absolutelyBangkok archive · Books & Movies
Originally published Jan. 6, 2010
It’s my great pleasure and honor to present an essay by the — as I call him — political poet Khi Kwai (“buffalo dung”, read: bullshit), one of the finest minds observing Thai politics. Khi Kwai introduces his latest book manuscript Thailand Unhinged — for which he found a publisher after the posting of this synopsis here, so we can no longer link to the full PDF of the wrathful, passionately written and powerful analysis anymore. But as a small foretaste, these are the essentials: Khi Kwai aka Federico Ferrara, assistant professor at the University of Singapore, is one of the few credible Thailand observers and academics left who stand above it all. It’s condensed, emotional and yet razor-sharp impartiality, reflected by phrases such as “in light of Thaksin’s sickening record,” the “comic-book version of Thai history”, Thailand’s “routine hijacking of democratic institutions,” and so forth. Here’s Khi Kwai himself introducing his beautiful little magnus opum of political poetry, looking back on Thai history to explain why we’re in this mess:
Thailand’s 2007 constitution begins with a tawdry, obscene fabricaton. With Orwellian audacity, its preamble states that “Thailand has been under the rule of democratic government with the king as head of state for more than 75 years.” No mention is made of aborted transitions and military takeovers. No significance is granted to the decades of repression Thailand experienced under the thumb of ghastly military dictators — men who governed the country with a level of savagery only exceeded by their greed. No meaningful role is attributed to the hundreds of brave young Thais who lost their lives in the mass protests of 1973 and 1992, just so that others would have a say on how they should live theirs.
Not so much as a footnote is reserved for pro-democracy students at Thammasat University, whom paramilitary death squads raped, murdered and hanged from trees — their eyes ripped out of their sockets, their mouths stuffed with old shoes — in October of 1976. The official, comic-book version of Thai history that the government routinely imparts to millions of school children nationwide has no place for the Thai people’s painful struggle for democracy. Those who died, lost limbs, went to jail, or fled to the jungle for the cause did all of this for no reason whatsoever.
Of course, plenty of elections have been held in Thailand since the 1930s, at a frequency which has at times surpassed that of countries with rather more distinguished democratic records. But many such elections took place under conditions of severely limited competition, had their outcome predetermined by fraud or massive deployment of state resources, or in any case turned out to be irrelevant to the exercise of real political power. For much the intervening time, moreover, government alternation has typically been accomplished through coups, not elections.
And though introducing, restoring, or otherwise saving democracy has reliably served as the rationale for many of the plentiful coups that have forcibly, if often bloodlessly, removed a succession of Thai governments, most of the “permanent” constitutions that have cyclically been promulgated, suspended and unceremoniously repealed were designed as a way to provide the regime of the day with the veneer of a legal foundation more than to regulate anything vaguely resembling democratic competition. Government propaganda notwithstanding, Thailand has only been a “democracy” in any meaningful sense of the word for a relatively small portion of its history. In each such instance, the military had to step in to “restore order” and “protect the unity of the nation.”
Thailand Unhinged offers a trenchant analysis of Thai politics and society over the tumultuous years that followed the ouster of the former prime minister, Thaksin Shinawatra. It explains Thailand’s ongoing political crisis by bringing important lessons from the country’s post-absolutist history to bear on recent events. At the same time, it takes Thailand’s current predicament as exemplary of the myriad ways in which prominent unelected institutions have typically sought to undermine the country’s notoriously fragile democracy.
Whatever the constitution might say, in particular, the book argues the real story of the past eight decades is not the development of democracy. It is rather the systematic sabotage of any meaningful democratic development, the routine hijacking of democratic institutions, and the continued suffocation of the Thai people’s democratic aspirations engineered by an unelected ruling class in an increasingly desperate attempt to hold on to its power — all the while, cloaking its “dictatorship of the big men” in the benign, legitimizing language of “Thai style democracy.”
