I had been thinking of enquiring whether NM was planning to extend its coverage to the only two (three maybe) ASEAN countries it does not already include:in particular the Philippines. However I could think of no obvious reason (other than ethnicity, political alignment, historical associations, shared experiences of colonialism, relations with emergent China, geographical proximity etc) why it might. But Tom’s article provides a really good one: celebrity politics may be taking off in Indonesia but it’s long been one of the core values in the RP. Significant numbers of celebrities have long entered politics -think ex-President Joseph Estrada, the neophyte Senator (and daughter of Estrada’s companion of the silver screen)Grace Poe, Manny Pacquiao, TV presenter and ex-VP de Castro. Moreover a very large number of celebrities appear to be the children or close relatives of politicians (astonishing how natural talent seems to be as clustered as the distribution of wealth – think Chris Aquino top individual taxpayer of the country, melodramatic actress, and purveyor of soap powder…no, on second thoughts, don’t think about her). Further at least at election time it is highly desirable that politicians show that, if they were only given the chance, they have the potential to become celebrities (since celebrities are more highly valued, unsurprisingly, than politicians) by showing they enjoy karaoke as much as the common tao, and are more than capable of rapping and break dancing (I have long suspected that one of the reasons Gloria Macapagal was so unpopular was that – to my knowledge – she never once cavorted or sang in public).
It might be said that in the Philippines at least, celebrities and politicians don’t just tend to come from the same small handful of families who live in million dollar houses; they have something else in common – they both spend their careers skipping between parties.
Am I so glad **you** – a full-blooded Malaysian who’s breathed more KL air than me, I’m sure – understand the country.
Let’s write a complaint letter to the AJPS (heck, the entire Seoul Nat’l University) and warn them against accepting articles like this which have the audacity to try to “impress tenured academicians with arcane philosophical treatises.”
Malaysian politics can be understood by understanding Malaysia. Invoking foreign intellectual elements, as if ‘Zizekian/Lacanian’ analysis has anything to do with Malaysia, which it does not, might impress tenured academicians with arcane philosophical treatises on their bookshelves, replete with studies by Derrida, Habermas and Adorno, and maybe even Marx, but they have nothing to do with Malaysia, and such effete attempts at introducing false and foreign phenomenological and teleological analyses, far more appropriate for Europe, is not impressive nor very useful, except for foreign faculty, but not Malaysian academics, who are more reliant on, and interested in, the views and analyses of the Alatas clan and Haji Ishak Muhammad, far more than Adorno or Derrida or ‘Zizekian/Lacanian’ theories, as Malaysians have more to say about Malaysia than European intellectuals, none of whom quoted here, visited the Malayan Archipelago.
Winstedt and Coedes would be far more appropriate in understanding the Malay archipelago, both pre-Islam, colonial period, and post-Independence.
I have a Thai friend that received his
Master’s Degree in Architecture from Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri, a very good school, but not Oxford or Cambridge or Harvard. He is well-spoken, exceedingly articulate, is a very distant cousin of HRH King Bhumibol, and works for
a top architecture firm in New York. Who bloody cares about the endless rigamarole on this topic on New Mandala, which is a waste
of useful text space, but apparently not a waste of bored minds. If you are good at what you do, and you are recognized as such, the college is not the only factor in life, and someone who is truly good at what they do, will have no need to lie to compensate for perceived internal flaws. The health of HRH King Bhumibol is a hell of a lot important than Akanat Promphan and his innumerable ‘degrees’, whether from Oxford University or from Oxford, Mississippi.
I don’t think is a rub, you are grasping at straws. Apart from this obscure reference that almost no-one, including him, ever looks at, he has never boasted this type of fantastical academic achievement anywhere else.
If he really wanted to show himself to be incredibly superior you would think he would do it at an occasion where he would get large exposure eg the Nation interview, where he seems to be factual.
Well enough on this silly topic, he deserves a ribbing, but thats about it.
The most likely cause is a clerical error based on a lack of knowledge on what an Masters in Engineering, Economics and Management from Oxford means, its pretty self evident that the mix lies here.
