Dear Dr. Koret,
Narin Phasit and your book fascinate me on many levels, not least for his righteous anger at injustice and his fearlessness even of the Thai king. I am embarking on a book project dealing with a woman in modern day Thailand who has bucked the system in order to save endangered elephants. I would enjoy contacting you with some questions around Narin Phasit and the Thailand of today, if you are interested. My email is grantmenzies (at) gmail (dot) com.
Best wishes – Grant Hayter-Menzies
Just a few factoids:
1. Thakin Than Tun, Suu Kyi’s uncle-in-law (Aung San’s brother-in-law) was the founder of the Burmese Communist Party that went “underground” in 1948, was one of the major “insurgent groups”(backed by Mao) that the “Tatmadaw” had to fight against for decades. The 20,000 man strong UWSA (United Wa State Army), a PLA-proxy is a remnant (and a legacy) of the BCP.
2. I am against classifying humans by race (according to a DNA test I did recently, I even have some Neanderthal genes!), but if people insist on playing the ethnic card, I would like to point out that the last King of Burma was half-Shan and Smith Dunn, the first Commander-in-Chief of the Burmese Army (Tatmadaw) before Ne Win, was a Karen. Besides a lot of the generals like Ne Win, Khin Nyunt are actually half-Chinese, and of course the (late) infamous drug-lords like Khun Sa and Lo Hsinghan were Chinese (some of the border Chinese involved in drug-dealing were actually remnants of the CIA-supported KMT (Chiang Kai-Shek’s Kuo Ming Tang forces)). When I was living in Burma during the 50’s and the 60’s, I knew a number of sergeants proudly serving in the elite battalions of the Tatmadaw who were not “Burman”; they were Chins, Kachins, Karens, Gurkhas, etc. So it is problematical to draw historically clean “ethnic lines” (also given the porous borders of the country) in Burma, especially between the “ruling-class-oligarchy” and the suffering rural population. “Ethnicisation” of political and economic problems is, in my opinion, a typical ├╝ber-liberal simplification, usually taught in some facile PoliSci course at a mediocre University in some Western country (so there, I can also play the “ethnic card” LOL)
I just don’t see how Yingluck Government policy to keep ‘hoarding and hoarding tens of millions of Thai rice’ (at the orders of Peau Thai Supremo Thaksin … on a ‘hunch’ that manipulating the global rice market would be good for Thai rice farmers) is “aimed at providing the basic needs of the Thai people”.
Yingluck is a ‘silly woman’ sitting at Thai PM’s chair embarked on really huge billions-to-trillions projects scares me. She could not even provide ‘edible rice’ to those very needy people requiring flood disaster relief at Pang Nga.
I saw the book at the Kinokoniya branch at the Emporium, but refrained from buying it. For a locally produced book, it is excessively expensive at 1,600 baht. I’d rather buy two well-produced imported books for that amount.
Yes, the movie was a simplistic portrayal of good vs. evil, white vs. black, and seriously glossed over the complexities of Burma’s history, especially of the minority issues in Burma, and the war that has been ongoing between the Burmans and the Karen, Chin, Tai Yai (Shan), Rohingya, etc., etc. In particular, it left out any mention of the civil war beginning with the Karen in 1946, and General Aung San’s role in it.
That said, I am not going to stand for letting anyone be an apologist for Ne Win. He really was the “superstitious tyrant” portrayed in the movie, to the nth degree. If anything, the movie didn’t portray him as badly as it should have. From the mid 1960s it was obvious that Ne Win and his form of military socialism was very bad news for his country. What can be worse for the economy than abolishing the country’s existing currency and wiping out whatever savings your citizens may have? Furthermore, the human rights abuses by the military have been atrocious, and the list of offenses is too long to be enumerated in this small comment section.
I don’t know how much time Luke Corbin has spent in Myanmar or Southeast Asia, but the supernatural component to politics (or any decision making for that matter) is VERY, very real. The scenes of relying on fortune tellers by Ne Win and Than Shwe is very commonplace, and extremely believable. If that is Corbin’s principal example of Said’s Orientalism and Western paternalism, I reject it as being in anyway inaccurate or a distortion of reality.