To be sure, since at least the 1980s, elected representatives and ministers drawn from their ranks have enjoyed ample freedom to use their positions to get rich, help their protégés get ahead, and repay contributors for their support by plundering state coffers with impunity. What elected officials cannot do under the present circumstances is place the military under civilian control, take control of the machinery of government, and set national policy — especially the kind of national policy designed to re-distribute some of the country’s wealth to the provincial masses. In fact, whether an elected government acts within or without the constitution is immaterial.
It’s when it begins to operate outside the confines set for it by the “network” that the country’ elites spring into action. If they can, they will use their control of the courts to overturn the results of elections through means that have the appearance of being legal. If they need to, they will send onto the streets gangs of paramilitary thugs to castrate the government and paralyze the country, all the while guaranteeing that the nation’s laws will not apply to them. And, if they absolutely must, they will roll out the tanks and the special forces — formally taking power just long enough to write a new constitution capable of insulating them from the nuisance posed by elected officials.
In light of Thaksin’s sickening record, one could be forgiven for having sympathized with the argument made in support of the 2006 coup. But we should have known better than to think there is any such thing as a “democratic coup d’état.” Much like Chatichai Choonhavan before him, at the end of the day Thaksin was done in less by his efforts to establish an “elected dictatorship” than by his attempt to project his government’s power deep into institutions traditionally impervious to encroachments by elected officials. After his bone-crushing victory in the 2005 elections, however, Thaksin was much too strong to be effectively undermined, let alone removed, through any of the gentler means at the disposal of Thailand’s economic, military, bureaucratic, and aristocratic elites.
And so the military had to step in, not merely to unseat Thaksin, but perhaps especially to lay the groundwork for his prosecution, confiscate his assets, dismantle those provisions in the 1997 constitution that protected his dominance, and put new safeguards in place against his return. When Thaksin did come back, if only by proxy, out came the PAD’s paramilitary thugs that softened the government’s support by raising the terrifying specter of an ugly civil war. And when the people had had enough of that, out came the constitutional court with its tendentious decision to dissolve the People Power Party.
The book includes scathing critiques of Thaksin’s administration as well as the military-backed governments that came to power in the wake of the 2006 coup and again in late 2008, following the week-long siege of the country’s busiest airports. Individual chapters explore Thailand’s long history of so-called “democratic coups d’état,” the build-up to the 2006 coup as well as the organization, operational strategy, and worldview of the PAD, the events that led up to Abhisit Vejjajiva’s elevation to the office of prime minister, the nexus of prostitution and class structure, the compatibility of Thai culture with democracy, and Thailand’s prospects of finally setting on a path to genuine democratization. The essays are written in a provocative, confrontational style — making Thailand Unhinged a decidedly unconventional mix of academic scholarship, literary journalism and radical pamphleteering.
As for some of the more memorable quotes from the book, here is a sampling of relevant passages:
Page 32 — But if the chasm between city and countryside is an important reason why Thailand never quite ceased to drift in and out of military dictatorship, the conventional wisdom offers little more than a caricature for the interests and aspirations of both urban and provincial voters. We should not be misled, moreover, into exchanging the politicization of demographic differences, however real and important, for inevitable. Nor, for that matter, should we fall for the notion that, at its core, this fight has anything to do with democracy. Beyond the apparent lifestyle differences, the rift is arguably about self-image — in particular, the long held stereotype that portrays northeasterners as lazy, halfwitted grunts — more than it is about any coherent, deeply held ideology. And at stake here are not competing visions of democracy, but rather the kind of naked power that the vanguards in both camps value far more than any principle or idea. In this very old-fashioned struggle for the right to control and plunder state coffers, to hoard the people’s money, “democracy” is but the rhetorical bludgeon wielded by each side to score political points against its rivals, earn itself the enlistment of useful idiots it may use as cannon fodder, and cloak its hegemonic aspirations in the shallow trappings of polite international discourse. In this fight, just as provincial voters could be said to often fall prey to the machinations of unsavory local bosses, the urban middle class — vast differences in education, wealth and status notwithstanding — is every bit the pawn of the Bangkok elites.
