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Giles Ji Ungpakorn
February 2014
If Democrat Party protesters, business leaders, military commanders, top civil servants, judges, NGOs, senior academics and the reactionary doctors have their way, Thai democracy will indeed be finished. But the conservative middle and upper classes in Thailand are a minority, albeit a powerful one. The majority of ordinary people want to defend their democratic rights and have shown that they are prepared to do so since the early 1970s.
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Paper given at St Antonys College, Oxford, S.E. Asia Seminar, 20 February 2014. Former Associate Professor of politics at Chulalongkorn University, Bangkok, now living in exile in the UK after being charged with lse majest in late 2008 because of a book criticising the 2006 military coup. Since arriving in Britain, he has been an active commentator on Thai politics, using blogs, websites, internet radio and social media. Out of necessity he is currently employed as an administrative worker in a local NHS hospital in Oxford where he is also a union shop steward.
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Giles Ji Ungpakorn
February 2014
Following the recent anti-government protests, where the Democrat Party demonstrators, led by Sutep Tuaksuban, called for an end to parliamentary democracy and a new system of appointed parliaments, Prime Minister Yingluck decided to dissolve parliament and call fresh elections for February 2014. The election failed to solve the crisis because those opposed to Yingluks Pua Thai government do not respect elections and democracy. Using violence and intimidation of voters, the Democrat Party supporters in Bangkok and some southern provinces caused chaos in about 10% of constituencies. This was enough, they hoped, to prevent parliament from being convened to elect a new government. Amid this long-running Thai crisis, many people are asking whether Thai democracy is on its last legs. This paper will attempt to analyse the post-election situation and explain the root causes of the crisis. In doing so the idea of a crisis of royal succession will be rejected in favour of an explanation grounded in political economy. Cracks in Thai society, which developed over decades, and were finally exposed in the 1996 Asian economic crisis, are the root cause of why the middle class, the military, the conservative elites and the NGOs dislike parliamentary democracy and former Prime Minister Taksin Shinawat, Yingluks brother. The opposing sides in this conflict were initially symbolised by colour codes. The Yellow Shirts were royalists who supported the 2006 military coup against Taksins TRT government3. The Red Shirts were those supporting Taksins elected government and also supporting the democratic process. Since the election of Yingluks Pua Thai Party, which is a new incarnation of Taksins TRT, the Yellow Shirts have shed their skins and their coloured shirts, but their political position has remained the same. They are against democracy and they are now led by the misnamed Democrat Party. My analysis of Thai politics is grounded in Marxist theory which rejects the idea that social change is merely about elite manoeuvres and elite conspiracies. Marxist theory also encourages us to look at the big picture, both historically and gl obally, so as not to merely confine ourselves to short sound bites of news and analysis.
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February 2014
activists who half supported the 2006 military coup and have said in the past that villagers who voted for Taksins party lacked information; a euphemism for stupidity 4. It is also the view of Chiang Mai academic Attachak Satayanuruk, who was associated with the Midnight University5. But this view is not shared by Niti Eoseewong, also a former member of the Midnight University. Niti called for the government to take a firm line with the anti-democratic protesters and to use prodemocracy social movements to help bring the military under democratic control6. It is a lazy generalisation to argue that the Red Shirts are rural villagers from the north and north-east and that Suteps royalist supporters are Bangkok residents.7 The results from the 2011 general election showed that in the 33 Bangkok constituencies, the Democrat Party won 44.34% of the vote, while the Pua Thai Party won 40.72%. Violent scenes outside Bangkok polling stations in the run up to the 2014 election, when Suteps gangs intimidated those who wished to exercise their vote, show that significant numbers of Bangkok residents were against the Democrat Party. In fact the Bangkok population is evenly split between Pua Thai and the Democrats and this is based on those who have house registrations in Bangkok. Thousands of rural migrant workers who work and reside permanently in Bangkok are still registered to vote in their family villages. If they were registered where they actually live and work, Pua Thai might have achieved an overall majority in Bangkok in 2011. Many Red Shirt protests in the past have also been made up of Bangkok residents.
