Borwornsak: “Thai Political Situation: Wherefrom and Whereto?”

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The poor are the “electoral base”, whose votes decide which political parties win a majority in parliament and form a government. The middle class are the “policy base” whose voices are nevertheless louder and capable of ousting governments. The bureaucracy both civilian and military continuously wrangles with political parties and elected politicians for control of policy…

I don’t see any capability of the “middle class” to oust elected governments. I see an allied military and bureaucracy capable of ousting elected governments which uses the “middle class” as a front for their agency.

The political reform that culminated in the 1997 Constitution, despite its many merits, including putting people at the centre of politics, did not address fully this inherent structural imbalance particularly where the distribution of natural resources is concerned. Instead the ability of a political party to exploit the Constitution’s strengths while exploiting its weaknesses in effect lit the fuse on the powder keg.

Borwornsak then runs down the corruptions of the Thaksin regime and blames it all on the 1997 Constitution, thus justifying the military charter put into place following the military coup against the 1997 Constitution.

But would the corruption have been any different had any other political party than Thaksin’s prevailed at the polls? I see no reason to think so. And the biggest offence of the elected government was that it short-circuited the traditional “tried and true” means of bureaucratic and military corruption, since reinstated after Thaksin’s overthrow and evident in the GT200 sort of military procurement juice that the weak unelected-coalition government has dutifully offered up to the real power behind itself, and the huge borrowing undertaken to finance bureaucratic corruption. Things are back to normal, as Abhisit is fond of saying with the “electoral class”, the poor, once again dealt out.

Borwornsak’s prescription for the future glosses over “problems associated with politicians and the electoral system” e.g “like how constituencies for election to the House of Representatives should be divided, whether the Senate should be elected or appointed…” before he gets down to his personal favorites in the area of structural reform, but skipping consideration of such issues allow the PAD types to eliminate electoral government altogether by creating an appointed Senate, further tinkering with House districts, and changing the responsibilities and powers of the two houses, for instance.

His own prescriptions are first, very general and all of the form of “the government should do things for the people”, which is a prescription for bureaucratic control. Second, they are couched in terms of “adjustments in the system of state administration” while radical restructuring is required to bring about decentalization of the government, the deconstruction of the system of government patronage toward big business, and campaign finance reform. Lastly, his proposed, eternal propaganda campaign on behalf of “key democratic values that make democracy sustainable” i.e. bureaucratically and militarily pleasing and thus coup-resistant, and his accompanying system of “social norms and laws” regulating free speech open an Orwellian pandora’s box.

Khun Borwornsak’s analysis and recommendations seem consonant with the bureaucratic-military point of view and with their interests, while superficially giving lip service to inequalities that have tuned into iniquities in the present Thai system of government.

(sorry to submit this three times… if you had a means of preview, as most sites do, it wouldn’t be necessary)

Actually… no need to. Sorry to whine and cry. Thanks for maintaining your blog, I don’t want to make more work for you. And all these “features” can easily subvert the real purpose of your blog.

No one else but myself seems to miss it, and if I simply save a long post to file and open it in a browser window here I can make my own preview.

If I do make a real mess… I can always repost it, since there is a delay between my push of the button and your review, edits will pile up at the gate. I guess “last best” might be the rule?