I don’t know much about “colonial condescension” but let me add my 2 cents worth of “Burmese sarcasm” (I was born in Burma and my ancestors were all poor wretched peasants there!)
The “Posh Lady” even had a “chef” and two “maids” while she was under “villa-arrest”. The “West”, especially the English speaking part, was “enamoured” by her slight Oxford accent but if you really listen, you will find that a good portion of her speeches are “self-referential” (which can lead to a logical paradox according to Bertrand Russell, another Noble Peace Prize winner), not to say self-aggrandising (pride goeth before a fall as the bible says) and the rest is mainly of the “clip-and-paste-buzz-word-garden-variety” (she had loads of time to read up on all that Mandela-esque stuff in her rose garden by Inya Lake)
Coming to the present: the thing that gave me a reality-check on who she really is (and what she really represents) was when I saw her angry face telling the down-trodden Letpadaung farmers (could be my distant relatives!) to shut up and accept their ancestral lands to be taken away for the benefit of a greedy Chinese copper mining State Owned Business (I like the acronym) that Suu Kyi was “endorsing”. The Great Chinese Economic Leapfrog and the Chinese lackeys in the Burmese junta are things that Suu Kyi is “fond of” nowadays. She can forget about her practising her Oxford accent and start learning Mandarin, I would suggest.
According to what I read recently:
“570 farmers had received a total of 17.8 million kyat (US $20,300) as compensation from Wanbao for more than 1,700 acres of land” (each farmer gets less than 40 bucks and each acre (full of copper) is worth less than 15 bucks?
see: http://www.irrawaddy.org/archives/31482
I believe Suu Kyi’s lakeside villa is probably worth over US $3 million, so she could sell her house (if her older brother agrees) and pay roughly 80,000 farmers for more than 240,000 acres. You can do the math now and compute the Gini coefficient, lol.
Aj. Somsak
I’m writing a research paper on Contemporary Thai Action Cinema and for one or two chapters I need to discuss the rise of the Thai middle-class so that I can make a relevant argument regarding the contemporary film reception.I was googling and found this..I’ve always been critical about your ultra-modernist vision regarding your views on the monarchy…but very little I’ve read or heard about your other political perspectives, esp. regarding the red shirts and Thaksin…I’ve read through all of your responses to the article…and I must say you’re a very critical, thoughtful, humanistic and sincere academic! thank you aj. Somsak!
and one more, your English writing is just as impressive!
Hi Vichai,
thanks for your ongoing interest in the article here and for raising the specific example of Pang Nga. I’m not privy to the case, but from your brief description, it seems to lend itself very nicely to aspects of Chatterjee’s political society. The most basic point is the expectation that the political class will seek to ameliorate the welfare demands of the needy. That is, there is a basic premise that governers will ‘govern’. Whilst this may sound straightforward, it’s actually a major shift in Thai politics from as recently as the 1970s. Thai politics, like politics in most of the world now, has taken a definitive ‘governmental turn’. This is an important point, even if its implementation remains patchy and haphazard. And those who govern are aware of the expectations upon them; no longer is their mandate simply to loot and pilfer. This no doubt continues, but is mixed with all manner of policies and projects aimed at providing the basic needs of the people. In turn, ‘the people’ are now able to negotiate the transfers of goods in a way completely different to say, back in the 1970s. This is the basic point. In your example above, can you imagine this happening in the 1970s – naming and blaming a powerful politician? But now, it is part of the tactics of the poor to do so, and it is done not to disenfranchise the one criticised, but in order to draw them into more productive relations – ie to provide edible rice. This is today’s politics. It’s not to say it’s perfect, it’s just to try and offer descriptive power to the way things are.
I was just watching today’s (July 9) 9:40PM TNN TV broadcasts of Pang Nga flood disaster relief recipients bitterly complaining about the government distribution of rice bags: all the rice distributed were rotten and rancid rice. When the TV reporter asked from whom they received the rice bags. The Pang Nga disaster victim-recipient replied “from Pheu Thai spokesman Prompong Nopparit”. Why that’s almost like receiving those rotten rancid rice (from Yingluck’s 17 million rice hoard definitely) from the Thai PM Yingluck herself, right?
