Thailand History, Politics and the Rule of Law
The author was a career diplomat with over 30 year experience in several countries. He stayed in Thailand for long period of time and was Australia’s ambassador to Thailand in 2010. After the post he worked as a consultant in political economy of Thailand. His works and his interests are well-aligned rendering him a unique position in and perspectives of Thailand.
I enjoy learning about my own country from outsiders’ point of views. They are usually impartial. They don’t carry baggage nor preconceived ideas/inherent bias as they were not brought up in Thailand and familiar with Thai’s ways. They usually bring up issues that are generally overlooked or Thais take for granted. It is always interesting to see things from outside in.
Just the first quote in the book in the introduction section got me hooked. It illustrates great contradictions in Thai politics beautifully.
“A billionaire tycoon is praised as the champion of the poor. A scandal-tainted politician leads a mass movement against corruption. Protesters declare that they need to block elections to save democracy.”
Westerners read this quote would easily mumble ‘what the heck!’, but those were true events in Thailand. The irony of the situations escaped me initially, but once it was pointed out by the author, it was astounding.
The author makes an assessment of what institutions brought Thailand’s political system to its knee. It’s comprehensive, global and surprising. The main culprit was not military. Nor was it the monarchy or executive. Interestingly, as institutions, the legislature and judiciary ultimately played bigger roles in breaking the system. These two institutions have not accumulated stabilising, dispute-settlement responsibilities that are commonly exercised by legislatures and judiciaries in conventional parliamentary democracies.
The legislatures could not break a political deadlock through elections. This can be explained by an underdeveloped party system, especially the absence of sophisticated party organisation that constantly modify policies and strategies in response to current and fluid situations. Thaksin amnesty which is a political suicide would have been prevented, had there been such mechanism in the party.
The legislation could not match the appeal of the mass political movements. Aggrieved Thais of all political persuasions have regularly concluded that they are less likely to find satisfaction in legally constituted parliament (or a court of law), and more likely to find it in mass political movements that resort to often illegal in sometime violent street protests.
The judiciary was equally unable to mediate or arbitrate a political impasse—largely because the judiciary broadly defined (i.e. including the so-called independent bodies like the electoral commission and anti-corruption commission) was not perceived by many Thais to be independent. Some judgements and public statements by commissioners and judges prompted observers to further question the independence of the judiciary because they are clearly biased.
From an institutional perspective, therefore, the military prevailed at least partially because the legislation and the judiciary were unable to fulfil the mediating and arbitrating roles in Thailand that their customarily fill in more developed democratic systems.
To me-an ignorant in politics and government, this analysis is like a breath of fresh air because it has bird eye view covering systems, institutions rather than individuals or particular events or repeatedly blaming military for all the wrongs in the world of Thai politics. Of course, military is the problem, but legislature and judiciary cannot escape their responsibilities for political mess in which we are neck deep.
On hierarchy in Thailand
“You are constantly interacting with other people, and gauging what level you are, and what level they are. You are doing it all the time, like how to address a person, like whether you need the politeness markers, or not, how courteous you have to be to them, how low you have to bow when you walk in front of someone everyone does it automatically, and they're really don't think about it.”
Philosophically, hierarchy was built on karma, the deeply held conviction that one social status was determined by the merit accumulated in previous lives, or in this life. With in traditional Buddhist cosmology karma “gives order and regularity to the universe much as Newtonian in laws of Western science give order and regularity to the physical universe”. Karma “ informs behaviour in a way that makes hierarchical social relations seemed normal, natural, in rational”, and “the primary goals of politics was to contain as many people as possible in a single hierarchy. This validated the karmic superiority of officials, and ultimately off the king.” The king have the most karma. He owned all the land and, critically, all manpower.
On colonisation
The West represented modernity, progress and civilisation. Peoples and nations aspired to be more like Westerners and Western nations. They judged themselves and each other by the extent to which they had, or had not, westernised; by the extent to which they were, or were not, catching up with the West. This included things as diverse as personal tastes like hairstyles, clothing and other consumption; town planning and architecture; social issues like slavery, polygyny and education; through to systems of government and administration. The West was attractive, alluring, desirable, tempting, successful-and emulated. At the same time, the West was threatening; it aroused apprehension, anxiety, self-doubt, fear-so it was rejected. On one hand the West was craved, on the other it was distrusted. Siam was affected by civilisational challenge, and the focus on national identity that it endangered, as much as directly colonised countries were. The Thai elites-royal and commoners alike-was “colonised in consciousness”. Again the author summarised the analysis of many great contradictions in Thai society so clearly and accurately. Two opposite forces pull Thai society and consciousness to and fro.
Democratic principles and Thai culture
In Thailand, democratic principles, unlike the communitarian principles of nationalism, don’t appeal intuitively or effortlessly. Democracy implicitly rejects the idea that harmonious hierarchical utopia is possible. Democracy accepts that reasonable and well-intentioned people can disagree, and that public discussion can resolve conflicts, as well as create them. Democracy can't exist without debate, which is often noisy and disruptive. In addition, the rule of law, which is essential to a fully functioning democracy, is impersonal, often coldly so. Rules, regulations and laws treat everybody equally; properly applied, the rule of law allows no exceptions. Democracy is therefore handicapped in a society that traditionally gives precedence to order, harmony, hierarchy, community, loyalty and personal relationships, which is preserved through the observance of duties, responsibilities and rights, not through the exercise and protection of rights.
The Thai concept of primacy of hierarchy and the community over equality and the individual; the value of harmony over debate; the importance of observing duties rather than exercising rights; and the danger of disunity. Perhaps deep down Thais are not psychologically and culturally apt for democracy. Many coup leaders talk about Thai-style democracy and the 2017 constitution is the perfect example of this attitude and the attempt to describe and perpetuate the concept.
Co-existing legitimacy's and the cycle of coups
The author believe that traditional and modern legitimacies in Thailand are in dispute and Thai politics lacks trusted referee. Adherents of the traditional legitimacies distrust the electorate and its representatives, advocates of the modern legitimacy distrust the monarchy, military and judiciary. The legislature has been kept weak and, in any event, legislators have displayed meager loyalty to the institution of the legislature; and the judiciary neither accepts that the law is supreme nor values its own independence. So the monarchy and military continue to hold sway.
Without the means to mediate and arbitrate disputes, Thailand has been politically unstable. What might have been discussions have becomes debates, debates have become disputes, disputes have tended to become crises and crises have tended to become conflicts. In the absence of trusted dispute settlement mechanisms, coups- military and judicial-have therefore been frequent. Following each coup, the balance of power between co-existing legitimacies has changed, but eventually power has again become unbalanced, then so unbalanced that the debate-become-coups cycle has restarted.
It is difficult, to say the least, to explain that recently imported ideas like equality, individual rights and elections are superior to, or can be reconciled with, the idea of moral hierarchy, which lies at the heart of the century old traditional legitimacy. The idea that even “good people” should be governed by the law is a long way from the idea that “good people” should govern. Put another way, the idea that political power belongs to the elected representatives of all the people is the antithesis of the idea that political power emanates from a king through hierarchy that is endorsed by religion.
This is probably the clearest explanation at institutional level of cycle of coups in Thailand.