notably Thaksin’s) and other influential people did their best to impede these mechanisms, and although justice was far from prevailing,things were going in the right way. People started to think they can do something about their real problems. Now, soldiers and sent anytime a community tries to protest.
I believe some nuances was not picked up by the author.
1. The funds “lost” through 1MDB is much more than USD700M. This 700M is only the amount that was discovered to be transferred to his account. By some estimates, it’s above USD12 billion.
2. The 700M could have been used to buy the win in the last elections. Ties in with the idea of a “political donation”. In contrast, some major British political parties only worked with 150M in contributions.
3. There are allegations as well that some of the funds were used to install puppets in PAS, one of the opposition parties, that resulted in the coalition breakdown. PAS immediately offered defensive statements for Najib after new leaders wrested control.
1. ‘Civil society’ in Malaysia has always been weak, except for the brief success (of sorts) of Bersih 2.0, wherein it proved, once again, the authoritarian stripe of the Umno regime in the way it had ripped into street protests. Incidentally, since then (yet again), Indians and Chinese have taken a back seat to open protests, allowing these to be led by young Malays. This, in and of itself, should make for an interesting essay.
2. The “saga” of Malaysia’s authoritarianism isn’t new, and certainly no more newer than the saga of the dire lack of checks and balances in that country’s political history. In fact the latter were grandly beginning to be sidelined by mid 1960s. By 1970 they were as dead as Malaysia’s “democracy”. All that Umno bat-signaled since that is the illusion of democracy by way of ensuring the federal election cycle. Even then the elections were massively rigged by an authoritarian regime much more concerned with regime maintenance. We know why, don’t we?
3. Since the introduction of ‘money politics’, nothing has changed, and nothing is likely to change. Umno will stay put. The ballast of ‘money politics’ will stay the same. There will be no reforms worthy of the name but ridiculous bits of tweaking to give the idea that Umno has changed (does a leopard change its spots?). The Opposition is too weak and it is weak because it is often too vague about what it really stands for — change, we know, to oust Umno, but what else is new? — its long-term vision and policies to boot are wholly absent. Look at Tony Abbott and the Liberal-National coalition in Australia: talk about the bankruptcy of intellectual idea and vision by the old Rhodes Scholar, who must be about a dime a dozen by now.
4. Stick around a decade, Meredith, and you’ll see the same old Malaysia then as you do now. That’s guaranteed.
What is significant about Dao Din’s pre-coup activism is the fact that their opposition to injustice in the Thai state precedes their opposition to the coup.
This of course means that, unlike so many “pro-democracy” folks, their sense of the undemocratic nature of the Thai state goes beyond the issue of elections and has included protest against the previous government as well.
As to the half of NDM that is made up of Bangkok students I am not so sure. Those of us who follow social media know that these people suddenly popped up only after the coup took place and don’t appear to have been particularly concerned about liberal democracy or its absence until the men in uniforms came out from behind the curtain.
Like the Red Farang and all their ilk, they don’t seem to have cared much for the “liberal” element in liberal-democracy as long as an elected government was overseeing the budget.
One can only hope that through their involvement with more genuinely motivated comrades they will come around to the understanding that elections alone, without rule of law or anything approaching justice, don’t really deliver much of benefit in the long run.
You can’t say in one breath Najib is not the problem and in another that he’s merely a symptom of all that is wrong with Malaysia. The fact — fact! — remains Najib is leader of Malaysia, has US$700m in bank accounts he controlled, vilified non-Malays for not voting for BN parties, has taken over in money politics where Mahathir has left it, et cetera. Is he still merely a “symptom” of institutionalized racism and corruption which goes all the way from the top of Malaysia’s elite to the tail-end of Malaysia’s “society”? Give me a break.
It might pay you to read the writer’s commentary very carefully — again — before you try putting words in his mouth or indeed create a strawman. If anything the writer is saying Najib is no better than Mahathir and Mahathir has been the worst — so far. Indeed he is banking on Malaysia being a basket case.
What happened to my first comment?
Anyway, this is a very good factual analysis (better than a million “likes” on Facebook)
I said almost the same things about the root causes of these terrible floods in my short comment to “that other article”. I should add that high sedimentation caused by soil erosion and deforestation makes the river beds shallower leading to flooding. Damming also changes the speed and volume of the normal flow of a river. I can go on!
Burma has some serious ecological problems. Inle lake is another example.