Outkast are a popular music combo – I’m pretty certain that most of the present crop of undergraduates at one of Oxford University’s “impeccable” colleges have heard of them.
There is no inference at all anywhere in any of these comments that implies or suggests that Akanat’s attendance at Oxford was his “crime”. However you personally suggested that Akanat’s elite “education” somehow made him more “credible”. For those crazed with an overbearing sense of self-entitlement and snobbery such comment might seem appropriate. Many others – including the many millions in the UK who view Oxbridge as little more than a bastion of the British establishment, re-entrenching privilege, a view, it seems, that is backed up by the evidence – may see it differently.
The suggestion, wholly, is that it is the bizarre embellishment of Akanat’s educational “achievements” that is questionable.
The “political divide between urban, middle class, educated Thais who mostly reside in Bangkok and, a rural poor group” is too simplistic. And many have argued that this allegedly ‘poor rural group’ are rather middle income (see Andrew Walker’s Thailand’s political peasants) and to a large degree urban (McCargo and others talks of urbanized villagers who spend much of their lives working in cities)
As there are few Jews in Indonesia to beat up (though quite enough, elsewhere, to rant about), Ahmadiyah and Shi’ite Muslims, will do just fine. Dr. Wilson’s article is most illuminating and insightful, but lest one be left with the belief that Islamic extremism is merely limited to harsh rhetoric and invocations of Shari’a Law, I have some Ahmadiyah friends I would like you to meet, one with two broken legs, and another with multiple burn scars on his face, lest you think the FPI is just one of those typical brazen and voluble Indonesian Islamic organisations and nothing more than that. I would introduce you to some others, but they are dead, beaten to a pulp and their mosque burned, as the police stood by and watched, and did nothing. Where is the analogue of Gus Dur, living now in Indonesia, to demand Islamic tolerance and accountability ?
Malaysia is rapidly turning into a fundamentalist Islamist state. The ruling Islamist groups are now even inciting and financially supporting the minority Bengali-Muslims on the Burma-Bangladesh Border to rise up against ruling Buddhist majority. Why, I wonder?
It certainly seems muddled, even in the version reduced to only two degrees (BSc Engineering and MSc Hons Engineering) provided by Bunyanuch. Oxford doesn’t award BSc degrees in any subject and its MSc in Engineering is a masters degree by research which is either pass or fail, not honours, pass or fail like undergraduate degrees. The unabridged list of degrees would have taken 12-13 years to earn and Mr Akanat is only 28. If he has just the 4 year undergraduate MEng degree from Oxford,that is a far higher educational achievement already than most Thai politicians. Given that 6 British GCSEs that are taken at 14-16 years old are accepted for admission to Chula and Thammasat, one can imagine that most Thai bachelors degrees are barely equivalent to British A levels.
Academic inflation is somewhat endemic to Thai politicians, viz Dr Chalerm Yoobamrung’s doctrate in law and Banharn’s masters in political science earned with a dissertation quoting widely from English and French sources. There was also that TRT MP who graduated from a university in the Philippines two years before he got round to applying for his first passport.
The monarchy still has the power (through a corrupt constitution) to appoint its own corrupt cronies to major administrative, military, and judicial posts, ensuring that democratic government is unworkable. If the elected officials of the world’s democracies can appoint their own cronies, the elected government of Thailand should be able to do the same. In a democracy, is up to the electorate to decide, in the light of free speech, what level of corruption they are prepared to tolerate. Provided there is free speech, the electorate will tend to vote for a government that is least corrupt: i. e. that rips them off the least; that gives them the best deal. That is what has happened in Thailand. Thaksin and his cronies, who are prepared to submit themselves to the judgement of the electorate, have shown themselves to be less corrupt than the monarchy and its cronies. The monarchy will allow neither free speech nor free elections.
I am quite confident that, should he be elected President, Jokowi’s numbers (popularity) will fall, once faced with the
daunting task of actual micro- and macromanagement of a rather large nation as opposed to mere rhetorical flourishes, and that the “Tidak Tahu” numbers (post-election) will progressively rise.