Page 50 — It should be noted that the use of the word “Democracy” in the title of an organization devoted to the disenfranchisement of tens of millions of people should not be mistaken for mere chutzpah or hypocrisy. Nor is it just a definitional question about the appropriate size of the demos. To claim the mantle of true democrats while denouncing democracy as a dangerous utopia is rather reflective of a far more insidious worldview. The PAD, specifically, claims to speak “for the nation” because the natural order made it their role to think for the masses. As such, not only is there no contradiction in asserting that the PAD embodies “the will of the people” even though its entire agenda is predicated upon substituting the people’s choices for their own. The PAD’s is in fact a superior form of democracy — one that recognizes the functions proper to each of the various components of Thailand’s social organizm. Those who oppose the PAD’s vision are “traitors” and “enemies of the nation” because the idea of individual equality undermines natural hierarchies whose preservation is integral to the survival of the organizm as a whole. For the PAD, what the majority actually thinks is irrelevant. The “will of the people” is what they say it is. It’s simply not the purview of the uncouth peasantry, the ignorant drudge, or the feckless cab driver to hold political opinions.
Page 51 — The PAD finally got its long sought-after bloody shirt on Oct. 7, when skirmishes outside the Thai parliament building left at least two people dead and scores injured. To the surprise of many, the violence on Oct. 7 did not precipitate the coup the pad had been clamoring for — the familiar kind of coup complete with the deployment of tanks, the proscription of political organizations, and the imposition of martial law. In fact, the PAD got something much better than that — the slow but inexorable cooking of the government’s goose. At the end of the day, that amounted to a coup all the same, but the pretense of bourgeois legality was carefully preserved through the outward observance of otherwise worthless constitutional provisions and parliamentary procedures.
Page 56 — In fact, the democratic movements of times past have never enjoyed the kind of protection that institutions like the military and the Privy Council have afforded the PAD. Nor have they ever received much in the way of financial backing from Bangkok’s feudal and capitalist elites. Each of these constituencies, whose long-standing dominance over Thai politics and society is threatened by the possibility that Thailand might embark upon a path to real democratization, has rather more commonly sought to crush past democratic movements.
Page 69 — In fact, whether an elected government acts within or without the constitution is immaterial. To be sure, since at least the 1980s, elected representatives and ministers drawn from their ranks have enjoyed ample freedom to use their positions to get rich, help their proteges get ahead, and repay contributors for their support by plundering state coffers with impunity. What elected offcials cannot do under the present circumstances is place the military under civilian control, take control of the machinery of government, and set national policy — especially the kind of national policy designed to re-distribute some of the country’s wealth to the provincial masses. It’s when it begins to operate outside the confines set for it by the “network” that the country’s elites spring into action. If they can, they will use their control of the courts to overturn the results of elections through means that have the appearance of being legal. If they need to, they will send onto the streets gangs of paramilitary thugs to castrate the government and paralyze the country, all the while guaranteeing that the nation’s laws will not apply to them. And, if they absolutely must, they will roll out the tanks and the special forces — formally taking power just long enough to write a new constitution capable of insulating them from the nuisance posed by elected officials.
Page 86 — The biggest challenge to the dominance of the military, the Privy Council, and the Bangkok elites is not Thaksin or even Thai Rak Thai, but rather the emergence of any strong, organized, national political party that takes its electoral mandate seriously. So long as Thai politics remains factionalized, fragmented, personalized, parochial, corrupt, and patronage-based, their ability to run the show behind the scenes remains intact. At the same time, should anyone call them out on it, they can always point to the ineptitude and corruption of elected politicians as evidence that powerful unelected institutions are actually needed to protect Thailand from the inanity of its own citizens.