Facebook 
Twitter 
Soundcloud 
Youtube 
Rss
Hopes for democracy in Thailand
“Non-UDD free Red protests” against what, Nick?
The rest of your examples are post-coup and so confirm what I said.
You continue insisting that only by hangin’ with your homies and grooving on the “internal discourse” can anyone get a sense of what’s what in Thai politics. I am sure there are plenty of Yellows and various other “internal discourse-gossip” purveyors who would love to compare notes with you.
“Anti-coup” does not equal “pro-democracy” when we define democracy in a larger sense than “elected budget dispensers”.
You can’t learn to understand that difference by hanging out with the people whose political existence depends on obscuring it.
Hopes for democracy in Thailand
“The only force that has emerged that has proven durable enough to challenge the military royalist complex in recent years is the Red Shirt/Thaksin coalition.”
There is a difference between “durable enough to challenge” and “willing to sell their supporters down the river to be allowed to join”.
That is the “cold, hard political analysis” that the Thai situation calls for.
As Giles points out in a recent post, both the military and the Thaksinites rely heavily on the institution of the monarchy to legitimize elite rule: in Thailand, neither the gun nor the ballot box is aimed in a liberal-democratic direction.
The sooner we all recognize that, and allow the cold hard fact of the immense difference between electoralism and liberal democracy to sink in, the sooner an effective and meaningful movement for democracy can begin to gain traction.
Facebook and Myanmar’s two floods
“Dagon Myint”?
River is pronounced “Myit” in Burmese nowadays and there is no “n” (although it is correctly written with an “r”)
The river near Rangoon is called “Hlaing” if my memory serves me right (Hlaingthaya township didn’t even exist when I was growing up in Rangoon)
Dealing with disaster in Myanmar
Why are you always defending China? I didn’t say anything about the Chinese this time, but since you reminded me, let me say that I have been consistent about my conviction that “China’s Rise” and the voracious Chinese appetite for natural resources (and endangered species) have been ecologically damaging, not just for Burma, but also for many other poor countries in Southeast Asia and Africa (I’m not so sure about the impact of the mining industry in Australia)
I am not an “elitist” (I don’t have an Oxford accent!) but I am a “green globalist” in the sense that I worry about the impact of human greed and stupidity on the fragile ecology of this planet (and that includes climate change and global warming). By the way, your last sentence would be considered an “argumentum ad hominem” in “elitist circles” lol
Dealing with disaster in Myanmar
#1
Do you think/believe that blaming the previous transgressions of a government and its cronies is enough to absolve one from the ongoing crises?
Is there room in your elitist mind to realize real solutions such as infrastructure improvements, such as roads and bridges similar to Thailand and Vietnam?
Do we need to be reminded of the real cause of current ongoing disaster, which might just be earlier and longer monsoon which is almost provident other than blaming the Myanmar and Chinese government?
May I and my ilks suggest humbly advocating for alleviating the immediate and long term consequences instead of pontificating as a professor/elitist?
And please do not invoke global warming that you know little of.
Malaysia is cracking up and cracking down
It depends whether the malignancy is Mahathir. In that event, with appropriate chemotherapy, Malaysia may recover. The likelihood of tumor metastasis is significantly lowered with the demise of Mahathir, and full recovery is possible with the establishment of civil laws in Malaysia. Given that UMNO, PAS and even the opposition want to use Islam and multiculturalism as a cudgel to defeat perceived and actual opponents, Malaysia is unlikely to change for the better, because Malaysians are unwilling to protest vehemently enough (like in Indonesian and in Thailand and in the Philippines) that they are willing to trade blood and even death, for a cause that is worth far more than one’s life: Truth and liberty in Malaysia. As Malaysians are not ready for this, apparently, Malaysia will be a dead patient within 2-5 years. Those Malaysians that only serve self-interest only defeat the purpose of democratising Malaysia. The level of immaturity and venality in Malaysia, on several levels,
inhibits any positive trajectory for Malaysia’s future, which is very bleak, indeed.
Malaysia is cracking up and cracking down
One “problem” is a figurative speech. The other is a literal fact. (Part of the fun of reading is to figure out which is which.) Literally, there are thousands of Najib’s in Umno, and many in the opposition parties. Getting rid of a cancerous tumour doesn’t necessarily mean getting rid of cancer. Does it??