2. There is no crisis of succession The hypothesis, found in many foreign media reports8, that the present long-running unrest in Thailand is primarily caused by a crisis of succession, assumes that the Thai monarch has real power and that he has been constantly intervening in politics. It also assumes that social and political crises are merely about elite rivalries with no involvement by millions of ordinary people. That is just not the case and the real cause of the crisis lies elsewhere. Thailand does not have an absolute monarch or North Korean-style despot in his twilight years, with factions fighting over who will be the next ruler. The Thai absolute monarchy was overthrown in the 1932 revolution, and since then, power
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Jon Ungpakorn What is the real nature of hatred in Thai society Prachatai 5th January 2014. http://www.prachatai.com/journal/2014/01/50958 5 http://www.prachatai.com/journal/2014/01/51077 6 http://www.prachatai.com/journal/2014/01/50981, http://uglytruththailand.wordpress.com/2014/01/08/niti-eoseewong-the-democratic-solution-to-thecurrent-crisis/ 7 Duncan McCargo The Last Gasp of Thai Paternalism. New York Times, 19th December 2013. http://www.nytimes.com/2013/12/20/opinion/the-last-gasp-of-thai-paternalism.html?_r=0 8 th For example, The Independent, 11 February 2014: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/asia/thai-princess-uses-social-media-to-declare-warphotos-posted-by-princess-chulabhorn-mahidol-widely-interpreted-as-a-sign-of-her-support-forantigovernment-protesters-9122267.html
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has been shared and disputed among the military and civilian elites and the top businessmen. At the same time elite rule has constantly been challenged from below in mass uprisings and insurgencies. For much of the time between 1932 and the mid1980s, the elites ruled by dictatorship. But this has become harder and harder to do ever since the mass uprising against the military in 1973. The reason for this is that the structure of Thai society has changed9. There are more and more workers, both blue collar and white collar and the new generation of workers and farmers are more confident and educated. That is why the monarchy has become more important to the ruling class as a symbol of natural hierarchy, necessary to give legitimacy to those who abuse democracy and preside over a grossly un-equal society. The lse majest law is designed to protect the holy relic that serves such a useful purpose for the ruling class10. The monarch has always been weak and cowardly, a creature of the military and the elites who surround him and use him for their own ends. He was ill-prepared to become king when his older brother died in a gun accident. He was introduced to the Throne during a time when the most powerful military and police faction was led by anti-royalists who had participated in the 1932 revolution. But rivals of this faction sought to use and promote the King. They came to power during the Sarit coup in the late 1950s and the monarch was promoted as part of the anti-communist struggle during the Cold War. King Pumipon was used by the Thai military and conservative elites, together with the U.S. government, as an anti-communist symbol. He was also required to appear on TV to stop the 1973 uprising from toppling the whole old order11. He was required by the Privy Council to appear on TV again after the 1992 uprising, which once more toppled military rule. Throughout his reign, Pumipon has swayed like a leaf, bending in the wind and serving as a willing tool of those who happened to be in power. He failed to prevent or solve any serious crisis. He supported the extreme right-wing leader Tanin Kraiwichien in 1976, only to see Tanin swept aside by the military a year later. He supported the 1991 military coup leader Sujinda Kaprayoon, only to see the junta destroyed by a popular uprising. His sufficiency Economy ideology was taken to heart by neo-liberal conservatives because it supported the idea that the state should not help the poor. But no one took it seriously enough to think it could really be an economic strategy which could be practically applied for economic development. The king himself is the richest man in Thailand and head of a huge multinational corporation.
