Chaiyan Ratchakul, History Department, Faculty of Humanities, Chiang Mai University, talked to Prachatai about the PAD’s ‘new politics’.

What do you think about Thai politics now?

The question has been long debated as to who, in principle, should rule?  Who should run the administration?  A philosopher says that a ruler should be a philosopher king.  Since time immemorial, there have been numerous philosophers and kings, as separate individuals, though.  Both attributes are rarely found in one person.  Some say rulers must come from heaven, chosen by God and ruling by divine rights, while others reject the idea.  It did exist in history, and was tried at certain times.  I think it has now become extinct.

Assuming that God cannot crown and cannot vote, the question remains as to who should choose the rulers.  It has been an evolving system.  Eligible voters used to be those who paid a certain amount of tax, or men only, or owners of a certain amount of land, etc. It has been tried until these restrictions on eligibility have been discarded, except in dictatorial regimes where the people have to select from choices provided by the state.

For lack of a better means to determine who is qualified to choose, everyone is eligible to vote, except people under 18, not exclusively those who are educated, morally decent or proficient, as there is no guarantee that these people can choose better than the others.  Can the People’s Alliance for Democracy (PAD) justify who is qualified to choose?

Choosing rulers is like choosing how to live.  Which lifestyle is better?  This is a difficult question, and ultimately one way is no better than any other in this.  So everyone has to choose for him/herself.  This is the meaning of Democracy which needs to be preceded by the word ‘liberal’, or Liberal Democracy.  It needs the preceding adjective, not the long phrase following as it does in Thai.

Of course, this is not the making of heaven on earth, but it is widely practiced. If I say ‘universal’, it might be disliked by some people. So how should we put it?  Perhaps ‘India-wise’.  But India will say it follows the universal practice.  If some people argue that the universal practice does not suit Thailand, as Thailand is so unique, they have to justify their claim that we don’t need to be universal, don’t need to follow the west in this regard.  And they should also identify in which areas we should or should not follow the west.  Is the idea of freedom of speech or freedom of assembly claimed by the PAD western?  Have the legal system with the legal codes that apply to the whole country, and the judicial system with all the judges been Thai since the beginning?

What about the PAD’s 70:30 idea?

Shortly after Oct 6, 1976, it was proposed that Democracy had to take a step-by-step approach, or guided democracy, because the people were not educated.  However, the proposal was recognized as a temporary measure, and further development would be needed.   Does the PAD’s 70:30 proposal include a development plan?  I’d like to hear how they plan to develop this.  Is it until Thai people stop being stupid?  Are the PAD so smart?

Nationalists, the media and Bangkok people always accuse rural people of vote-selling, being fooled by politicians, so they propose rural people and the general public get 30%.  Sondhi Limthongkul says unabashedly that the Sakdina (feudalists) and the rich have to share the pie.  His proposal is like taking us back to the time before the 1932 revolution.  He is more Sakdina than the Sakdina themselves, because I’ve never heard such thing from the Sakdina.

Socio-politics is a subject that tries to find out who actually rules, unlike political philosophy which tries to say who should rule.  We are well aware that even if people have 100% representation, their representatives would not become rulers.  Some other forces, though not elected, rule the country de facto.  These include the military, the judiciary, financial institutions, etc.  Instead of the 70:30 proportion, a proposal should be made that these institutions be elected as well.  I don’t mean it to be sarcastic, but I’d like to hear what the PAD have to say to oppose this.

In retrospect, when democracy was in its infancy after the 1932 revolution, there were restrictions in setting up the system that had to include, for example, both elected and non-elected representatives.  But that was the beginning.  Or according to Pridi Bhanomyong, ‘we cannot climb to the top of a tree at once’.

Before the dictatorial regime of Field Marshal Sarit Thanarat, members of parliament from the northeast were of decent quality in terms of their attitude towards the poor, better than the dignitaries.  There was no vote buying and selling, which was a relatively new phenomenon in the 1990s and 2000s.  But lately vote buying and selling have been in decline.  Some argue that during Thaksin’s years it was not a direct vote buying, they bought votes with policies.  This is an extremely broad definition of vote buying.  If using policies to persuade people to vote for a political party is vote buying, then there would be no countries free from vote buying.

