Thread: Article in The Nation

Giving up on democracy for Thailand

Over the past few days, Sondhi Limthongkul has made a mini-tour of the US, talking to audiences of Thais and interested observers.



His message was stark. The experience of Thaksin has shown that electoral democracy cannot work in Thailand. The mass of rural people who constitute the largest element in the electorate do not have the knowledge to participate properly. They sell their votes, either retail to the local canvasser, or wholesale to the populist who promises them goodies. This commercialism breeds a style of politician who is greedy and corrupt. The last few years have shown that a constitution, however well crafted, cannot impose any semblance of good governance.

What Sondhi says is important because he served as the lightning rod for the Bangkok middle class's emotional rejection of Thaksin. In many ways, he was a surprising candidate for this role. He had been one of Thaksin's most fervent supporters for five years. The two men are so similar that if you set out to clone Thaksin and made a tiny mistake you might finish up creating Sondhi. He became a key leader of the anti-Thaksin movement for two reasons: he had rare access to media outlets, and he changed his own tune to brilliantly articulate Bangkok middle-class opinion. We have to pay attention to him because he is undoubtedly still trying to channel this middle-class voice.

What he is saying is not new, but as old as Thailand's first fragile experiments with democracy. Underlying his views is the city's fear of the countryside, the middle class's fear of the peasant.

In 1932, the pioneers of Thailand's middle-class politicians stopped short of ushering in a new democracy on the grounds the provinces were not yet ready. In the 1970s the middle class backed the military to thwart a pro-peasant insurgency. In the 1990s the middle class quietly cheered the Democrat governments for turning their backs on rural protesters, and occasionally beating them over the head.

Underlying this fear is the huge divide in Thai society - not just the massive inequality in incomes, but the great imbalance in the distribution of social services and public goods, and also the cultural gap, which has widened as the city has grown richer, more confident and more dazzled by globalisation. Over a decade ago the political scientist Anek Laothammatas mused on the political consequences of having society divided into two virtual nations. The city people harboured dreams of a Western-style liberal democracy, but the villagers sent gangsters as MPs to the capital to wrest away whatever resources they could bring back to their constituencies while making some private benefit on the side. The constant clash of these two political cultures resulted in endemic political instability. Anek's answer was to educate the villagers in democracy, but also to put their needs on the national political agenda so that the gangsters would no longer have a role.

To a very large extent, Thaksin was following that second part of Anek's agenda. The platform his advisers assembled before the 2001 election was simply a collection of measures that the rural electors said they wanted. The claim he made at the 2005 poll was that he alone could act as a channel for rural demands because other parties were not interested.

Thaksin's populism was sometimes crude, often extravagant, and always a cover for corruption, cronyism and profiteering. But what made this populism truly frightening for the middle class - and hence the focus of Sondhi's tirade - was its political implications. Thaksin was giving political legitimacy to rural demands. If this trend were followed to its logical conclusion, it would undermine the city's undue share of government spending and public goods. There would also be a bill, which the well-off might be asked to pay.

Sondhi is appealing to a deep vein of middle-class fear. Bangkokians no longer have to worry about rural revolution, and have even been spared the sight of rural protesters cluttering up the Bangkok pavements (an unappreciated benefit of the Thaksin era). But they understand that, deep down, electoral politics is a battle over the command of resources, and that Thaksin's populism showed the rural mass was starting to gain a larger share.

Seven years ago, on the eve of Thaksin's rise, Chang Noi wrote a piece on this same theme, joking that Bangkok would like to copy the Singapore Solution (giving away your rural hinterland, as Singapore did by splitting from Malaysia) or build a Great Wall round the city. But Sondhi's solution is serious. He is turning his back on the last 75 years of Thailand's political history, saying that Thailand's social reality makes electoral democracy unworkable and constitutions futile.

