Post-election Thailand: Reform or Revolution?

Cartoon by Sacrava (on the web at http://sacrava.blogspot.com)

Thursday, July 07, 2011
Op-Ed by MP

Observers of Cambodia's UN supervised election of 1993 were stating the same truth about the defeated party being more powerful than the victorious one. And we learned what the outcome of that was in 1997, didn't we?

I'm sure the conservative elements in Thailand, backed by their military will wait for the euphoria of this election to die down before muscling their way into power once more, just as they had always done in the past. Once again, the election is a slap in the face for those elements, including the Royal House. To keep their peace with them, the Pheu Thai-Thaksin camp will be expected to cede some ground. Whether that will be enough, remains to be seen.

Thaksin will be anxious to deliver on his/her promises to carry on improving rural services in tangible terms, which inevitably means transferring much economic/financial resources from the middle classes (Yellow) to rural areas. If the reforms are successful, these areas (Red) will then strengthen the Thaksin camp, leading to a sense of fear and unease among traditional power segments that a new economic and electoral base is opening up outside of their sphere of influence and reach; a shift in the balance in power relations that they will likely be ill-prepared to accept.

Thaksin (Shinawatra) is a close friend of Hun Sen, and whilst having been appointed economic advisor to the Phnom Penh regime suggests he is experienced in economic matters, he is nonetheless a pupil to his friend on how to cling on to political office. Not that Thaksin is averse to physical violence as a means to an end. His last political reign also saw the Thai military committing atrocities against civilians on a large scale in the Southern tip of the country where Muslims are predominant. Thaksin, like Abhisit after him, could have privately claimed that he had been powerless to prevent the generals from exercising their power anyway. Yet, the sentiment among many is that he had deliberately sung to the tune of the army rather than risking their wrath.

One suspects that Yingluck Shinawatra (I pronounce it 'Yin- Gluck', which sounds irresistibly endearing to my ears, keeping in mind that she is a female politician and much prettier than her better known brother!) will be advised to project her own individual style and persona to the Thai public, just as Thaksin will be anxious to save his sister's good name from being sullied (as his was) by being seen to connive to an excessive extent with the strongmen in the army barracks.

The Thai people, like the Khmers, are generally resigned to the reality of corruption. What they expect from their rulers are signs of visible change for the better in their immediate social spheres. However, such changes or reforms are not by themselves automatic transmitters of projected social-political stability to come. Material change or improvement is often accompanied by psychological change or awareness, and this in turn is accompanied by a revolution in expectations and attitudes in people and culture. For social reforms to prove meaningful they will need to be far-reaching in outcomes and effects. I happened to have travelled widely in most regions of Thailand, and what struck me most was the grinding poverty and dispossession in rural areas like the North-East and Central where decades of national economic growth appeared to have little trickle-down effect. Academic research also reveals entrenched exploitative economic relations in rural regions whereby farmers' productive potential is firmly determined by inequitable exchange practices that allow merchants and middlemen to dictate the market value of their labour and products. This has meant that rural labour market, in retaining its anachronistic relations, perpetuates a traditional system of economic dependence that continues to distort an otherwise ineluctable national growth and performance. Of course, not all farmers share the same economic status.

So we have seen in Thailand as well as in most developing economies, the unstoppable pattern in migration of people from rural regions into urban cities where their adopted make-shift urban squalours or environments further distort and complicate economic and political landscape. We are right then to suggest that there are shades of Yellow in the provinces as well as Red in Bangkok and other cities.

The hope is that Ms ‘Yin-Gluck’ will come up with a magic wand that can bridge this social divide, and before the aged Monarch calls it a day (no disrespect intended). If she could persuade ‘her’ generals in the armed forces to take fast-track courses in economics or anthropology, she could be half-way there already! But, the worst thing she could do - and should try in her grace and power to avoid - is to take a leaf from Mr Hun Sen's book on how to remain in office regardless of democratic will.