Giles Ji Ungpakorn (2011) Thai Spring? Paper given at the 5th Annual Nordic NIAS Council Conference organised by The Forum for Asian Studies/NIAS. 21-23rd November 2011, Stockholm University, Sweden. http://www.scribd.com/doc/73908759/Thai-Spring 10 Giles Ji Ungpakorn (2011) Lse Majest, the Monarchy, and the Military in Thailand. Paper given at the Department of Peace and Conflict Studies (Pax et Bellum), University of Uppsala, Sweden, 29th April 2011. http://www.scribd.com/doc/54529804/Lese-majeste-the-Monarchy-and-the-Military-inThailand 11 Giles Ji Ungpakorn (2010) Thailands Crisis and the Struggle for Democracy. WD Press, U.K. http://www.scribd.com/doc/47097266/Thailand-s-Crisis-and-the-fight-for-Democracy
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The fixation by political commentators on the monarch and the royal family may be understandable, given the way the elites deliberately make the king into a deity to serve their own ends, but we should expect a better quality of analysis. Such an analysis should be based on historical evidence and an investigation into the political dynamics that exist in the whole of society. The first question that should be asked is: why do the elites make the king into a powerful deity and constantly reproduce this myth? The more Thai society develops into a modern capitalist one, the more difficult it has become for the elites to rule over the population using crude authoritarian means. The Thai military can only justify its anti-democratic political meddling by promoting the monarch into a deity and then claiming to follow his orders. Similarly, politicians and businessmen, Taksin included, used the monarchy to increase their own legitimacy. It was Taksins government which kicked-off the semicompulsory wearing of royalist yellow shirts on one day each week. The interesting point to bear in mind is that the frenzied promotion of the King actually accelerated from the mid-1980s onwards, as the elites were forced to make more and more concessions to parliamentary democracy. It was an attempt to slow down progress and insulate elite privileges from change. But eventually, their worst nightmares came true when the democratic process came to challenge their status after the election victory of TRT. Before former Prime Minister Taksin had a falling out with the military and the conservatives, the King was a willing supporter of his government, for example, praising his war on drugs where thousands were executed in an extra -judiciary manner12. For those who believe that the King is a powerful figure even today, one just has to look at reality. How can a man who has spent years in hospital or in a wheel chair and who can hardly speak, order the army to do anything? Or perhaps he is just hamming it? After the act of speaking in public with such difficulty, after the cameras stop rolling, perhaps he jumps up from his chair and does 100 push-ups, followed by a phone call to the army chiefs, where he barks out his orders in a firm and powerful voice? There is no absolute monarch in his final years causing a potential power vacuum. But what about the idea that the various elite factions are really fighting about who will control the Crown Prince when he becomes king? Make no mistake; all sides have agreed that the scandal-prone and despicable prince will be the next king. To place the Crown Princess, who has chosen never to have a male partner, on the throne instead, would immediately destroy all the reinvented tradition about the
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Giles Ji Ungpakorn (2007) A Coup for the Rich. WDPress, Bangkok. http://www.scribd.com/doc/41173616/Coup-For-the-Rich-by-Giles-Ji-Ungpakorn
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monarchy as a deity. If a bad prince can be side-lined by a woman, then perhaps the population could elect a president? It is probably true that Taksin paid off the Crown Princes gambling debts and that Taksins rivals may fear that he would be more dominant in his use of the Prince as a result. But this is a minor question because the Prince will be an even weaker creature than his father. Buying the Crown Prince doesnt result in ownership of power because power does not reside with the monarchy. All this begs the really big question as to why the present military high command and the conservatives, including the Democrat Party, are so opposed to Taksin. The answer cannot be found in the problem of the succession. Neither can it be explained by claiming incorrectly that Taksin is a closet republican.
