[Tlc] T-Charles Keyes post

[justinm at ucr.edu]

FYI.
Thanks,
justin

 Like Ajarn Charnvit, I also strongly agree with the editorial in The Economist.
 
    Like other non-Thai citizens who has a deep and long personal as well as professional interest in/even stake in Thailand, I have been deeply concerned by the current avatar of the crisis has to be dated at least to late 2005 when PAD first emerged to challenge Thaksin. Although I recognize that there are some who support PAD who do so because they have legitimate grievances with the Samak-led government, but I also agree with the editorial that “The PAD’s leaders … are neither liberals nor democrats.”
 
     Since the founding of PAD he Sondhi Limthongkul, the primary leader, has taken an increasingly ultra-nationalist and pro-royalist stance. He considers the rural populace to be stupid (ngo), something I heard him argue in person when he came to Seattle after the coup in 2006. He has pushed PAD to advocate a form of 'guided democracy' in which elected members of parliament would be limited to 30% of the total membership. He and his associates have also used racist language regarding the Khmer in connection with the temple controversy, again something I heard personally when I went to a PAD rally in early July.
 
     Major General Chamlong Srimuang, the other major leader of the PAD, is the leading lay member of the fundamentalist Santi Asoke sect, a former governor of Bangkok, and, particularly notable, one of the leaders of the popular protest movement against the military-established government in 1992. It is clear that Chamlong has long seen himself as the only truly moral leader of Thailand, but he has failed to persuade most people of his barami, Buddhist charisma. Indeed, he has now transformed Santi Asoke into a form of militant Buddhism.
 
     Samak Suntharawej, surrogate (self-designated?) for Thaksin and head of the Peoples Power Party, the successor to Thaksin's Thai Rak Thai Party, is a deeply flawed politician who is a truly unfortunate stand-in for Thaksin even given Thaksin’s own great failings. Samak has proven to be incompetent as an administrator, and constrained by the broad support Thaksin still has among many of the MPs and followers of PPP/TRT. Samak had a key role in 1976 in the bloody suppression of the student movement. Although he has changed his right-wing clothes for those of a populist, this costume change is only on the surface. He would, I suspect, like to use as much force to suppress the PAD as was used to suppress the student movement on 6 October 1976. The military, because of their failures to use force to create a stable political order in 1992 and again in 2006 as well as because some are supportive of the PAD, has not allowed itself to be used as a tool by Samak.
 
      While Samak, as The Economist editorial observes, is hardly the ideal person to represent democracy in Thailand, the fact remains, again as The Economist notes, that the PPP government was democratically elected. To deny the franchise for 70% of the electorate, to silence the voices of rural people who are far from ngo, to impose ‘guided democracy’ on the country after the hard-won battles of the 1990s will promote an irreparable chasm between the large majority of the population and those who claim the right to rule because of their wealth, birth, or membership in the military or bureaucratic elites. To allow extra-parliamentary forces to force the ouster of this government could well lead to violence even if the military does not intervene as the confrontation between government supporters and the PAD last week shows.
 
     Samak has now proposed a referendum, a proposal not discussed in The Economist piece. While this proposal has the feel of an act of desperation, it might well allow for the electorate to be heard. If this proposal were to receive Royal approval, then perhaps the PAD would have to be quiet until it takes place. And, perhaps, after it has taken place, Samak will find a way to give up the premiership to some other PPP leader who is not also deeply flawed as, unfortunately, a number are.
 
Charles (Biff) Keyes
Professor Emeritus of Anthropology and International Studies
Department of Anthropology
Box 353100
University of Washington
Seattle, WA 98195-3100

______________
Dr. Justin McDaniel
Dept. of Religious Studies
3046 INTN
University of California, Riverside
Riverside, CA 92521
951-827-4530
justinm at ucr.edu