What was that again that Ryan Lane was saying about embracing Thailand’s ‘impure politics/democracy’?
It appears that Najib Razak and Kevin Rudd have one thing in common. Both are generally liked much more by the electorate than by their caucus/warlords.
Also, both are in their leadership positions because the caucus/warlords cannot find other more acceptable/suitable leader/s.
[…] prisoners at the Lak-Sri prison and five other 112 cases that are still incarcerated (4 males, Surachai Danwattananusorn, Somyot Prueksakasemsuk, Ekachai Hongkangwan and Yuttaphoom Martnork are at Bangkok Remand Prison […]
I would also throw ethnicity into the mix.
The political tensions of uniting an ex-colonial, multi-ethnic society with multiple talents and cultures have caused governments in Singapore and Malaysia to handle their electorate a little more generously than they would have to with a relatively homogenised, nationalistically inclined and comparatively bovine (until recently) electorate.
I expect some slow changes will occur after 2015. It will be interesting to see what isolationist barriers are put in place to keep the nations blood pure (and Chinese-Thai).
Any or all of Yingluck’s three major mega-billions-to-trillions projects: (a) the rice pledge scheme, (b) water (flood) management project, and (c) mega-trillions modern rail system (high-speed trains) could undo her.
Gamely but lamely the Yingluck government is claiming that because the project will be funded “off-budget”, meaning will borrowed (ha ha), then government funding would not be touched or involved thus making the decree constitutional (I think Yingluck’s ministers are either idiots or delusionally incurable).
The Baht 350 billion water (flood) management project has of course been already accepted for judicial process, being sued because “there were not enough public hearings” as required by the law before the projects were awarded to the many bidders undertaking the engineering projects.
The rice scheme fiasco goes on and will continue on and on because of very serious flaws and ‘rampant corruptive’ aroma and sleaze surrounding the mountains of rice hoard (17 million tons and still piling).
Among the many many reasons that drew millions of ordinary Egyptians to protest against ousted Egyptian Pres. Morsi was the rapid rise of basic food items, bread in particular. Thailand’s price of rice could rise or explode, but at the moment, according to Mr. Ammar Siamwalla, a distinguished scholar at the Thailand Development Research Institute,
Yingluck’s most amazing accomplishment to-date was “to make the price of paddy skyrocket by 30-40% whereas the price of milled rice remains unchanged.”
It is an idiotic, dangerous and very costly (to Thailand eventually) for Yingluck to proceed with his hare-brained scheme to drive the ‘world market price’ by ‘hoarding Thai rice rice’ indefinitely. Somebody should pay, and most definitely not the Thai taxpayers, for the losses of the rice pledge scheme.
But Vietnam, India and global exporters continue to benefit from Thailand’s rice pledge scheme, while Thailand’s rice export industry erodes and its rice rot and go rancid.
Facebook 
Twitter 
Soundcloud 
Youtube 
Rss
Review of Man who accused king
Dear Dr. Koret,
Narin Phasit and your book fascinate me on many levels, not least for his righteous anger at injustice and his fearlessness even of the Thai king. I am embarking on a book project dealing with a woman in modern day Thailand who has bucked the system in order to save endangered elephants. I would enjoy contacting you with some questions around Narin Phasit and the Thailand of today, if you are interested. My email is grantmenzies (at) gmail (dot) com.
Best wishes – Grant Hayter-Menzies
Just a Lady – Part I
Just a few factoids:
1. Thakin Than Tun, Suu Kyi’s uncle-in-law (Aung San’s brother-in-law) was the founder of the Burmese Communist Party that went “underground” in 1948, was one of the major “insurgent groups”(backed by Mao) that the “Tatmadaw” had to fight against for decades. The 20,000 man strong UWSA (United Wa State Army), a PLA-proxy is a remnant (and a legacy) of the BCP.