3. The two dimensional class struggle The long running Thai crisis is a result of an unintentional clash between the conservative way of operating in a parliamentary democracy and a more modern one. It is equally related to attempts by Taksin and his party to modernise Thai society so that the economy could become more competitive on a global level, especially after the 1996 Asian economic crisis. Thai political leaders since the early 1970s had always adopted a laissez faire attitude to development, with minimal government planning, low wages, few trade union rights and an abdication of responsibility by governments to improve infrastructure and living standards. This strategy worked in the early years, but by the time of the 1996 Asian economic crisis it was becoming obvious that it was seriously failing. The consequences of this economic crisis are far more important to the understanding the Thai political crisis today than concentrating on the so-called problem of succession. The increased inequality in Thai society as a result of freemarket economic growth is also important. The top 20% now have a disposable income, after living costs, of more than 10 times that of the general population.13 In the first general election since the 1996 crisis, Taksins party put forward a raft of modernising and pro-poor policies, including the first ever universal health care scheme. Because the Democrat Party had previously told the unemployed to go back to their villages and depend on their families, while spending state finances in securing the savings for the rich in failed banks, Taksin was able to say that his government would benefit everyone, not just the rich. Taksins T RT won the elections. The government was unique in being both popular and dynamic, with real policies, which were used to win the election and were then implemented afterwards. Previously, the old parties had just bought votes without any policies and had relied on local patron-client networks. Taksins policies and his overwhelming electoral base came to challenge many elements of the old elite
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order, although this was not Taksins conscious aim at all. In the last 20 years the Democrat Party has never managed to win more than a quarter of the national vote, often it was much less. Local political and criminal mafia were edged out of power by Taksins electoral machine. The military could not compete in terms of democratic legitimacy and support. The middle class started to resent the fact that the government was helping to raise the standards of living of workers and poor farmers. This is the real basis for the prolonged crisis in society and it explains why the conservatives, the middle class and the Democrat Party are so strongly opposed to democracy. We need to understand the role of the Red Shirt movement which was formed in 2008 in response to the continuing destruction of democracy. One way of understanding the dialectical relationship between Taksin and the Red Shirt movement is to see a kind of parallel war in the Red Shirt struggles against the conservative elites. Thousands of ordinary Red Shirts struggle for democracy, dignity and social justice, while Taksin and his political allies wage a very different campaign to regain the political influence that they had enjoyed before the 2006 coup d'tat 14. However, at the same time, Taksin remains very popular with most Red Shirts. The real division between the Reds and the Yellows in the current crisis is CLASS. There is a clear tendency for workers and poor to middle income farmers to support Pua Thai and the Red Shirts, irrespective of geographical location. This is because of TRTs pro-poor policies of universal health care, job creation and support for rice farmers. In the provinces and in Bangkok, the middle classes and the elites tended to vote for the Democrats and wanted to reduce the democratic space and turn the clock back to pre-TRT times. Back in 1976, the middle class supported repression and dictatorship to destroy the Left. In the 1930s, the middle class were also the back-bone of fascism in Europe. But this is not just a simple class struggle. In fact, class struggle in the real world is seldom simple or pure. The Thai crisis has important class dimensions, but they are complicated by the political weakness of the Left and the organised working class. This is why Taksins Pua Thai Party can dominate and lead the Red Shirts.
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Giles Ji Ungpakorn (2012) Thailand: Reconciliation as Betrayal. The Parallel War: Taksin and the Red Shirts. Paper given to the Thailand Research Group, Institute of Asian and African Studies, Humboldt University of Berlin, Germany, October 2012. http://www.scribd.com/doc/177338303/%E2%80%9CThailand-Reconciliation-as-Betrayal-TheParallel-War-Taksin-and-the-Red-Shirts%E2%80%9D-econciliation-as-Betrayal
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Red Shirt movement and have come to expect the government to produce policies which are beneficial to the majority. There is no easy way out for them. Turning the clock back too far on democratic change will inflame the divisions. Yet to achieve real democracy, the un-democratic elements in Thai society need to be crushed politically by a mass movement. Otherwise we shall end up with just a grubby compromise and the prospect of another crisis breaking out some time in the future. A compromise between Sutep and the Pua Thai is on the cards after the turmoil of the February 2014 election. However, it would not be a step forward for democracy. It would result in reducing the democratic space and reducing the power of the electorate. That is why calls by elites, academics and NGOs for a compromise does not represent any progress towards democratic reform.
