[Tlc] FW: IPS/Thailand: Straitjacket Elections Has Army Stamp All Over

[Michael Montesano]

Inter Press News Service
October 29, 2007

Thailand: Straitjacket Elections Has Army Stamp All Over

By Marwaan Macan-Markar

BANGKOK - The first parliamentary election to be held in Thailand since
last year's army coup is generating excitement for the wrong reasons.
Political parties, the media and analysts are up in arms over a raft of
restrictions imposed on candidates for the Dec. 23 poll.

Under the new rules announced by the election commission (EC) the
customary festive air of a campaign, where a prospective parliamentarian
is feted with a public parade to promote his or her candidacy once the
race officially begins, is banned.
Also deemed illegal is the practice of candidates enlisting popular
figures from the world of film, music and entertainment to boost their
campaigns.

For this poll, say the commissioners, the broadcast media will not be
able to exercise editorial judgement as to which candidate they want to
feature in a news programme or an interview ahead of the election. The
new regulations state that television and radio stations must invite
representatives from all parties to participate in every programme if
candidates are to be featured.

Even the country's universities have not been spared. They will not be
able to conduct the pre-election seminars and discussions with select
candidates, a practice that has helped to feed the political debate and
generate more information about the issues at stake. The universities
must follow the same rules as the
media: feature representatives of all parties at every event or none at
all.

No wonder headlines such as ''EC's restrictions on political rallies
stifle democratic freedoms'' have appeared in the local press after the
EC made its rules public last week. In the column that appeared below
that headline in Sunday's edition of 'The Nation,' Nophakhun
Limsamarphun argues that the limits, including restriction of election
campaign rallies to specially designated areas, ''is a risky proposition
that runs counter to the basic principles of democracy, in which access
to information must be unfettered''.

Thailand's media associations have issued statements that the
regulations violate the guarantees of a right to freedom of information
and speech upheld in the current constitution, the country's 18th
charter, which was approved by a simple majority in a mid-August
referendum. ''Restrictions imposed on media coverage could lead to a
lack of sufficient information on candidates that in turn could affect
voters' decision at polling stations,'' Thakerng Somsap, president of
the Thai Broadcast Journalists Association, was quoted as having told
Saturday's 'Bangkok Post' newspaper.

The current EC is being accused of exceeding its mandate and the role
expected of an election monitoring body that has been shaped since the
first commission was created after the country's
1997 constitution. ''Such an attempt to micromanage the election is
unprecedented,'' Giles Ungpakorn, a political scientist at Bangkok's
Chulalongkorn University, told IPS. ''It is an attempt to limit
electioneering and the open discussion of politics that is normal in any
election campaign.''

Other analysts, such as Michael Nelson, faulted the EC for upholding the
conservative and authoritarian streak that runs through the country's
entrenched political elite. ''These new rules are a form of bureaucratic
authoritarianism,'' Michael, a German academic specialising in Thai
political culture, said in an interview.
''This shows how utterly ridiculous their thinking is. These mindless
bureaucratic rules are so far outside reasonable behaviour.''

''Electioneering is an activity among citizens in the public space where
the state should not intervene in such a manner,''
he added. ''It confirms that the current election commission is not
neutral. There was a far more liberal democratic atmosphere when
elections were held under (former prime minister) Thaksin
(Shinawatra).''

The questionable climate ahead of the polls comes at an awkward moment
for the country's junta and its pro-military government and
sympathisers. The forthcoming election has been billed by the ruling
class as its commitment to restore Thailand's credentials as another
democracy in South-east Asia. On Saturday, the military-appointed prime
minister, Gen. Surayud Chulanont, urged the country's 45 million voters
to come out in strength at the December ballot during his weekly radio
broadcast.

Bangkok's effort to restore its sullied image following last year's
putsch goes beyond domestic concerns, too. After all, the country has
not been invited for the first time to an international meeting of the
world's democracies to be held in mid-November in the African nation of
Mali. Thailand had enjoyed a seat at the Community of Democracies, a
global group of the world's oldest and newest democracies, at the
ministerial meetings in 2000, in Poland, 2002, in South Korea, and 2005,
in Chile.

Thailand's exclusion from the international family of democracies was
not what the country's military leaders had in mind when they mounted
the putsch in September 2006 to drive from power the twice-elected
former prime minister Thaksin. The country's 18th coup was justified by
the junta as an attempt to help restore the democratic culture that they
said Thaksin and his Thai Rak Thai (Thais Love Thai) party had destroyed
during over five years in government.

Yet in the months since, the space for a free and open political
environment has come under threat by laws, verdicts and rules imposed by
supposedly independent institutions, such as the EC.
The mid-August plebiscite to approve the new constitution was replete
with a host of anti-democratic measures, ranging from political parties
forced to play a diminished role to rules that threatened arrests of
people campaigning against the referendum.

''The thinking behind the election commissions decisions is the same as
the junta: they do not want the Thai Rak Thai or the party representing
it to return to power,'' says Giles. ''What they fail to realise is that
the coup which overthrew an elected government destroyed Thai democracy
in the first place.''