Why Thai Politics is No Longer Normal

Posted Below is a longer version of a piece that appears in the The AGE today.

For Italian Translation Click Here or for Chinese translation see below.

Written for a general audience, I focus on broad trends rather than immediate analysis of what is happening now. As for current events, no one who supports the right of people to protest can support the use of military with armed weapons to end the stand-off. The degeneration into this state abuse of power is not excusable, and despite the existence of paramilitary elements in the red-shirts, the disproportionate use of weaponry by the government side is to be condemned.
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When a social order is threatened, politics becomes about defining friend and enemy. Then you wage a rule-less war for complete victory.

History is a fat pile of friend/enemy wars and as monstrous as it sounds, this is how transformative change sometimes happens. In the process, old social orders survive by reform or tumble, and new orders rise. It is never pretty, and often bloody.

So it has been since former Thai prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra was outsted in a coup in 2006.

The street battles and rising death toll in Bangkok right now signal that fundamentalist antagonists are now waging war over who defines democracy.

The red-shirts are seeking a new social order. The Democrat Party led-governing coalition, backed so far by the military, are committed to restoring a social order that is now in ashes. Each sees the other as the enemy.

The violent actions of both sides in the street battles are born of this dangerous logic of friend/enemy, and do not tell us much about what they stand for, what kind of Thailand they wish to build.

Some recent history will help.

After the 1991 coup and its bloody aftermath in May 1992, a politically liberal reform movement emerged. Elites recognised that the semi-democracy of the 1980s, when a retired general depended on palace support to stay as prime minister, was an age gone by. The movement resulted in the celebrated 1997 “People’s Constitution”, which enshrined the liberal doctrine at the heart of the Thai state. Henceforth, executive power (coming from a democratic mandate) would be scrutinised by a variety of liberal checks and balances, an electoral commission, and constitutional and administrative courts.

Some believe the liberal political settlement was devised in anticipation that King Bhumiphol’s death – even then thought to be in the twilight of his reign – required Thailand embrace an open politics based on robust political institutions.

Nevertheless, suspicious of the dangers of majoritarian democracy, elite liberals embraced a role for the monarchy, who they popularly represented as the supreme ombudsman, virtuous and able to restrain the venality of politics. Thus, the monarchy that had a reciprocal relationship with military dictators from the 1950s onwards was reinvented as a liberal institution by elites who feared full democracy without a moralizing centre to restrain mass appetite.

In anycase, no one expected a smooth path to liberal democracy. The military’s corporate interests remained and networks around the monarchy continued to wield power. Corruption was pervasive. Rather, the project was to be gradual and generational.

Then the project came unstuck. When the liberally-oriented Democrat Party ruled during the Asian Economic Crisis of 1997-2000, it failed to offer anything except implementation of an IMF austerity program. Such liberal feebleness paved the way for Thaksin Shinatara and his brand of authoritarian populism and popular pro-poor policies.

During his term as prime minister (2001-2006) Thaksin systematically tore up the aspirational liberal settlement. His disregard for human rights and the institutions of checks and balances is well documented, as is his undoubtable electoral support, which won him office in 2001 and 2005 (and would possibly see a pro-Thaksin government returned to power were elections held soon). Liberalism and Democracy parted ways.

The yellow-shirt movement against Thaksin that arose in 2005/2006 was a mixture of the liberal middle class elements, rural poor, and unionists opposed to privatisation programmes. There were also elite conservative elements who feared Thaksin was pushing them from their pedestal as power-brokers. They viewed Thaksin as a threat to the social order and most importantly to the monarchy.

Since 2006 liberals have loosely pacted with conservative elements in the state, and the yellow shirts, to defeat Thaksin and his supporters. Together, they brought down an elected pro-Thaksin government in late 2008. They are driven by a flawed logic of gradually returning Thailand to something like the liberal settlement of 1997 – with all its compromises. Some anti-Thaksin elements have called for a “new politics” that does away with full electoral democracy.

The current government, led by Abhisit Vejjajiva, recognises there are genuine grievances among the redshirts and has offered a raft of pro-poor policies since taking office in late 2008. Thai liberalism has moved towards a form of social liberalism that recognises the importance of equal opportunity. But perhaps, as in all revolutionary situations, this is too little too late. And now associated with scores of deaths as a consequence of the crackdown underway, what future does the government have?