Permanent Revolution in the Thai context Many people might wonder why Yingluks government seemed to be paralysed in the face of violent and criminal actions by Suteps Democrat Party mob 15. The answer is not that there are invisible hands from the throne or that there is covert military support for Sutep. In fact, the top elites tend to regard Sutep and his acolytes as lowly street gangsters. They also regard former Democrat Party Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva as a weak creature to be used and then ignored16. But these disturbances are useful to the military and the conservatives because they can push Pua Thai and Taksin into further compromises. That is why the military sat on its hands with a smug smile during the violence. Naturally, Sutep was getting support from the backwoodsmen in the Constitutional Court, the Election Commission and business elites but the street mobs were doing all the work. They were also supported by the reactionary doctors, university vice chancellors and NGOs who represent the middle class. The real reason why Pua Thai appeared to be paralysed is that they were faced with a hard choice. Either they had to order the sacking of the top generals and reactionary judges and the arrest of the violent protest leaders, using the police and the support of millions of Red Shirts, mobilised on the streets, or they had to go for a grubby compromise with the conservatives. To put it more bluntly, either Pua Thai mobilise their millions of supporters and the Red Shirts to tear down the old order, or they make peace with their conservative elite rivals. Given that Taksin, Yingluk and Pua Thai are basically big
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See the account by a CNN producer in Bangkok http://edition.cnn.com/2014/02/03/world/asia/thai-protests-gunfight-kocha/index.html 16 See Taksin and the Militarys attitude to The Democrat Party in Giles Ji Ungpakorn (2012) Thailand: Reconciliation as Betrayal. The Parallel War: Taksin and the Red Shirts. Already quoted.
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business politicians, they naturally choose the latter option. This is not to avoid civil war, but to avoid revolution from below. They want to use the red shirts as voting fodder, but not risk mobilising a mass movement. After the 2011 election Pua Thai and Taksin made an uneasy peace with the military and this was reinforced in late 2013 when the Pua Thai government tried unsuccessfully to push through a disgraceful amnesty bill covering the military and Democrat Party leaders who murdered red shirts in 2010. Naturally, it also covered Taksin, but not lse majest political prisoners. Thailands old order is not some semi-feudal state structure. The state and the conservative elites are part of a modern capitalist semi-dictatorship controlled by the military, the business class and the top civil servants. They are all united in their royalism, but Thailand is not an absolute monarchy either. These conservatives are also extreme neo-liberals who are totally opposed to spending state funds on improving the lives of ordinary people17. They denigrated Taksins dual-track economic policies, which were a mixture of grass-roots Keynesianism and freemarket policies at a national level. This is what lies behind the term populism, used by conservative academics as an insult against Taksins pro-poor policies such as the universal health care scheme. Since the late 1990s, growing conflict was emerging between the realities on the ground and the old political structures that had a stranglehold on society. Taksin and TRT played a part in increasing this conflict by proposing modernisation. Yet Taksins aim was not to pull down the old order, but merely to gently modernise it. Today, Yingluk, Pua Thai and Taksin are still determined to protect the main pillars of the old order. They fear revolt from below more than competition from the conservatives. Thailand today is not the Europe of 1848, but there are some aspects of Europe in 1848, as explained by Karl Marx18, which can help us understand the Thai situation. Marx wrote that the rising capitalist class in Europe were too cowardly to finish off the old order by leading a revolutionary movement of workers. The capitalist class preferred a compromise with the old feudalists rather than mobilising movements from below which might come to challenge the capitalists themselves. Marx announced that from then on, workers needed to lead an independent Permanent Revolution which would sweep away the old rulers and go on t o challenge the capitalist class. Leon Trotsky developed this idea further by arguing that in underdeveloped countries workers should lead movements of workers and peasants to sweep away colonialism or feudalism and not merely stop at modern capitalism, but
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Giles Ji Ungpakorn (2007) A Coup for the Rich, chapter 1, already quoted. Marx Engels Collected Works, Volume 10, London: Lawrence & Wishart (1978), p. 280-287.