No, it’s more of parting with delusions of grandeur, than a split. Talk of humility among Indonesian politicians, is a dime a dozen (or 1 rupiah for 20 politicians), as much as hubris is as equally preponderant, if not far more prevalent, than humility. If concern is that the Diaspora is poorly represented in Indonesia’s byzantine electoral process, than I have a solution.
Hire any one of the 200,000 Indonesian emigres in Southern California, many quite
affluent now, as President of Indonesia, as Indonesia could hardly do worse, and the quality of English at the Istana Merdeka
will radically improve.
Since I have never heard of Outkast it is difficult to comment.For some it seems, the Spoonerish tendency as it were, Akanat’s crime appears to be that he attended academically and socially elite institutions.Those not crazed by envy and class hatred will have different views.My only caveat on Akanat’s case is that it’s a pity he appears not to have imbibed much of Oxford’s great civilised and liberal heritage.Still he is far from being the only Oxonian in Thailand that has repudiated the University’s best traditions.
My reference to “impeccable” was to Akanat’s elite education, nothing else.
Facebook 
Twitter 
Soundcloud 
Youtube 
Rss
Hot on the hustings–Indonesia’s ‘caleg cantik’
I had been thinking of enquiring whether NM was planning to extend its coverage to the only two (three maybe) ASEAN countries it does not already include:in particular the Philippines. However I could think of no obvious reason (other than ethnicity, political alignment, historical associations, shared experiences of colonialism, relations with emergent China, geographical proximity etc) why it might. But Tom’s article provides a really good one: celebrity politics may be taking off in Indonesia but it’s long been one of the core values in the RP. Significant numbers of celebrities have long entered politics -think ex-President Joseph Estrada, the neophyte Senator (and daughter of Estrada’s companion of the silver screen)Grace Poe, Manny Pacquiao, TV presenter and ex-VP de Castro. Moreover a very large number of celebrities appear to be the children or close relatives of politicians (astonishing how natural talent seems to be as clustered as the distribution of wealth – think Chris Aquino top individual taxpayer of the country, melodramatic actress, and purveyor of soap powder…no, on second thoughts, don’t think about her). Further at least at election time it is highly desirable that politicians show that, if they were only given the chance, they have the potential to become celebrities (since celebrities are more highly valued, unsurprisingly, than politicians) by showing they enjoy karaoke as much as the common tao, and are more than capable of rapping and break dancing (I have long suspected that one of the reasons Gloria Macapagal was so unpopular was that – to my knowledge – she never once cavorted or sang in public).
It might be said that in the Philippines at least, celebrities and politicians don’t just tend to come from the same small handful of families who live in million dollar houses; they have something else in common – they both spend their careers skipping between parties.
Political participation and pleasurable pain in Malaysia
Amazing comment, Peter.
Am I so glad **you** – a full-blooded Malaysian who’s breathed more KL air than me, I’m sure – understand the country.
Let’s write a complaint letter to the AJPS (heck, the entire Seoul Nat’l University) and warn them against accepting articles like this which have the audacity to try to “impress tenured academicians with arcane philosophical treatises.”
Political participation and pleasurable pain in Malaysia
Malaysian politics can be understood by understanding Malaysia. Invoking foreign intellectual elements, as if ‘Zizekian/Lacanian’ analysis has anything to do with Malaysia, which it does not, might impress tenured academicians with arcane philosophical treatises on their bookshelves, replete with studies by Derrida, Habermas and Adorno, and maybe even Marx, but they have nothing to do with Malaysia, and such effete attempts at introducing false and foreign phenomenological and teleological analyses, far more appropriate for Europe, is not impressive nor very useful, except for foreign faculty, but not Malaysian academics, who are more reliant on, and interested in, the views and analyses of the Alatas clan and Haji Ishak Muhammad, far more than Adorno or Derrida or ‘Zizekian/Lacanian’ theories, as Malaysians have more to say about Malaysia than European intellectuals, none of whom quoted here, visited the Malayan Archipelago.