What of the red-shirts, what social order, should they win, can we expect?

The redshirts are a diverse movement of middle layer farmers, leftwing activists, rural poor, working class urban elements, and middle class professions, and business. Importantly, Thaksin and his political networks play a role too. Frustrated with a failed year-long campaign to bring down the government, they have moved to endgame on the streets of Bangkok. Some redshirts have also embraced a para-military solution.

They pledge to return the 1997 Constitution, deal with the bureaucratic and aristocratic elements of the state, and make democracy ‘edible’. They support market capitalism and want a better deal for the “commoner”. They rightly speak of double standards in the execution of law, and of non-transparent processes that are non-democratic. Their program is powerfully attractive, but fatally flawed.

Like liberals who have failed to come to terms with the non-democratic nature of conservative institutions in Thailand, the red-shirt leadership and its backers refuse to publicly account for the authoritarian slide under Thaksin.

They have mobilized a powerful myth of a democratic oasis at the centre of which stands the Thaksin era. But apart from calling for an immediate election to enable the victory of Pheu Thai, the pro-Thaksin opposition party, no one knows what a red-shirted democracy would look like.

Thai politics is obviously no longer in a “normal phase”. It’s as if a textbook struggle between liberalism and democracy is taking place, except that real people are being killed.

Chinese Translation - Thanks to Ng Cheng Beng

为什么泰国政治已不再正常
当社会秩序受到威胁，政治成为界定朋友与敌人。然后有人发动一场没有法纪的战争，以求达到完全的胜利。
历史是一堆朋友与敌人的战争，它听起来虽骇人听闻，却正是改变有时发生的原因。在这个过程里，旧的秩序或因改革而得以生存，或倒下而新的秩序得以抬头。这，从来不会是美丽的，反倒常是很血腥的。
这，就是泰国前首相达信，在二零零六年的一场政变，被推翻以来的写照。
在曼谷的街头战，和持续上升的死亡人数，显示基本教条主义的对抗者，现在正在发动一场战争，看谁在界定民主。
红杉军要求新的社会秩序。民主党领导的联合政府 - 至今仍受军方的支持，要求恢复社会秩序，但它现已成灰。双方互视为敌人。
双方的暴力行动，因朋友/敌人这个危险的逻辑而产生，他们并没有告诉我们，他们的立场，以及他们希望建造一个怎样的泰国。
一些过去的历史，可以帮助了解情况。
一九九一年的政变，以及它在一九九二年造成的血惺暴动之后，一股政治自由改革的运动产生了。精英份子承认，一九八零年代的半民主时代已一去不返。这个运动导致了有名的一九九七年“人民宪法”，它将自由主义教条，载入泰国的国家核心。自此以后，行政权力（来自民主的授权）一直受到各种自由主义制衡，选举委员会，以及宪法和行政的检验。
没有人期待，自由民主的道路，会是一帆风顺的。军方的团体利益，保留不变，而围绕着王室的联络网，一直在巩固势力。贪污猖獗。
这个计划本应该是循序渐进的。然而，它却脱序了。
当自由派的民主党，在一九九七至二零零零年，亚洲金融危机时间执政，它完全束手无策，只得实行国际货币基金制定的紧缩方案。自由派的衰弱，为达信和他的独裁民粹主义，以及他的受欢迎、有利於穷人的政策铺路。
在他为首相的任期，达信把得来不易的理想自由主义撕毁了。他无视人权和体制的制衡，以及他在选举得到的支持，让他在二零零一年和二零零五年赢得执政，这些皆有案可稽。自由主义与民主於是分道扬镳。
黄衫军反对达信，发生在二零零五 - 二零零六年，它是自由主义中产份子，反对私营化计划的乡村穷人，和工会会员的混合产物。还包括保守派的精英份子，他们害怕达信把他们作为权力掮客的基本盘给移走。他们视达信为对社会秩序，更重要的对王室，是一种威胁。
自二零零六年，自由派和国家的保守份子、以及黄衫军，结成松散的联盟，打败了达信和他的支持者。他们一起在二零零八年后期，把支持达信的政府给弄下台。他们是基於一个错误的逻辑，以为可以让泰国慢慢地回到好像一九九七年那种自由主义 - 包括所有的妥协。有一些反达信份子，还呼吁实行一种“新的政治”，取消全面民主选举。
阿比昔领导的现任政府承认，在红衫军之间存有真正的不满，自从他於二零零八年后期出任首相以来，他也提出了一系列有利於穷人的措施。泰国的自由主义，已经转移成一种社会自由主义的形式，承认平等机会的重要性。但，或许正如所有的革命，它来得有点太迟、太慢了。而由於现在正在进行的镇压，造成了几十人死亡，政府将会有什么样的未来呢？
假如红衫军赢，我们将可期待怎么样的社会秩序呢？
红衫军是由中间阶层的农夫、左翼活跃份子、城市穷人，城市的工人阶级份子，和中产专业人仕组成的一个复杂运动。重要的是，达信与他的政治联络网也扮演了一个角色。对一个失败、长达一年而无法打倒现任政府的宣传运动感到沮丧，他们不惜在曼谷采取街头的最后一战。有些红衫军也赞同成立辅助军的方案。
他们誓言回到一九九七年宪法，对付国家的官僚与贵族份子，让民主“可以食用”。他们支持市场资本主义，而又要求让“平民百姓”得到更好的待遇。他们的计划很吸引人，但，却是一个致命的错误。
正如自由派无法与泰国的保守机构达致妥协，红衫军领袖也拒绝公开对达信的独裁负责。
他们发动了一个强大的民主绿洲神话，而站在它的中心的是达信的时代。但，除了呼吁立刻举行大选，让支持达信的反对党为泰党赢得胜利之外，没有一个人知道，红衫军的民主，倒底是什么个样子的。
泰国的政治，明显的，已经不是一个正常的状态。它看来好像正在举行一场教课书上，关於自由主义与民主的斗争，例外的是，有人真的被杀害了。

