Fringer | คนชายขอบ

When I started writing this blog entry, it was merely hours after tanks took to the streets of Bangkok and other major cities in Thailand. Right now, 6 days after the coup, the atmosphere is calm but tense, as the Council for Democratic Reform under Constitutional Monarchy (CDRM) (a euphemism whose irony is hard to miss) continues to muzzle our civil rights and liberties, wavers visibly over who to appoint as interim Prime Minister, and commits a number of missteps left and right.

So why are many Thais, including myself, while resenting several measures of the CDRM (tearing up our constitution and suppressing our freedom of speech, for one thing), remain willing to ‘put up’ with these military men until October 1, when they promised to give us a civilian government that will spearhead the next round of political reforms?

It may sound like a cliché, but sometimes clichés are true: because as much as we hate military coups, we hate the corruptions, interference in and exploitation of various democratic institutions, and human rights abuses of the previous government led by Thaksin Shinawatra a lot more.

Because under Thaksin’s regime, even though Thailand is a democracy, it has degenerated into what Fareed Zakaria aptly calls an “illiberal democracy”. As Zakaria’s article on this subject puts it (emphasis mine):

Democratically elected regimes, often ones that have been reelected or reaffirmed through referenda, are routinely ignoring constitutional limits on their power and depriving their citizens of basic rights and freedoms….

It has been difficult to recognize this problem because for almost a century in the West, democracy has meant liberal democracy – a political system marked not only by free and fair elections, but also by the rule of law, a separation of powers, and the protection of basic liberties of speech, assembly, religion, and property. In fact, this latter bundle of freedoms – what might be termed constitutional liberalism – is theoretically different and historically distinct from democracy…

…Today the two strands of liberal democracy, interwoven in the Western political fabric, are coming apart in the rest of the world. Democracy is flourishing; constitutional liberalism is not.

In an illiberal democracy like Thailand under Thaksin Shinawatra, the rule of law is selectively applied and even intentionally ignored or misinterpreted in favor of the politicians in charge. The government egregiously ignored and abused human rights to an extent never before seen in Thailand’s short history of civil governments, as nicely summarized in this statement from the Asian Human Rights Commission.

The Thaksin government claimed to back freedom of speech but did the opposite in practice, by suppressing the media (usually by outright orders and threats of pulling ads) and relentlessly using straw-man arguments and simplistic dismissals to counter criticisms. When talking about freedom of the press in Thailand, one must remember that, like most developing countries, TV is the main source of news for most people. Thai Rath, Thailand’s best-selling newspaper, has the circulation of only around 1 million – less than 2% of the population – and was reluctant to print stories about high-level corruptions until merely a few months before the coup. All six free TV channels in Thailand are either government-owned or controlled by businessmen-turned-politicians who joined the government. The opposition party and vocal critics of the government got almost zero airtime before the coup. There will doubtless be many research reports that expose such cronyism in the coming months.

The Thai Rak Thai (government) party’s control of popular media, parliament, senate, police, and courts was so near-absolute that its politicians were able to “corrupt legally” in addition to traditional channels of bribery and graft, by passing laws that served their own interest at the expense of public interest, with very little opposition and without much awareness from the public, most of whom know or care too little about key legal principles and the interplay between money politics and law to realize how the law was being abused. Of course, it also helped that the government employed many legal experts who were able to justify its every move with deft sophistry, ethics and intent of the law be damned.

In the stock market where I plied my trade, I watched in disgust and amazement as share manipulation reached such dizzying heights (supposedly led by no other than Thaksin’s relatives – I hope to be able to take that “supposedly” word out soon, once the graft busters get around to stock market cases) while both regulatory watchdogs, the Stock Exchange of Thailand and the Stock Exchange Commission, consistently turned a blind eye. Share manipulation became so widespread, blatant, and consistent that many, if not most, retail investors don’t know anymore that stock market manipulation is illegal. The sole investment strategy of many investors is simply: keep their ears close to the ground, and try to ingratiate themselves with someone who knows someone who knows the “big players” in the game, so that they can hopefully benefit from the ride before it’s over.

These problems and many more cannot be solved by elections, because popularity and adherence to the law are two completely separate issues. After all, the fate of every criminal should be decided in a court of law, not by popular vote.

These problems can only be solved by effective enforcement of the rule of law, and democratic check & balance apparatus that truly work, including a vigilant civil society and the media that have information and can share that information without fear of retaliation. Like most developing countries, the media in Thailand is far from perfect (most of them are not even professional or objective), but even if what they publish is 80% falsehood and 20% truth, it is important for us to recognize the 20% truth – especially when that 20% truth is about egregious crimes that are certain to send high-ranking politicians to jail if check & balance apparatus work as well as they were designed.

So when most voters have no willingness, interest, or ability to separate that 20% truth from the other 80% of lies, or know the difference but vote out of a sense of ‘loyalty’ or ‘gratitude’ they owe politicians (which are completely reasonable and admirable reasons especially when this government DID help the poor), and we cannot rely on the police or the courts to prosecute corrupt politicians because they have been silenced or bought out, and the politicians in power recognize this and continue to corrupt unchecked, what “constitutional” means do we have left to show them the door?

The “form” of democracy – elections and establishment of democratic institutions – is necessary in a liberal democracy. The “substance” of democracy – freedom of speech for everyone including minority opinions, and a fair and effective enforcement of those same democratic institutions to punish corrupt officials – is no less necessary. The sad fact, underscored by the recent coup, that we cannot yet have one without sacrificing the other is, to me, a sign of how young and fragile our “democracy” is, and how much work remains to be done.

……

Rampant abuses of state power to muzzle dissent (which do happen on a regular basis – a few people I know faced unexpected and harsher-than-usual audits by taxmen and were trailed by policemen for a week after joining anti-government protests; in the rural areas people are regularly shot and killed over politics) and the lack of effective whistleblower-protection laws means that Thai society, like in most developing countries, is a “society of rumors” rather than a “society of knowledge” like in developed countries. Accordingly, the rumor mill often carries more grains of truth than official news channels.

Many foreigners and Thais who are educated abroad, including some writers of well-written blogs in English, are simply too naïve or too ignorant of this developing-country characteristic that they simply don’t believe that our popular media and democratic institutions – two crucial apparatus that they take for granted – can be interfered and controlled by politicians so completely and so blatantly.

And so these people refuse to believe rumors of corruptions and completely dismiss the rumor mill. If the Thaksin government is truly as corrupt as the protestors claimed, they reasoned, surely corrupt politicians would have been prosecuted, brought to court, and punished by now.

To these foreigners and Thais I’d like to say: hold your horses. The show is just about to begin. Because the coup has violently lifted the veil of ignorance and blown away the climate of fear, the coming weeks and months will show the world how much evil was hidden behind the veil of good and glossy marketing. Of course, we have to keep a close eye on the CDRM, to demand that they not negotiate with corrupt politicians or (even worse) abuse existing laws in the rush to put them behind bars. But by and large I believe they won’t, now that they have assembled a near “dream team” of graft busters who are famous for their integrity and the refusal to compromise it.

Because there is no other reason that can ever make this coup, which is illegitimate in its very nature, easier to stomach for Thais.

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