Winstedt and Coedes would be far more appropriate in understanding the Malay archipelago, both pre-Islam, colonial period, and post-Independence.
Akanat “six degrees” Promphan
I have a Thai friend that received his
Master’s Degree in Architecture from Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri, a very good school, but not Oxford or Cambridge or Harvard. He is well-spoken, exceedingly articulate, is a very distant cousin of HRH King Bhumibol, and works for
a top architecture firm in New York. Who bloody cares about the endless rigamarole on this topic on New Mandala, which is a waste
of useful text space, but apparently not a waste of bored minds. If you are good at what you do, and you are recognized as such, the college is not the only factor in life, and someone who is truly good at what they do, will have no need to lie to compensate for perceived internal flaws. The health of HRH King Bhumibol is a hell of a lot important than Akanat Promphan and his innumerable ‘degrees’, whether from Oxford University or from Oxford, Mississippi.
Akanat “six degrees” Promphan
I don’t think is a rub, you are grasping at straws. Apart from this obscure reference that almost no-one, including him, ever looks at, he has never boasted this type of fantastical academic achievement anywhere else.
If he really wanted to show himself to be incredibly superior you would think he would do it at an occasion where he would get large exposure eg the Nation interview, where he seems to be factual.
Well enough on this silly topic, he deserves a ribbing, but thats about it.
The most likely cause is a clerical error based on a lack of knowledge on what an Masters in Engineering, Economics and Management from Oxford means, its pretty self evident that the mix lies here.
Akanat “six degrees” Promphan
Jayboy
Outkast are a popular music combo – I’m pretty certain that most of the present crop of undergraduates at one of Oxford University’s “impeccable” colleges have heard of them.
There is no inference at all anywhere in any of these comments that implies or suggests that Akanat’s attendance at Oxford was his “crime”. However you personally suggested that Akanat’s elite “education” somehow made him more “credible”. For those crazed with an overbearing sense of self-entitlement and snobbery such comment might seem appropriate. Many others – including the many millions in the UK who view Oxbridge as little more than a bastion of the British establishment, re-entrenching privilege, a view, it seems, that is backed up by the evidence – may see it differently.
The suggestion, wholly, is that it is the bizarre embellishment of Akanat’s educational “achievements” that is questionable.
http://world.time.com/2013/01/08/can-oxbridge-solve-its-privilege-problem/
Network monarchy’s twilight
The “political divide between urban, middle class, educated Thais who mostly reside in Bangkok and, a rural poor group” is too simplistic. And many have argued that this allegedly ‘poor rural group’ are rather middle income (see Andrew Walker’s Thailand’s political peasants) and to a large degree urban (McCargo and others talks of urbanized villagers who spend much of their lives working in cities)
Democracy, a ‘pathway to hell’
“the voice of a prostitute or a drunk is of equal value”…
lol,,
I think that may be the most honest description of the demos in democracy I’ve ever heard. Allow me to borrow that for future reference. 🙂
Democracy, a ‘pathway to hell’
As there are few Jews in Indonesia to beat up (though quite enough, elsewhere, to rant about), Ahmadiyah and Shi’ite Muslims, will do just fine. Dr. Wilson’s article is most illuminating and insightful, but lest one be left with the belief that Islamic extremism is merely limited to harsh rhetoric and invocations of Shari’a Law, I have some Ahmadiyah friends I would like you to meet, one with two broken legs, and another with multiple burn scars on his face, lest you think the FPI is just one of those typical brazen and voluble Indonesian Islamic organisations and nothing more than that. I would introduce you to some others, but they are dead, beaten to a pulp and their mosque burned, as the police stood by and watched, and did nothing. Where is the analogue of Gus Dur, living now in Indonesia, to demand Islamic tolerance and accountability ?
Why is Malaysia experiencing a brain drain?
Malaysia is rapidly turning into a fundamentalist Islamist state. The ruling Islamist groups are now even inciting and financially supporting the minority Bengali-Muslims on the Burma-Bangladesh Border to rise up against ruling Buddhist majority. Why, I wonder?