Hopes for democracy in Thailand
These 14 students must be applauded for their efforts and supported as much as is possible.
However, that shouldn’t then stop cold, hard political analysis of their potential role in taking on the might of the amaart/military.
The only force that has emerged that has proven durable enough to challenge the military royalist complex in recent years is the Red Shirt/Thaksin coalition.
Of course, as some have pointed out, this coalition is very far from perfect and at times seems very far from democratic.
Yet it remains the single best hope of challenging the hegemony of the military royalist complex.
The idea that the “better educated” students can lead the “uneducated masses” towards democracy is fraught with all kinds of tensions not least the fact that the emerging petit bourgeoisie that make up large parts of the Red Shirt movement are no longer willing to be spoken down to.
They are willing to form coalitions though – as has been shown by their willingness to work with Thaksin.
My hope would be that the students – rather than distancing themselves from this coalition in a self-defeating attempt to appear “pure” and “good” – firmly link up with the broader Red Shirt movement. That way these students could then provide a counter-balance to the authoritarian elements with the Red Shirt/Thaksin coalition.
If the students stand apart from this coalition they will be picked off one by one and their nascent movement curtailed.
The only way to defeat the fascism of the Thai military royalist complex is via unity of those opposed to them.
Once this complex is defeated is the point when the real discussions can begin to take place.
Hopes for democracy in Thailand
This is correct, indeed. When Dao Din first appeared on the scene many, both in the UDD and in free Red Shirt groups, had strong reservations about this group, for the reasons you mentioned, and some others, such as supposed links to yellow leaning NGO’s. This perception has to a large degree changed though since recent events, and both the Dao Din students and the Bangkok based students are seen as an independent pro-democracy group by most.
Hopes for democracy in Thailand
Emjay, as usual you are quite wrong in your facts, leading as usual to mistaken conclusions. Several of the Bangkok based students i have seen and photographed long before the coup, mostly in non-UDD free Red protests and pro-democracy protests. They didn’t just pop up. In addition to that, many of the Bangkok based students led the first anti-2014 coup protests, such as the first one (the better known BACC protest the same evening was *not* the first such gathering, but came after the student protest and different small gatherings by local Red Shirts) on the morning after the coup on May 23, 2014, where they gathered at Thammasat and walked towards the Democracy monument, where still quite a few PDRC protesters remained and a uncomfortable face off between these students and PDRC protesters and military took place.
Basically, what i try to say here is that following things on social media is simply not sufficient as a base to judge.
Hopes for democracy in Thailand
Your comment appears to rely on the identifications that you have in inverted commas. Those seem based on assumptions rather than an assessment of rural, red shirt, village or worker politics.
Hopes for democracy in Thailand
The posting on 5 August on The Isaan Record gives further background to the activities and motivations of the Dao Din group:
http://isaanrecord.com/
As mentioned by one of the members interviewed, apart from supporting villagers that are suffering social and environmental injustice issues in the Northeast, they have been active opponents of the privatization of Khon Kaen University, which has been a serious internal conflict issue for many years, leading to the marginalisation of several lecturers who stood up to the privatization process, including a court challenge against a past KKU President through the Constitutional Court.
Hopes for democracy in Thailand
Newsahape: It’s impossible of course to deny that the 97 Constitution embodied some “good” intentions and pointed in the right direction for a move towards more liberal and even more democratic government in Thailand.
But Thai constitutions are just about worth the paper they are printed on and the ’97 version should be known as the “Good People’s Constitution” and not the rootsy sounding misnomer that gets tossed around in contemporary discourse.
While it is true that functioning liberal democratic states depend on strong institutions, the Thai case proves beyond a shadow of a doubt that, at least in the early stages of development, institutions are only as good as the people who comprise them in reality.
It’s why people like the Dao Din students and their families and academic supporters are more likely to bring forth democratic development than any billionaire-funded Democratic Front.
Hopes for democracy in Thailand
Emjay, you are right, but the 1997 constitution gave birth to several channel to give more voice to the people and local communities regarding their real issues. For example, compulsory public hearings for potentially harmful projects, a sort of co-management of protected areas by local communities… Although the previous governments (notably Thaksin’s) and other influential people did their best to impede these mechanisms, and although justice was far from prevailing,things were going in the right way. People started to think they can do something about their real problems. Now, soldiers and sent anytime a community tries to protest.
Malaysia’s long history of financial scandals
I believe some nuances was not picked up by the author.
