[Tlc] michael jerryson

[Robert Albritton]

My God, if government corruption were the issue, we should have had a 
coup in the US long ago. Think about the billions of dollars ripped 
off by Haliburton or the corruption of the legislative and executive 
process by Abramoff, and involving the US in a massive war on 
spurious grounds, etc., etc., etc. - just to mention the most recent 
problems. Thai governments have been pikers when it comes to this, 
but we accept a democratically elected government because that is 
what democracy is.

I get very tired of hearing Thais claim some specialized form of 
democracy without ever specifying what it is. What it definitely is 
not is the overthrow of democratically elected governments by 
unconstitutional means. We should no longer tolerate the claim to 
some unique form of democracy without some clear specification of 
what it entails. Finally, as scholars, we have every right to 
evaluate whether any system is democratic or not, regardless of what 
Thais claim. (Remember the Democratic Republic of Kampuchea?)

We should not feed into this by deferring to Thai elites who want to 
be able to seize and run the country to prevent the overthrow of 
traditional society by mass democracy. Remember that the best analyst 
of American democracy for over a century was a Frenchman, not an 
American. Furthermore, the American Revolution was against 
colonialism, not against the old canard of "corruption in 
government." Please refer to Thongchai's characterization of this as 
a "Royalist coup."
RBA


At 10:23 PM 10/8/2006, justinm at ucr.edu wrote:
>Here is an opinion from one of our members, Michael Jerryson:
>
>There is a lot of dirty laundry to air; whether this
>administration will do it is a question. Investigations and
>changes take time, and there is no smooth sailing in matters
>like these.
>
>The Thai Rak Thai party, under the leadership of Thaksin,
>uprooted many civilian and local administrations that were
>extremely important to maintaining civility in Southern
>Thailand. Take for instance the Southern Border Provinces
>Administrative Centre (SBPAC). This previous week, Sonthi is
>beginning to try and resurrect the SBPAC and has made contact
>with some of the groups responsible for the continual deaths
>and mayhem in Southern Thailand-- raising a possibility of a
>ceasefire.
>
>To criticize the coup for destroying the integrity of a
>democratic system raises epistemological queries. It also
>calls into question the use of the very use of the term
>'democracy.' Is this simply a title, or a sense of duration,
>or should it pertain to state matters and their
>interrelationship with the people?
>
>Are we discussing a 'Western liberal' form of democracy, which
>Singapore Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong considers at best
>adequate in Asian governments, or another type that is still
>forming? There is an online forum sponsored by The Nation,
>regarding Thailand and democracy, which I feel is quite
>relevant to this discussion. The title of the forum: "Can
>foreigners ever understand Thai politics?"
>
>Aside from the fact that the U.S has a very disturbed
>democratic system as of late, we need to remember our own
>roots for our constitution and said democracy. As General
>Washington 'reclaimed' the government for the people (and
>right now many retired generals are quietly talking about
>reclaiming the current government), we should realize that it
>took military might to alter our course for a specific democracy.
>
>While I appreciate recent musings on the September coup, I
>fear many of us have become jaded by recent historical records
>(which is understandable -- 17 coups since 1932). To assess
>this coup will take time. And although I am not a Freudian, I
>do agree with him that in order to adequately assess history,
>we must have some distance from it.
>
>
>michael jerryson
>
>______________
>Dr. Justin McDaniel
>Dept. of Religious Studies
>2617 Humanities Building
>University of California, Riverside
>Riverside, CA 92521
>951-827-4530
>justinm at ucr.edu
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