2. I am against classifying humans by race (according to a DNA test I did recently, I even have some Neanderthal genes!), but if people insist on playing the ethnic card, I would like to point out that the last King of Burma was half-Shan and Smith Dunn, the first Commander-in-Chief of the Burmese Army (Tatmadaw) before Ne Win, was a Karen. Besides a lot of the generals like Ne Win, Khin Nyunt are actually half-Chinese, and of course the (late) infamous drug-lords like Khun Sa and Lo Hsinghan were Chinese (some of the border Chinese involved in drug-dealing were actually remnants of the CIA-supported KMT (Chiang Kai-Shek’s Kuo Ming Tang forces)). When I was living in Burma during the 50’s and the 60’s, I knew a number of sergeants proudly serving in the elite battalions of the Tatmadaw who were not “Burman”; they were Chins, Kachins, Karens, Gurkhas, etc. So it is problematical to draw historically clean “ethnic lines” (also given the porous borders of the country) in Burma, especially between the “ruling-class-oligarchy” and the suffering rural population. “Ethnicisation” of political and economic problems is, in my opinion, a typical ├╝ber-liberal simplification, usually taught in some facile PoliSci course at a mediocre University in some Western country (so there, I can also play the “ethnic card” LOL)
Desiring a pure people’s politics
I just don’t see how Yingluck Government policy to keep ‘hoarding and hoarding tens of millions of Thai rice’ (at the orders of Peau Thai Supremo Thaksin … on a ‘hunch’ that manipulating the global rice market would be good for Thai rice farmers) is “aimed at providing the basic needs of the Thai people”.
Yingluck is a ‘silly woman’ sitting at Thai PM’s chair embarked on really huge billions-to-trillions projects scares me. She could not even provide ‘edible rice’ to those very needy people requiring flood disaster relief at Pang Nga.
Thailand’s knights of the realm
I saw the book at the Kinokoniya branch at the Emporium, but refrained from buying it. For a locally produced book, it is excessively expensive at 1,600 baht. I’d rather buy two well-produced imported books for that amount.
Clive Kessler’s analysis on UMNO’s strategy and a correction
Emeritus Professor Clive Kessler elaborates further on Malaysia’s 13th general election.
http://www.themalaymailonline.com/what-you-think/article/malaysias-13th-national-election-some-further-remarks-clive-kessler
Just a Lady – Part I
Yes, the movie was a simplistic portrayal of good vs. evil, white vs. black, and seriously glossed over the complexities of Burma’s history, especially of the minority issues in Burma, and the war that has been ongoing between the Burmans and the Karen, Chin, Tai Yai (Shan), Rohingya, etc., etc. In particular, it left out any mention of the civil war beginning with the Karen in 1946, and General Aung San’s role in it.
That said, I am not going to stand for letting anyone be an apologist for Ne Win. He really was the “superstitious tyrant” portrayed in the movie, to the nth degree. If anything, the movie didn’t portray him as badly as it should have. From the mid 1960s it was obvious that Ne Win and his form of military socialism was very bad news for his country. What can be worse for the economy than abolishing the country’s existing currency and wiping out whatever savings your citizens may have? Furthermore, the human rights abuses by the military have been atrocious, and the list of offenses is too long to be enumerated in this small comment section.
I don’t know how much time Luke Corbin has spent in Myanmar or Southeast Asia, but the supernatural component to politics (or any decision making for that matter) is VERY, very real. The scenes of relying on fortune tellers by Ne Win and Than Shwe is very commonplace, and extremely believable. If that is Corbin’s principal example of Said’s Orientalism and Western paternalism, I reject it as being in anyway inaccurate or a distortion of reality.
Just a Lady – Part I
I don’t know much about “colonial condescension” but let me add my 2 cents worth of “Burmese sarcasm” (I was born in Burma and my ancestors were all poor wretched peasants there!)