Compared to Anek's proposals of a decade earlier, Sondhi's thinking represents a considerable hardening of attitudes. He claims he will continue to work for democracy, but only with the middle class because they alone understand that populist politicians abuse power. By implication, the rural masses do not qualify for this "democracy" so must be excluded or contained.

This thinking may find its way into the drafting of the new constitution, in the form of measures designed to "upweight" the effective representation of Bangkok and "downweight" that of the countryside (for example, through a Senate partly appointed and partly elected as a single national constituency).
But this will fail. Thaksin became a populist not because he was born a populist but because he recognised there was a political demand which he could exploit to gain and retain power. Thaksin's populism does not show, as Sondhi claims, that the rural electorate is stupid, but rather that it is becoming more politicised and more astute in getting what it wants. Removing Thaksin from the political scene will not destroy the populism he came to represent. A constitutional solution that tries to ensure rural demands do not get the hearing they deserve in the formal politics of the nation will simply re-direct those demands elsewhere.
Chang Noi

Very good article.

I agree.
Things run smoother when the Generals are in charge.

His message was stark. The experience of Thaksin has shown that electoral democracy cannot work in Thailand. The mass of rural people who constitute the largest element in the electorate do not have the knowledge to participate properly.

wtf? I guess the guys with guns will be with us a bit longer than expected huh?

They sell their votes, either retail to the local canvasser, or wholesale to the populist who promises them goodies.

can you blame them? idealism never filled bellies and cash "now" is always better than false and empty electoral promises "later".

Underlying his views is the city's fear of the countryside, the middle class's fear of the peasant.

classic demagoguery 101; urban poor pitted against the rural poor for the benefit of ... ?

it has always amazed me why the fuck people
feel the need to voluntarily elect lying crooks to run (and ruin)
their own lives!!!

bladdy hell - that article is a heap of leftist alarmist pyschobable rubbish filled with half truths to give it a medicum of believibility.

Reasonable article, though it failed to point out the irony that urban chinese vote for democracy while rural thais sell their votes and send chinese gangsters to represent them in Bangkok.

Originally Posted by Boon Mee

Things run smoother when the Generals are in charge.

Yep, in the case of Thailand, this is very true. Maybe we won't see an election before 2008

Originally Posted by Begbie

Reasonable article, though it failed to point out the irony that urban chinese vote for democracy while rural thais sell their votes and send chinese gangsters to represent them in Bangkok.

Good one.

This is a gangster society, rich or poor. Our nations were either founded on democracy or have age-old democratic principles. It's natural for us.

To study Thai culture and religion gives us a good idea of Thailand wants to be - but isn't, and never will be. They want it and they want to get it the easy way. Only a fool would work hard and earn a honest day's pay and plan for the day of his promotion.

Originally Posted by Camel Toe

This is a gangster society...

which one aint?
in my books, they all are

Plato's final statement on Utopia, his view of an ideal state, a democracy, if you will, was;
"But who is there to watch the watchers?"

Safeguards to ideal democratic principles have been sadly lacking in history.

Western forms of democracy have been slow to evolve, Germany only entering the democratic fold less than a century ago and does Switzerland give the right to vote to women yet? If so, only recently. It took until the 13th century for a parliament to form in Europe

Democracy in its pure form has not reached into our lives yet, most of what we view as democratic process is simply the the election of financially powerful lobby groups of self interest, incorporated societies all,
allong the lines of the earliest Roman incorporations of emporia, or trade groups.

The result is an "elected" hierarchy of power under an oligarchy of chronyism, not far removed from the nepotic structures so criticised in less "democratic" countries.

Untill an open form of proportional representation arrives upon the global political scenario, democracy will still be way away in cloud cuckoo land.

Originally Posted by daveboy

The city people harboured dreams of a Western-style liberal democracy, but the villagers sent gangsters as MPs to the capital to wrest away whatever resources they could bring back to their constituencies while making some private benefit on the side

nicely put...shows neither side is happy with their lot...