作者：麦可康纳斯（Michael Connors）
发表於：19.05.2010
麦可康诺斯在澳洲La Trobe University教政治学。他是《泰国的民主与国家认同》（Democracy and National Identity in Thailand）一书的作者。
译者：苏杭

Liberalism, Authoritarianism and the Politics of Decisionism in Thailand

Connors, Michael K. 'Liberalism, authoritarianism and the politics of decisionism in Thailand', The Pacific Review, 22:3, 355 - 373


Introduction
The 2006 coup d'tat against the Thaksin regime highlights the ongoing failure to embed a legitimate pattern of decision-making, enforcement and sovereignty at the national level in Thailand. It also signals that the gains of Thai liberalism and democracy since the 1980s were based on a volatile 'democratic transition' that entailed a liberal and security settlement which entrenched the monarchy at the centre of a national power bloc (Connors 2007: 128). The rise of pluto-populism (Baker 2005) under Thaksin in the early 2000s put pressure on that settlement and the social and vested interests it served, leading to a tacit alliance between liberal and statist elements to overcome the threat posed by the Thaksin regime. The coup has led to a resurgence of authoritarian politics in Thailand, but these politics are characterised by a great deal of continuity. Notwithstanding the appearance of liberalisation and democratisation in recent years, the authoritarian exercise of power - power which is unaccountable to democratic institutions and processes of law - has been an abiding feature of different regime forms. The fundamental argument is that the contemporary Thai state exists in a state of ambivalence, its institutions subject to liberal and authoritarian currents and purposes. This entails moving beyond a conventional analysis of democratisation and its treasure hunt for the democratic actor, and requires a multilayered periodisation of regime forms decoupled from the teleology implicit in 'democratic transitology'. The argument is advanced in four stages.