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move on towards socialism19. This happened in Russia in 1917 until the revolution was drowned in blood by Stalin. Of course the Thai capitalist class has long been entrenched and feudalism was abolished in the 1870s. But what this means for Thailand is that we should not raise false hopes that Yingluk, Pua Thai or Taksin will carry out the necessary mobilisations to get rid of the old authoritarian capitalist order. That task must be led by a movement from below whose aims should be to go further than just establishing capitalist parliamentary democracy as seen in the West. In practice, given the weak state of independent red shirt and left-wing organisation on the ground, the best we can hope for right now is to build a movement from below which continues to push against the boundaries of authoritarianism and to continually criticise any nasty compromises which Pua Thai will want to make. But ultimately, in the long term, this movement will have to rise up and pull down the structures dominated by the military, big business and conservative officials. It is worth looking at the revolutionary events in Egypt, often referred to as the Arab Spring, as a further comparison. The mass movement which overthrew Mubarak was made up of a multitude of groups. The middle class liberals and rank and file members of the Muslim Brotherhood were important sections. But the liberals and the Brotherhood leadership were determined to stop the revolution before it could grow deeper. Both the liberals and the Muslim Brotherhood were prepared to do deals with the military and Mubaraks old state machine and they were in favour of continuing Mubaraks neo-liberal policies. Disenchantment with a lack of progress in tackling economic inequality and increasing authoritarianism under the Muslim Brotherhood government, eventually allowed the military to stage a coup, on the back of mass protests, and start to re-establish the old order. Clearly the liberals and the Muslim Brotherhood were not going to lead an all-out assault on the old order. The task lay with the working class, the radical youth and revolutionary socialists. But these groups were not strong enough to push the revolution forward at this stage20.
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Leon Trotsky (1962) The Permanent Revolution. Results and Prospects. New Park Publications, London. 20 th Revolutionary Realists by Wael Gamal. 29 January 2014. http://global.revsoc.me/2014/01/revolutionary-realists/ and Counterrevolution and myths of th foreign plots by Sameh Naguib. 27 August 2013. http://global.revsoc.me/2013/08/counterrevolution-and-myths-of-foreign-plots/
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To understand the reactionary role of Thai NGOs, see: Giles Ji Ungpakorn. Why have most Thai NGOs chosen to side with the conservative royalists, against democracy and the poor? Interface: a journal for and about social movements. Volume 1 (2): 233 - 237 (November 2009) http://groups.google.com/group/interface-articles/web/ungpakorn.pdf 22 TRT was forced to change its name to Peoples Power Party (PPP). It is now Pua Thai Party. 23 Giles Ji Ungpakorn (2010) Thailands Crisis and the Struggle for Democracy. Already Quoted.
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same as saying that Suteps mob who want to destroy dem ocracy, have the same legitimacy as the elected government which is supported by 70% of the population. If this collection of pompous middle class reactionaries cared one iota about creating peace and democracy in Thailand, they would have joined with those who were lighting candles calling for a respect for democracy and urging Sutep to take his mob home. Instead, every time they opened their mouths, they gave confidence to the thugs.
The Communist Party of Thailand was a Maoist-Stalinist organisation that believed in trying to build popular fronts with progressive capitalist politicians against the military.
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development projects put forward by TRT or Pua Thai. They reject state spending on the population and instead favour local patronage. They are clearly a party of the old politics. Even Abhisit Vejjajiva, with his posh English public school accent, and attempts to have a modern image cannot get away from the fact that he has long been in the same political bed as the military and the arch conservatives. The Democrats are a hybrid party combining some middle class urban support with southern regional bossism.
1. The need to address gross economic inequality by introducing a wealth tax and a welfare state. Oxfam recently reported that the richest 85 people on the globe between them control as much wealth as the poorest half of the global population put together. Those richest 85 people across the globe share a combined wealth of 1tn, as much as the poorest 3.5 billion of the world's population. The wealth of the 1% richest people in the world amounts to $110tn (60.88tn), or 65 times as much as the poorest half of the world. Many top billionaires are in the West. Thailands GDP is 40 times smaller than that of the USA, but Thailand has 3 billionaires who are among the worlds richest 85 people. According to Forbes, they are: King Pumipon, 8th richest man in the world with $44.24B. Dhanin Chearavanont, 58th richest man in the world with $12.6 B. Charoen Sirivadhanabhakdi, 82nd richest man in the world with $10.6B. Taksin Shinawat is the 882nd richest man in the world and the 7th richest Thai with $ 1.7B These figures show that there is an urgent need to address economic inequality in Thailand by introducing a Super Tax on the rich in order to build a welfare state. Such a tax was originally proposed by Pridi Panomyong in 1933, but vetoed by the elites.
