[Tlc] T-Southern Thailand

[justinm at ucr.edu]

Forwarded from a member.
Thanks,
justin 

THE STRAITS TIMES, 7 April 2009

 

TACKLING WOES IN THAI SOUTH

Past may save the future

 

Michael J. Montesano 

 

FIVE years and more than 3,000 deaths into the strange war in Thailand's southern provinces, the successful reassertion of Thai sovereignty in the region by military means is nowhere in sight. The Thai army's reputation as a counter-insurgency force is rooted in myth rather than history, and its units continue to flounder in fighting shadowy enemies. The talented among its officer corps suffer the leadership of a high command more interested in propping up the government of Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva in Bangkok than in meeting the armed challenges in the south.

The southern troubles of the past half-decade have led both informed foreign observers and influential Thai civilians to a new understanding of the issues at stake and of the most promising way to address them. Though not yet ready to say it openly, many in the Thai capital now appreciate that the provinces of Pattani, Narathiwat and Yala represent only the most extreme case of a problem that afflicts the country as a whole. They understand that Thailand must develop a new regime of sub-national administration - and not just in the south.

 

Insufficient local say over administrative, fiscal, educational, cultural and security matters is the source of much trouble. Existing structures of sub-national governance are actually relics of Bangkok's process of 'internal colonisation' of its hinterland during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Decades of bureaucratic and military domination of Thai politics reinforced the extreme centralisation. Centralisation being a legacy of the celebrated King Chulalongkorn also made it difficult to criticise it directly.

 

But Thailand's over-centralisation no longer conforms to contemporary realities. It meets neither the needs nor the aspirations of residents of provincial Thailand, who are more affluent, educated and informed than they were 50 or 100 years ago.

 

In the Malay/Muslim-majority provinces of southern Thailand, the country's archaic over-centralisation threatens the very legitimacy of the Thai state. Elsewhere, the problem is - for now at least - less grave.

 

Existing proposals to offer autonomy to the Pattani-Narathiwat-Yala region are misguided on four grounds. First, they would reward a brutal insurgency, one whose members have killed more local Muslims than Buddhists. Second, they directly challenge King Chulalongkorn's royal legacy. Third, each of the first two issues makes autonomy politically unrealistic. And fourth, proposals for southern autonomy fail to address a governance problem that is national rather than merely regional in scope.

 

Meaningful devolution of some control over policing, taxation, schooling and local administration to all the provinces holds greater promise. As well as addressing what Dr Duncan McCargo of the University of Leeds labels the Thai state's crisis of legitimacy in the south, such devolution will offer residents of all regions of Thailand more say in their own affairs.

 

This devolution could also be packaged in a form acceptable to royalist interests, through the re-introduction of the multi-province monthons or 'administrative circles' into which King Chulalongkorn divided his kingdom 120 years ago. At that time, Bangkok sent superintendent-commissioners to govern its monthons. The reconstituted monthons of the future would have elected assemblies and their own chief ministers. These assemblies would resemble the provincial councils of today, but would enjoy more authority, not having to share power with governors appointed from Bangkok and operating on a larger scale.

 

Can any Thai government contemplate such ambitious changes at a time of great political and social polarisation? More and more, the liberal-minded among Bangkok's traditionally powerful have come to realise that Thailand can scarcely afford not to contemplate such reforms.

 

At least one leading member of Thailand's 'network monarchy' has begun to float the idea of restoring monthon-level governance. Failing that or similar reforms, the Thai state's lack of legitimacy in the far south and weak appeal among people in other regions - especially after the end of the current reign - may bring even greater, less carefully conceived, and far more destabilising changes to Thailand.

 

The writer is a visiting research fellow at the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies. He and Patrick Jory co-edited Thai South And Malay North: Ethnic Interactions On A Plural Peninsula (NUS Press, 2008).

 

 

  

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