Page 87 — Of course, Thailand’s problem is not that it has had too much democracy, as some in the blue-blood jet conveniently allege, but rather that what little democracy it has experienced since 1932 has been systematically undermined and then subverted whenever it produced results its unelected masters didn’t like. As such, having never been given the chance to develop into a functioning system of government, democracy has cyclically produced the kind of inept, fragmented administrations that made the rise of a brash, decisive, populist leader like Thaksin Shinawatra possible in the first place.
Page 109 — Follow the money. For every miscreant who descends upon Thailand, weighted down by the oversized baggage of smug condescension Westerners carry with them everywhere they go, there are thousands of enablers in this country. These enablers benefit — of course, some more directly and more bounteously than others — from the Farang Juice Company’s sustained cropdusting of Thailand in imported, protein-rich fertilizer. They have a deal, you see. It’s an unspoken one, but as iron-clad as any contract you could sign in this country. And, thus far, successive generations have seen it fit to honor it. All the modernized, urbane elites are asked to do to is refrain from making too big a stink about the wide availability of plebeian girls. So long as they don’t do a damn thing about it, in return they get to publicly berate the white man’s shocking degeneracy, bemoan his influence on the ignorant, impressionable little people (whom they have always argued in need of guidance from the civilized urbanites), and thus proudly wear the mantle of strenuous defenders of Thailand’s national identity. All the while, behind closed doors, millions of their own men engage in much the same behavior.
Page 111 — For the Thai bourgeoisie, the great thing about the status quo — beyond the fact that tourism makes businesses more prosperous, jobs more remunerative, and taxes less burdensome — is that while the measly sum families upcountry receive from their daughters keeps them afloat and hence mutes the clamor for a more interventionist role of the state, in the absence of real economic development millions of provincial bores never go far beyond mere subsistence. Incidentally, though “sufficiency” is all the elites and the local press say provincial Thais should aspire to, the continuing reality of rural poverty perpetuates the incentive structure that makes prostitution the best possible career choice for upcountry girls by the hundreds of thousands. You can force people into mere sufficiency, but it is quite another thing to permanently extinguish any yearning for self-advancement, to forever sear upon people’s faces idiotic smiles of contentment. Nor, for that matter, would the elites really want for the slogging proles to surrender all hopes of a better life — not lest they piss away the steady supply of cheap labor that makes their parasitic lives so comfortable.
Page 121 — Notwithstanding the lip service frequently paid to the customs, practices, values, norms, and beliefs that cumulated over centuries of Thai political development, there is nothing “Thai” about lining up scores of dissidents against the wall of a Buddhist temple and mowing them down with machine guns. There is nothing “Thai” about the shameless hypocrisy required to praise a military dictator who stole billions and murdered hundreds, with the blessing of the country’s highest authorities, and in the same breath adduce “corruption” and “human rights violations” as justification to stage military coups against elected leaders guilty of a fraction of those offenses. There is nothing “Thai” about turning religion into an instrument of political legitimacy. There is nothing “Thai” about cults of personality. There is nothing “Thai” about the enlistment of mass media and schools in the dissemination of propaganda. And there is nothing “Thai” about repressing the poor to benefit the rich. These are not the hallmarks of culture, Thai or otherwise. These are rather the attributes of authoritarianism — the main features of which were pioneered, for the most part, by generations of Western dictators.
Page 135 — Culture is now the first refuge of dictators. But it’s important to recognize that “Thai-style democracy” doesn’t amount to anything more glamorous or exotic than your average European-style dictatorship. In fact, the real hindrance to democratization in Thailand is not Thai culture; it is rather the interest of elites who are otherwise eager to borrow from abroad what can be used to entrench their power at home. As such, to reject democracy on cultural grounds, is not to protect Thailand from Western impositions. It is rather to acknowledge the authority of pompous, inbred big men to define what is compatible with tradition and what is not.
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