Most governments always spent a lot more money on Bangkok and big cities than rural areas.  Is this vote buying?  Candidates for Bangkok Governorship promise people that they will build this and that.  Is that vote buying?  Expressways, underground trains, and decent schools.  Is this populism?  When these are applied to rural people, Bangkok people ask, ‘Why give them money? Why don’t they learn to earn by themselves?’, attacking populism as a spending spree.  I’d say populism is better than non-populism.  Urban people have got used to it for so long.

Speaking like this, I’d be accused of being pro-Thaksin.  Some friends who I have associated with since adolescence asked me that: ‘Are you pro-Thaksin?’  I can only respond that I’m not with those who are against Thaksin.  It’s not that I cheer the underdog, but I wonder what the ‘Thaksin regime’ really means?  Is it just a ploy to support another regime by using the ‘Thaksin regime’ as a decoy?

If Thaksin bought votes, then how can we explain the rejection of the 2007 draft charter by a lot of voters in the referendum?  The accusation of vote selling by villagers has been cited so often to the point of becoming meaningless.  I worked for the People Network for Election in Thailand in 1992 when vote buying was really huge.  A particular party leader always claimed that his party didn’t buy votes, while smearing other parties for buying votes.  But I preferred to believe the PNet volunteers.  According to our figures, this party came in number two in vote buying, but it doesn’t mean that it was more decent.  That’s because the number of candidates it fielded came second.

The 70:30 proposal just follows the prejudice, and follows the coup d’etat.  With Thaksin already toppled, the coup already done, the 2007 charter already in force, they have yet to win.  So electoral politics is next in line, isn’t it?

Is there something behind the idea?

When the PAD first proposed the 70:30 idea, it was just a good laugh.  But it’s weird that later on there were responses.  The National Government thing came back again.  Some newspapers cheered.  It means that this kind of idea was not just the brainchild of the PAD leaders.  Perhaps this is a kind of conspiracy.

There are two assumptions for the current round of protests by the PAD.  One is that the PAD initiated this scheme on their own, and has been joined by like-minded people.  The other assumption is that there are masterminds behind this.  The PAD leaders just lead the demonstrations, but are henchmen for much more influential and higher-up people.  I’m not sure which one is true, as both are highly likely.

But one is made to think why there have been such concerted efforts among various bodies in shaking up and attacking the government like this.  The PAD kicked the ball.  The media cheered.  Political parties joined in, and passed the ball to the courts.  And the courts shot the goal.  Do these groups just converge by pure chance or a miracle?  Apart from the courts, these groups overlap with those who killed students on Oct 6, 1976.  This is a historical continuity.  They are the same interest groups.  Some are even the same persons.

The idea and the protests do not just stem from the PAD.  It’s a display of conflicting forces in Thai society from the past.  In my view, the ‘Oct 6’ students were killed because their ideas threatened the status quo, no matter whether they could really carry out their threat.  What mattered was that the rulers felt threatened.  This is like the case of Thaksin who has allegedly threatened the status quo.  Thaksin himself may not have thought that far.  He probably just wanted to try to get votes and popularity.  But when he was popular in those constituencies, he had to be got rid of, as the ‘Thaksin regime’.

Why institutionalize an individual as a regime?  Is it because Thaksin threatens another regime in Thailand?  Thaksin’s corruption scandals are just condiment, but corruption per se is not so big an evil that it makes a ‘regime’.  ‘Thaksin regime’ has no meaning in itself, rather a counterpart to another power in the same way that the students were labeled ‘communists’.  If we try to find out if the students were really ‘communists’, we might not get the answer as much as if we look to find what the counterpart to ‘communist’ is.

Since the Oct 14, 1973 uprising ushered in people’s participation in politics, Thai politics has increasingly become mass politics.  In the coups on Oct 6, 1976 and Sept 19, 2006, for example, the military just added the finishing strokes, and all the arrangements had already been made by someone else.  And support from the mass is important.  It’s no longer a power play exclusively in Parliament or among the elite.  This is indeed the ‘new politics’, involving the mass.  The PAD just play along this line.  For the previous coup, the head of the PAD had to use this tactic.

And this is what makes Thaksin still look threatening to his opponents.  And this is what prompts the 70:30 idea, to cut the mass away from the so-called ‘Thaksin regime’.  Don’t bother accusing Samak of being Thaksin’s nominee.  The real nominees are those who are willing to vote for Thaksin or pro-Thaksin political groups.  And these nominees are over 10 million.  The PAD’s idea is to reduce these nominees by 70%.  Isn’t it a little too much?  Isn’t it a little bit of a joke?