Akanat “six degrees” Promphan
Academic inflation in Thailand begins pretty close to the very top, if you know what I mean.
The weakness of the Thai royalists
Here’s Suthep’s version of “decentralisation”. No prizes for guessing WHICH 10-15 provinces would be “de-centralised”, with thereby incresed financial largess. And no prize for guessing how many Red Shirt provinces would be among those “10-15”, out of Thailand’s 76 provinces : http://www.nationmultimedia.com/politics/Decentralised-administration-discussed-at-PDRC-for-30229271.html
Akanat “six degrees” Promphan
It certainly seems muddled, even in the version reduced to only two degrees (BSc Engineering and MSc Hons Engineering) provided by Bunyanuch. Oxford doesn’t award BSc degrees in any subject and its MSc in Engineering is a masters degree by research which is either pass or fail, not honours, pass or fail like undergraduate degrees. The unabridged list of degrees would have taken 12-13 years to earn and Mr Akanat is only 28. If he has just the 4 year undergraduate MEng degree from Oxford,that is a far higher educational achievement already than most Thai politicians. Given that 6 British GCSEs that are taken at 14-16 years old are accepted for admission to Chula and Thammasat, one can imagine that most Thai bachelors degrees are barely equivalent to British A levels.
Academic inflation is somewhat endemic to Thai politicians, viz Dr Chalerm Yoobamrung’s doctrate in law and Banharn’s masters in political science earned with a dissertation quoting widely from English and French sources. There was also that TRT MP who graduated from a university in the Philippines two years before he got round to applying for his first passport.
Indonesia Votes: what polling says
Great data, thanks Liam
Indonesia Votes: what polling says
Great summary, thanks Liam.
Network monarchy’s twilight
The monarchy still has the power (through a corrupt constitution) to appoint its own corrupt cronies to major administrative, military, and judicial posts, ensuring that democratic government is unworkable. If the elected officials of the world’s democracies can appoint their own cronies, the elected government of Thailand should be able to do the same. In a democracy, is up to the electorate to decide, in the light of free speech, what level of corruption they are prepared to tolerate. Provided there is free speech, the electorate will tend to vote for a government that is least corrupt: i. e. that rips them off the least; that gives them the best deal. That is what has happened in Thailand. Thaksin and his cronies, who are prepared to submit themselves to the judgement of the electorate, have shown themselves to be less corrupt than the monarchy and its cronies. The monarchy will allow neither free speech nor free elections.
Indonesia Votes: what polling says
I am quite confident that, should he be elected President, Jokowi’s numbers (popularity) will fall, once faced with the
daunting task of actual micro- and macromanagement of a rather large nation as opposed to mere rhetorical flourishes, and that the “Tidak Tahu” numbers (post-election) will progressively rise.
Why is Malaysia experiencing a brain drain?
Dio Wang, and many like him, may disagree Neptunian.
http://palmerunited.com/staff/dio-wang/
Indonesia’s Overseas Vote: Time for Secession?
No, it’s more of parting with delusions of grandeur, than a split. Talk of humility among Indonesian politicians, is a dime a dozen (or 1 rupiah for 20 politicians), as much as hubris is as equally preponderant, if not far more prevalent, than humility. If concern is that the Diaspora is poorly represented in Indonesia’s byzantine electoral process, than I have a solution.
Hire any one of the 200,000 Indonesian emigres in Southern California, many quite
affluent now, as President of Indonesia, as Indonesia could hardly do worse, and the quality of English at the Istana Merdeka
will radically improve.
Akanat “six degrees” Promphan
Since I have never heard of Outkast it is difficult to comment.For some it seems, the Spoonerish tendency as it were, Akanat’s crime appears to be that he attended academically and socially elite institutions.Those not crazed by envy and class hatred will have different views.My only caveat on Akanat’s case is that it’s a pity he appears not to have imbibed much of Oxford’s great civilised and liberal heritage.Still he is far from being the only Oxonian in Thailand that has repudiated the University’s best traditions.
My reference to “impeccable” was to Akanat’s elite education, nothing else.