The “Posh Lady” even had a “chef” and two “maids” while she was under “villa-arrest”. The “West”, especially the English speaking part, was “enamoured” by her slight Oxford accent but if you really listen, you will find that a good portion of her speeches are “self-referential” (which can lead to a logical paradox according to Bertrand Russell, another Noble Peace Prize winner), not to say self-aggrandising (pride goeth before a fall as the bible says) and the rest is mainly of the “clip-and-paste-buzz-word-garden-variety” (she had loads of time to read up on all that Mandela-esque stuff in her rose garden by Inya Lake)
Coming to the present: the thing that gave me a reality-check on who she really is (and what she really represents) was when I saw her angry face telling the down-trodden Letpadaung farmers (could be my distant relatives!) to shut up and accept their ancestral lands to be taken away for the benefit of a greedy Chinese copper mining State Owned Business (I like the acronym) that Suu Kyi was “endorsing”. The Great Chinese Economic Leapfrog and the Chinese lackeys in the Burmese junta are things that Suu Kyi is “fond of” nowadays. She can forget about her practising her Oxford accent and start learning Mandarin, I would suggest.
According to what I read recently:
“570 farmers had received a total of 17.8 million kyat (US $20,300) as compensation from Wanbao for more than 1,700 acres of land” (each farmer gets less than 40 bucks and each acre (full of copper) is worth less than 15 bucks?
see: http://www.irrawaddy.org/archives/31482
I believe Suu Kyi’s lakeside villa is probably worth over US $3 million, so she could sell her house (if her older brother agrees) and pay roughly 80,000 farmers for more than 240,000 acres. You can do the math now and compute the Gini coefficient, lol.
Najib’s tightrope act
The Rightist and Leftist Ultras in Umno/Bn are Fake.
It is the Money that Tips the Political Scale.
Najib will Forever Acting, Walking on Tightrope because Umno Never CHange .
The Future Lies with the Rakyat, no more Umno/Bn
Thongchai Winichakul on the Red “germs”
Aj. Somsak
I’m writing a research paper on Contemporary Thai Action Cinema and for one or two chapters I need to discuss the rise of the Thai middle-class so that I can make a relevant argument regarding the contemporary film reception.I was googling and found this..I’ve always been critical about your ultra-modernist vision regarding your views on the monarchy…but very little I’ve read or heard about your other political perspectives, esp. regarding the red shirts and Thaksin…I’ve read through all of your responses to the article…and I must say you’re a very critical, thoughtful, humanistic and sincere academic! thank you aj. Somsak!
and one more, your English writing is just as impressive!
Desiring a pure people’s politics
Hi Vichai,
thanks for your ongoing interest in the article here and for raising the specific example of Pang Nga. I’m not privy to the case, but from your brief description, it seems to lend itself very nicely to aspects of Chatterjee’s political society. The most basic point is the expectation that the political class will seek to ameliorate the welfare demands of the needy. That is, there is a basic premise that governers will ‘govern’. Whilst this may sound straightforward, it’s actually a major shift in Thai politics from as recently as the 1970s. Thai politics, like politics in most of the world now, has taken a definitive ‘governmental turn’. This is an important point, even if its implementation remains patchy and haphazard. And those who govern are aware of the expectations upon them; no longer is their mandate simply to loot and pilfer. This no doubt continues, but is mixed with all manner of policies and projects aimed at providing the basic needs of the people. In turn, ‘the people’ are now able to negotiate the transfers of goods in a way completely different to say, back in the 1970s. This is the basic point. In your example above, can you imagine this happening in the 1970s – naming and blaming a powerful politician? But now, it is part of the tactics of the poor to do so, and it is done not to disenfranchise the one criticised, but in order to draw them into more productive relations – ie to provide edible rice. This is today’s politics. It’s not to say it’s perfect, it’s just to try and offer descriptive power to the way things are.
Dominant parties in decline
I suppose David Cameron is the people’s choice in the UK?
Desiring a pure people’s politics
I was just watching today’s (July 9) 9:40PM TNN TV broadcasts of Pang Nga flood disaster relief recipients bitterly complaining about the government distribution of rice bags: all the rice distributed were rotten and rancid rice. When the TV reporter asked from whom they received the rice bags. The Pang Nga disaster victim-recipient replied “from Pheu Thai spokesman Prompong Nopparit”. Why that’s almost like receiving those rotten rancid rice (from Yingluck’s 17 million rice hoard definitely) from the Thai PM Yingluck herself, right?