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2. The need to establish freedom of expression We need to abolish Lse Majest, the Computer Crimes law and the Contempt of Court law, which protects judges from criticism. The entire judicial system should be overhauled. Lse Majest is a political law designed to restrict freedom of expression and the ability of citizens to criticise or check the power of those in public positions. The law protects the elites, especially the military, who claim legitimacy from the monarchy. There are several political prisoners sentenced to jail for decades, especially those who are charged with lse Majest. The only way to get released is to admit guilt. Somyot Prueksakasemsuk has refused to admit guilt. He has done nothing wrong. He believes that standard practices in Thai jails are mainly designed to reduce the humanity of prisoners. According to Somyot, court hearings have also been designed to intimidate defendants. The judges have unlimited power. The justice system is long overdue for reform. Thailand needs a jury system and we need the right to criticise judges.. Any political reform will be meaningless if it does not result in Somyots freedom.
3. The need to abolish the so-called independent bodies The elite-appointed independent bodies, which are only independent from any democratic process, and which mis-use their power by over-ruling parliament, must be abolished. The worst offenders are the Election Commission, the Constitutional Court and the appointed half of the Senate. The entire concept of having so-called independent bodies is to restrict the democratic process by pretending that they provide checks and balances. Put simply, those who support the idea of these bodies do not respect the electorate and do not respect democracy. These so-called independent bodies are never accountable to the public. The constitutional court over-stepped its power by vetoing the economic policy of an elected government and an elected parliament. They claimed that a proposed high speed rail link was unconstitutional. Thailand desperately needs infrastructure investment. They also ruled that it was unconstitutional for parliament to propose an amendment to the military constitution to make sure that all senators would be elected.
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The election commission was continually trying to postpone the February election by mounting pressure on government. In the past, it declared the 2006 election to be null and void because the ballot boxes were the wrong way round. This was a convenient excuse to legitimise the military coup. The extreme neo-liberal Thailand Development Research Institute (TDRI) constantly calls for unelected economists to curb government spending that is beneficial to the poor. There is never a peep out of them about the astronomical levels of military spending or spending on the royal family. The human rights commission has proved itself again and again to be useless. It has never protected the Red Shirts even when they were gunned down in the streets of Bangkok by the military and the Democrats in 2010. It has never protected the human rights of political prisoners who are charged with lse majest. When Suteps mob came out and used violence on the streets, it urgently issued statements to demand that the government must not use violence against protesters. Nothing was said about the gross abuse of human rights in preventing people from voting. Independent bodies should be abolished. If we need checks and balances this should be done by elected representatives who are chosen in a different way to parliament. Elected judges and regional representatives are one choice. The use of referendums should also be expanded.
4. The need to reduce the power and influence of the military in politics and society The two main activities of the Thai army are to kill pro-democracy citizens and to tear up democratic constitutions by staging military coups. The army has committed crimes against civilians again and again, but none of the generals have ever been punished. Most disgusting is the way that those generals who staged coups, are constantly invited by the media to give opinions about democracy. In fact they are interviewed by the media on all aspects of Thai politics. If the murderous generals are not charged with crimes against the people, how can we establish justice? The military is the main barrier to democracy. If we must have a military, it should be drastically reduced in size. We should abolish military service. We should retire most of the generals without the usual retirement perks and abolish the post of commander in chief of the army. The military should be firmly under the command of the elected government of the day. Given that the majority live in poverty and need improvements to their living conditions, we should cut the bloated military budget and use that money to invest
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in the basic needs of the people, such as schools, hospitals and modern transportation. We must ask more important questions. Why does the military own so much of the broadcasting media? They use their power over the media to spread their antidemocratic propaganda and also to line the pockets of the generals with the huge profits. The military should be excluded from controlling the media and the generals should also be removed from the boards of state enterprises.