Firstly, a broad understanding of authoritarianism is advanced which focuses on the exercise of power, rather than formal regime form. One consequence of this argument is that electoral democratic regimes arguably facilitate the exercise of authoritarian power, as do liberal regimes. Conversely, formally authoritarian regimes can have liberal intentions. Making this argument requires a critical understanding of liberalism that goes beyond its conflation with democracy, and which recognises liberalism's agnostic if not antagonistic relationship to majoritarianism. The democratic struggle in Thailand largely has been waged by non-state and non-regime actors who have fought against liberal and illiberal elites to advance substantive political and economic equality. At times a protean force, the democratic mass rose to break statist or liberal centres, or to temper anti-democratic agendas. Bracketing that democratic struggle, secondly this paper examines elite competition over regime form. Thirdly, the paper attempts to characterise four different regime forms that have emerged since the late 1970s, each possessing a different mix of liberalism and authoritarianism. Finally, the paper offers a reflection on current politics, arguing that Carl Schmitt's concept of decisionism (as a normative orientation to politics) illuminates the reconfiguration of liberalism in authoritarian form since the coup d'tat of 2006.

Authoritarian: liberal, statist and plutocratic

Contending regime framers seek to embed specific patterns of political power that reflect distinct social bases articulated to state apparatuses. That articulation is usually organised around competing hegemonic projects of social, economic and political order. Following Jessop (2007: 9), in this paper the core of the state apparatus is defined as 'a distinct ensemble of institutions and organizations whose socially accepted function is to define and enforce collectively binding decisions on a given population in the name of their “common interest” or general will'. Regime framers, then, seek to direct relevant state apparatuses.

For the purposes of analytical simplification, I suggest that competing liberal, statist and plutocratic regime framers have fought for control of state apparatuses in contemporary Thai politics. The actions and influence of each reaches across different governments and periods and there is no neat chronological fix. Each camp attempts to sustain or create patterns of rule advancing different models of social order, economics and politics. 'Statist regime framers', dominant in the 1980s and in periods of junta rule, refers to those with a commitment to a strong powerful centralised state, in which agents of state institutions wield power with little popular accountability. For statists, the formal separation of power may be declaratory, but executive dominance is practised. Statists also mobilise nationalist forms of development democracy or Thai-style democracy. 'Liberal regime framers', emergent in the 1990s, refers to those building or sustaining a political system that aspires to the ideals of limited government, separation of powers, rule of law, and contingent freedoms and liberties. Inasmuch as elite liberals support democratic forms of rule they do so in conformity with polyarchic models of democracy. According to Robinson this is a system 'in which a small group actually rules and mass participation in decision-making is confined to leadership choice in elections carefully managed by competing elites' (1996: 49). 'Pluto-populist regime framers', dominant during the Thaksin regime, are those who have sought direct capital control over the state. In recent times plutocracy has articulated to a politics of populism and electoral democracy. As do statists, pluto-populists favour strong executive power, but unlike statists they can claim a direct electoral mandate.

If the surface of elite Thai politics is centred on the melodrama of cabinet faction quotas, and military and bureaucratic promotion lists, the more enduring factor that structures this surface is the struggle between competing regime-framers. The regime-frame typology is ideal-type, for Thai political forces blur at the edges in the messy reality of everyday politics (Ockey 2004: 157). The three camps are composed of various tendencies, social bases and orientations to religion, nationalism, capitalism and monarchy. Their peak-centres can not be read off their dominant social base. Statists can be found in formally non-state spheres such as the media and community associations. Liberals can be located in the predominantly statist Interior Ministry. Plutocrats can work through formally liberal institutions such as parliament. While institutional sites can be correlated to each force, the network nature of regime framers and related political groups extends into state and political institutions, making those institutions conflicted sites. The struggle has been characterised by many seemingly contradictory alliances and defections as each force has sought to advance, tactically retreat, or launch an offensive against the other. The use of state power by different regime framers against the other partly accounts for the persistence of authoritarianism in Thailand. In this framework it is possible to speak of authoritarian state power coeval with liberal, plutocratic and statist regime forms.

The term 'authoritarianism' entails that, on balance, the exercise of power is illiberal and based on the authority of those who hold the centre (either formally or obscurely), and to those whom they delegate or defer. That authority is often legitimated by democratic, authoritative and mythic claims to universal representation, or some combination of all (Malloy 1992: 232). Such universal claims are not matched by institutional arrangements. For the purposes of this paper an authoritarian state exists when an apparatus of arbitrary power (what may be called an ensemble of dictate) exerts control in a political field. Although patterned, the deployment of power in such a state is arbitrary by virtue of its relative unaccountability to those subject to it (see Linz 2000: 159). An authoritarian state tends to exert selective force, indicating its fragile legitimacy in some domains.