What was that again that Ryan Lane was saying about embracing Thailand’s ‘impure politics/democracy’?
Najib’s tightrope act
It appears that Najib Razak and Kevin Rudd have one thing in common. Both are generally liked much more by the electorate than by their caucus/warlords.
Also, both are in their leadership positions because the caucus/warlords cannot find other more acceptable/suitable leader/s.
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2013-07-08/kevin-rudd-reveals-plan-for-labor-party-leadership-voting-reform/4806820
Interview with Surachai Danwattananusorn
[…] prisoners at the Lak-Sri prison and five other 112 cases that are still incarcerated (4 males, Surachai Danwattananusorn, Somyot Prueksakasemsuk, Ekachai Hongkangwan and Yuttaphoom Martnork are at Bangkok Remand Prison […]
Dominant parties in decline
When leaders fail to lead, the people will teach them to follow.
– Bob Geldof
Review of The Institutional Imperative
I would also throw ethnicity into the mix.
The political tensions of uniting an ex-colonial, multi-ethnic society with multiple talents and cultures have caused governments in Singapore and Malaysia to handle their electorate a little more generously than they would have to with a relatively homogenised, nationalistically inclined and comparatively bovine (until recently) electorate.
I expect some slow changes will occur after 2015. It will be interesting to see what isolationist barriers are put in place to keep the nations blood pure (and Chinese-Thai).
Thailand’s knights of the realm
Thanks all. Turns out Kinokuniya at Paragon did have a few copies.
Thai royals and the Border Patrol Police
He’s the Universal Soldier-
He’a a Catholic, a Hindu, an Atheist, a Jain,
A Buddhist and a Baptist and a Jew….
-Buffy Sainte-Marie.
Desiring a pure people’s politics
Any or all of Yingluck’s three major mega-billions-to-trillions projects: (a) the rice pledge scheme, (b) water (flood) management project, and (c) mega-trillions modern rail system (high-speed trains) could undo her.
The Law Reform Commission chairman Kanit Na Nakhon recently warned on Wednesday (July 3rd) that the Baht 2 trillion Yingluck loan decree is “unconstitutional” (specifically Article 169). (http://www.bangkokpost.com/news/local/358145/law-reform-commission-warns-govt-b2-trillion-loan-decree-breaches-constitution)
Gamely but lamely the Yingluck government is claiming that because the project will be funded “off-budget”, meaning will borrowed (ha ha), then government funding would not be touched or involved thus making the decree constitutional (I think Yingluck’s ministers are either idiots or delusionally incurable).
The Baht 350 billion water (flood) management project has of course been already accepted for judicial process, being sued because “there were not enough public hearings” as required by the law before the projects were awarded to the many bidders undertaking the engineering projects.
The rice scheme fiasco goes on and will continue on and on because of very serious flaws and ‘rampant corruptive’ aroma and sleaze surrounding the mountains of rice hoard (17 million tons and still piling).
Among the many many reasons that drew millions of ordinary Egyptians to protest against ousted Egyptian Pres. Morsi was the rapid rise of basic food items, bread in particular. Thailand’s price of rice could rise or explode, but at the moment, according to Mr. Ammar Siamwalla, a distinguished scholar at the Thailand Development Research Institute,
Yingluck’s most amazing accomplishment to-date was “to make the price of paddy skyrocket by 30-40% whereas the price of milled rice remains unchanged.”
link:http://www.bangkokpost.com/news/local/358197/yingluck-challenges-supa-to-provide-corruption-details
It is an idiotic, dangerous and very costly (to Thailand eventually) for Yingluck to proceed with his hare-brained scheme to drive the ‘world market price’ by ‘hoarding Thai rice rice’ indefinitely. Somebody should pay, and most definitely not the Thai taxpayers, for the losses of the rice pledge scheme.
But Vietnam, India and global exporters continue to benefit from Thailand’s rice pledge scheme, while Thailand’s rice export industry erodes and its rice rot and go rancid.
Thai royals and the Border Patrol Police
He looks like a good shot….