5. The need to establish standards of human rights There are no standards of human rights in Thailand. Why is this so? The main explanation is the prevailing conservative attitude of the elites which does not tolerate the fact that citizens should be equal. The Thai people are usually called Ras-sa-don which means people who live in the land belonging to the king. It is an out of date concept and is incompatible with the modern democratic world. The concepts supporting inequality have been re-emphasised by the militarys crimes again and again. Such crimes happened in 1973, 1976, 1992 and under Taksins government at Tak-Bai25 and in the war on drugs. In 2010, the Democrat Party and the military killed red shirts in Bangkok. None of those who committed these crimes have been punished. We need to learn from Argentina, South Korea and Chile about punishing state criminals. In the work places, employers think that they have absolutely rights over their employees. The attitude is fully enshrined in labour laws as well as in the minds of the judges who fail to deliver justice. When judges sit in court they look at the poor with contempt. The children of the rich can get away easily when they kill people because daddy buys the police and judges. What can we see in the mainstream body language in Thai society? Good Thais have to crawl to show their respect to people who are in power or are their seniors. The main purpose of this practice is that the Thai elites need us to believe that people are unequal. This grotesque culture has been taught through schools and families. In the elite households they make their maids crawl to them as well. The unequal concepts can be easily seen in daily conversations, especially with personal pronouns which signify social position. Women are told that they need to call
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See Giles Ji Ungpakorn (2013) The Bloody Civil-War in Patani and the Way to Achieve Peace. Paper given at the seminar To understand the conflict; Patani -Thailand South. Organised by the Peace Innovation Forum, Focus Southeast Asia, University of Lund, Sweden, August 2013. http://bit.ly/1cLbFtr or go to: http://www.scribd.com/doc/207169526/The-Bloody-Civil-War-in-Patani
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Giles Ji Ungpakorn
February 2014
themselves Noo which means little mouse in a childish fashion. The idea simply identifies women as second class citizens. The first step to build standards of human rights is to abolish the National Human Rights Commission. The organisation is full of soldiers, police and academics who stand against democracy. Then, we need to campaign that Thailand accept the jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court so that we can punish state criminals such as the army generals, Abhisit, Sutep and Taksin. In the long term, we need to increase the rights in work places, schools, and universities and we need full gender rights. We need human dignity and respect.
What about corruption? Corruption is a serious problem in Thailand, but it is can never be abolished by the elites who are universally corrupt. It cannot be abolished by legislation either. To abolish corruption we need to expand the democratic space so that the public can reject corrupt politicians and state officials. Everyone, including the army generals and members of the royal family need to be openly scrutinised and made accountable. Strengthening social movements and trade unions can be an important part of this and we need mass media to be free of elite control. Reducing inequality and providing decent public services can also be part of the fight against corruption. However in present day middle class Thai discourse, corruption is merely an insult people use against public figures whom they dislike, while ignoring the corruption of others.
Conclusion
The 2nd February 2014 election did not solve the Thai political crisis because those lined up against the government and the holding of democratic elections, are fundamentally opposed to democracy. No amount of compromise or negotiations with the anti-democratic thugs will solve the crisis. The only short-term result would be shrinkage of the democratic space and the further empowerment of those who view the majority of the electorate with contempt. No amount of outrage at the violence and impunity of the thugs will push Yingluk or Pua Thai or the authorities into a crackdown on those committed criminal acts. Yingluk would rather do a dirty deal with Sutep and others than to mobilise the Red Shirts and the general population to fight for democracy.
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Giles Ji Ungpakorn
February 2014
This means that pro-democracy activists, whether they be progressive Red Shirts, pro-democracy trade unionists, White Shirts, Nitirat supporters, socialists, or members of the Forum for the Defence of Democracy, all have to work together to prevent the destruction of the democratic space. They should also push forward with real reform proposals which will increase rights and the empowerment of the majority. The future of Thai democracy lies in their hands. Democracy is not an unchanging state of affairs. It is constantly contested. If the Thai democratic space is compressed today, it does not mean that we cannot fight to expand it in the future.
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