Authoritarianism: structures and institutions

Adopting the structural approach to democratisation (see Rueschemeyer, Stephens and Stephens 1992), the regime-frame analysis that follows is set against the changing nature of key structural features of the Thai social formation over the modern period, including the hegemonic international order and counter-hegemonic moments, state formation, the nature of capitalist development and class formation.

A bureaucratic-authoritarian regime with neo-patrimonial characteristics was birthed from the absolute monarchy of the late nineteenth century and the attendant struggles over regime form after the overthrow of the absolute monarchy in 1932 (Jacobs 1971). During the early and middle Cold War period the Thai military regime, with considerable US support, was typical of many dictatorships, conforming to the political-development inspired 'Huntington premise' that before liberty there must be order (Glassman 2004). Within state apparatuses a technocratic elite was given relative freedom to plan capitalist economic growth (Christensen and Ammar 1993). Partly because of the resulting transformations in the dominant class structure, both elite and popular, and because of the emergence of insurgency and student activism (1960s-1970s), a liberal and democratic opening occurred in the mid-1970s, which momentarily usurped dictatorial rule. However, in 1976, against the background of international counter-hegemonic victories (Vietnam), reactive statist forces, centred in the palace, military and bureaucracy, resorted to extraordinary repression to re-establish order. It is after this period that the modern ambivalent state, in which the balance between liberal and authoritarian elements is uneven and fluid, takes shape. The founding condition is a realignment of its significant elements: the monarchy unambiguously moves to the head of a statist power bloc, supported by the military, and there occurs a re-ideologisation of the state through discourses of 'democracy with the king as head of state'.

While the military, bureaucratic and palace forces were central in state composition post 1976, by the late 1970s liberals were able to use the resulting period of political stability to steadily advance in the parliamentary and ideological domains. They did so in favourable conditions: the crushing of class organisations of farmers and workers and the privileging of capital that occurred in the post-1976 reconstruction of social order enabled a liberal opening that was not threatening to conservative state and capitalist elements. A liberal current emerged among Thai elites in state and political institutions, and among business and organic intellectuals. That current did not have to contend with a radical and powerful redistributive democratising force that might challenge the objective of market liberal democracy with Thai characteristics. Liberal regime framers allied with the statist institution of monarchy, regarding the latter as a power in its own right, and a force for social order and integration. The bounds against which there could be no transgression in the transition of the 1980s were the monarchy, property and, it was hoped, emerging constitutional law. The relative weakness of redistributive coalitions also reduced liberal reliance on the authoritarian security arms of the state for the purposes of repression, making them more willing to actively erode or bypass statist domains. They steadily advanced throughout the 1990s. The 1997 economic crisis seemed to facilitate liberal political order in Thailand (Connors 1999), demonstrating the need for a regulatory state and the rule of law. The passing of the 1997 liberally oriented 'people's constitution' was a tentative victory for Thai political liberalism. However, the recomposition of capitalism in the crisis years and the emergence of defensive nationalism led to the rise of a plutocratic leader - Thaksin Shinawatra - who smashed the liberal-conservative settlement of the 1990s.

To put flesh on the skeletal outline above it is proposed, somewhat schematically, that four distinct regime forms have emerged in the post-1976 political landscape. Firstly, decisionist regimes (1976, 1977-78, 1991-92, 2006-7), that seize sovereign power by a coup d'tat and 'reset' the rules of the game; secondly, the liberalising bureaucratic-authoritarian regime of 1978-88; thirdly, the emergent liberal-conservative regimes of 1988-91, 1992-96, 1997-2000; and fourthly, the electoral populist regime of 2001-6.1 This regime typology should be understood as an analytical tool only, for within each, elements of the other were present or emergent in different measure.

Liberalising bureaucratic-authoritarian regime (1978-88)

The predominating centre of the liberalising bureaucratic-authoritarian regime (henceforth LBAR) was the military and core state apparatuses, sanctioned by the palace and significant sections of capital. The regime liberalised over time not as a consequence of intentionality, but as a product of intra-elite struggle. Indeed, influential statist regime framers sought to limit the liberalisation of the LBAR.