1. The funds “lost” through 1MDB is much more than USD700M. This 700M is only the amount that was discovered to be transferred to his account. By some estimates, it’s above USD12 billion.
2. The 700M could have been used to buy the win in the last elections. Ties in with the idea of a “political donation”. In contrast, some major British political parties only worked with 150M in contributions.
3. There are allegations as well that some of the funds were used to install puppets in PAS, one of the opposition parties, that resulted in the coalition breakdown. PAS immediately offered defensive statements for Najib after new leaders wrested control.
Reading the tea leaves of 1MDB
1. ‘Civil society’ in Malaysia has always been weak, except for the brief success (of sorts) of Bersih 2.0, wherein it proved, once again, the authoritarian stripe of the Umno regime in the way it had ripped into street protests. Incidentally, since then (yet again), Indians and Chinese have taken a back seat to open protests, allowing these to be led by young Malays. This, in and of itself, should make for an interesting essay.
2. The “saga” of Malaysia’s authoritarianism isn’t new, and certainly no more newer than the saga of the dire lack of checks and balances in that country’s political history. In fact the latter were grandly beginning to be sidelined by mid 1960s. By 1970 they were as dead as Malaysia’s “democracy”. All that Umno bat-signaled since that is the illusion of democracy by way of ensuring the federal election cycle. Even then the elections were massively rigged by an authoritarian regime much more concerned with regime maintenance. We know why, don’t we?
3. Since the introduction of ‘money politics’, nothing has changed, and nothing is likely to change. Umno will stay put. The ballast of ‘money politics’ will stay the same. There will be no reforms worthy of the name but ridiculous bits of tweaking to give the idea that Umno has changed (does a leopard change its spots?). The Opposition is too weak and it is weak because it is often too vague about what it really stands for — change, we know, to oust Umno, but what else is new? — its long-term vision and policies to boot are wholly absent. Look at Tony Abbott and the Liberal-National coalition in Australia: talk about the bankruptcy of intellectual idea and vision by the old Rhodes Scholar, who must be about a dime a dozen by now.
4. Stick around a decade, Meredith, and you’ll see the same old Malaysia then as you do now. That’s guaranteed.
Hopes for democracy in Thailand
What is significant about Dao Din’s pre-coup activism is the fact that their opposition to injustice in the Thai state precedes their opposition to the coup.
This of course means that, unlike so many “pro-democracy” folks, their sense of the undemocratic nature of the Thai state goes beyond the issue of elections and has included protest against the previous government as well.
As to the half of NDM that is made up of Bangkok students I am not so sure. Those of us who follow social media know that these people suddenly popped up only after the coup took place and don’t appear to have been particularly concerned about liberal democracy or its absence until the men in uniforms came out from behind the curtain.
Like the Red Farang and all their ilk, they don’t seem to have cared much for the “liberal” element in liberal-democracy as long as an elected government was overseeing the budget.
One can only hope that through their involvement with more genuinely motivated comrades they will come around to the understanding that elections alone, without rule of law or anything approaching justice, don’t really deliver much of benefit in the long run.
Malaysia is cracking up and cracking down
You can’t say in one breath Najib is not the problem and in another that he’s merely a symptom of all that is wrong with Malaysia. The fact — fact! — remains Najib is leader of Malaysia, has US$700m in bank accounts he controlled, vilified non-Malays for not voting for BN parties, has taken over in money politics where Mahathir has left it, et cetera. Is he still merely a “symptom” of institutionalized racism and corruption which goes all the way from the top of Malaysia’s elite to the tail-end of Malaysia’s “society”? Give me a break.
Malaysia is cracking up and cracking down
It might pay you to read the writer’s commentary very carefully — again — before you try putting words in his mouth or indeed create a strawman. If anything the writer is saying Najib is no better than Mahathir and Mahathir has been the worst — so far. Indeed he is banking on Malaysia being a basket case.
Dealing with disaster in Myanmar
What happened to my first comment?
Anyway, this is a very good factual analysis (better than a million “likes” on Facebook)
I said almost the same things about the root causes of these terrible floods in my short comment to “that other article”. I should add that high sedimentation caused by soil erosion and deforestation makes the river beds shallower leading to flooding. Damming also changes the speed and volume of the normal flow of a river. I can go on!
Burma has some serious ecological problems. Inle lake is another example.