The statist role of the Thai military in politics is well documented, but that of the monarchy is relatively under-scrutinised. The monarchy came into its own from the 1970s onwards when its political interventions to restore order increased its prestige and power. From that time on the expanded role of the monarchy has been sanctioned by convention, if not the written constitution. McCargo (2005), Thongchai (2008) and Handley (2006) have given specificity to the political role of the palace. Thongchai and Handley have noted the role of royalist forces in actively securing the pre-dominant position of monarchy in Thai politics into the modern era. In a path-breaking analysis of the illiberal nature of network monarchy, McCargo (2005: 501) notes that

the monarch was the ultimate arbiter of political decisions in times of crisis … the monarch intervened actively in political developments, largely by working through proxies such as privy councillors and trusted military figures; and the lead proxy, former army commander and prime minister Prem Tinsulanond, helped determine the nature of coalition governments, and monitored the process of military and other promotions.

These analyses, when coupled with earlier critical studies of the monarchy (Connors 2007 [orig. 2000]: 128-52; Hewison 1997) that have noted its statist conservative role and its place in promoting social cohesion and national forms of capitalism, enable the mapping of a coherent peak institutional force that combines with security and capital to universalise their combined corporate interests as the national interest. The wielding of power by palace elements is largely done in the absence of processes of accountability and scrutiny, ensuring that a highly personalised power system, in alliance with military elements, has been an existing feature of post-1970s regimes. Moreover, substantive ideological work promoting the monarchy in the 1980s allowed it to sustain its role even as the LBAR faded (Connors 2007: 183-90).
Statist objectives were codified in the 1978 constitution, which provided for an appointed senate and for a non-elected prime minister. During the 1980s the conservative-bureaucratic elements that had built strategies of counter-insurgency and order in the 1960s and 1970s sat in ministries, actively resisting the liberal and pluralist dynamics of a more complex national and global order. Their interests were also represented in the appointed and military dominated Senate. They sought to entrench their position, first by extending constitutional provisions to allow sitting military officers and bureaucrats to continue serving in the senate in 1983 and secondly by proposing representation of the professions in the upper house (The Nation, 18 February 1983). General Chavalit - later an elected politician and prime minister in 1996-97 - explained his support for this position: 'If we don't develop it along the right path … [it] might turn into a system of monopolistic capitalism' (The Nation, 3 March 1983).

Nevertheless, statists had to face the reality of the emergence of new political forces and the need for more complex policy deliberation. In the 1980s the 'liberal corporatist' Joint Public Private Sector Consultative Committee was allowed to function, providing peak business groups with access to shape policy (Anek 1992). Liberalisation also entailed an expanded and institutionalised legislative process in parliament that became the basis for extending political liberalism.

Statist forces continued to wield a monopoly on official national ideology. The dominant idiom of state political discourse was that the state was representative of society, and that the military had a leading political role in partnership with the powerful Interior Ministry (Prime Minister's Office 1989). The three pillars ideology of nation, religion and king conjoined with 'democracy with the king as head of state' was the statist ideological mantra. The Thai 'semi-democracy' that emerged in this period was marked by tension between the directive political role of the bureaucracy and military and the liberalisation of political space. This was reflected too in ideological shifts. By the 1980s hardened notions of Thai-style democracy that viewed the state as capable of channelling the general will of the people were superseded by more nuanced notions of development democracy. I have argued elsewhere that from the 1960s statist forces had formulated an orientation to developmental democracy, whose objective was the realisation, at some stage, of liberal democracy. Statists thus rationalised their role as laying the conditions for liberal democracy by means of leadership, control and guardianship. The language of this discourse was American political development theory and was in addition shared by liberal framers who also considered that the building of liberal democracy required careful management. The difference was partly in their time-span solution to the problems, with statist forces arguing for a long tutelage over parliament while liberal forces sought rapid change (Connors 2007: 60-127).

At the political level, the LBAR was characterised by a battle between statists and liberals within parliament and centred on constitutional amendment and strengthening parliamentary functioning and parliamentary relations with society at large. A constitutionalist element was emerging in Thai 'semi-democracy' (Chai-Anan 1990). Developing episodically, it can be seen in the push to make ministers declare assets in the 1980s, the successful struggle against constitutional amendments that attempted to further entrench military and bureaucratic rule in 1983-84, and the successful 1989 constitutional amendment that made the speaker of the House of Representatives, rather than the Senate speaker, the parliamentary president.

Popular forces, still largely traumatised by the brutal repression of the 1970s and subject to ongoing repression, had no ongoing direct bearing on regime form. If in this period liberalism coloured business-state corporatism, trade unions faced great repression, both by employers and state. Many unions were heavily regulated in a nominally tri-corporatist labour relations regime that had incentive structures for economist unionism and 'employer yellow unionism'. Military political interference in State Enterprise Unions was also common. These broad patterns have persisted to the present, but through struggle gains have been made, including social welfare insurance, minimum wage standards and legislative standards of occupational health and safety (see Brown 2007). As for farmers, the highly politicised peasant groups of the 1970s were a distant memory, but farmers successfully organised around livelihood issues, tariffs, and influenced state policy and pricing mechanisms. For the most part, economic concerns did not lead to transformative political action.

Statists in the LBAR faced challenges from within state institutions too. As Surin and Pasuk (Surin 1993: 89-93; Pasuk 1992) separately note, liberal and more globally focused outlooks developed among a younger generation of state officials and technocrats on economic questions. This process was further engendered by statist defeat around various constitutional issues in the 1980s, which gave weight to capital and political parties. A process of interpenetration of state personnel and political parties witnessed odd formations emerge, defying classification along institutional lines (see Sungsidh and Pasuk 1996). General Prem, the unelected prime minister (1980-88), survived on the basis of military and palace backing and the support of key political parties such as Chat Thai, the Social Action Party and the Democrats. Such parties, while supporting a general liberalisation of the state also supported the institutions Prem represented (military and palace) as forces for order, and were in turn rewarded with significant cabinet presence, notwithstanding occasional spats.2 They did so while pushing for parliamentary dominance and, implicitly, civilian leadership of the government.

At this conjuncture, a finely balanced authoritarian-liberal order was characterised by an odd institutional parallelism. First, was embryonic regime patterns associated with liberal democracy: the re-emergence of political parties, non-governmental organisations (NGOs), a press that was establishing new standards of openness, and the relatively open political competition for power in the lower house. Second, was the persistence of statist regime patterns embodied by General Prem, whose historical role was to first advance and then protect the interests of statists associated with the military, bureaucracy and palace.

Emergent liberal-conservative regime (1988-90, 1992-95, 1997-2000)

The liberal-conservative regime was centred in the processes of expanding parliamentary power and the executive power of elected representatives in some legal centres of the Thai state and among business seeking a more responsive state structure. Many of those coming to parliamentary office through elections, for example during the Chatichai government of 1988-91, were not ideologically liberal and had distinctly plutocratic instincts, but by mobilising an electoral support base they came to challenge statist forces by dissipating the bureaucratic centres.

The term 'liberal-conservative' is used here to define a regime that is characterised by a pattern of liberal political institutions but which remains (in part) conservative in its social outlook and its use of relevant social institutions (the monarchy, cultural forms) that were held to advance the liberal principle. Use of the term 'emergent' signals that these institutions were in a state of expansion, but remained subject to countervailing actions by statists and plutocrats. They also developed a semi-hegemonic reach into the NGO and 'people sector'.

A number of structural and agential factors can explain the greater pressure to liberalise during this period: firstly, neo-liberal globalism was enforcing a new discipline that required a reformulation of state-capital relations and the stronger enforcement of impersonal contract. Secondly, the post-Cold War wave of democratisation and the emerging norms of liberal international order emboldened liberal framers in the political arena. Thirdly, the intervention of workers and progressive elements of the middle class in opposition to the military coup of 1991 - which attempted to restore power to bureaucratic and military elements - restricted the movement of authoritarian centres of the state. A contested process of liberal constitutionalism was initiated after the massacre of pro-democracy protestors in May 1992, when a constitutional amendment was passed that required that the prime minister be an elected member of parliament. However, the struggle for liberal constitutional amendments on decentralisation and rights during 1993-94 was lost as statist elements counter-mobilised. The liberal current, however, triumphed momentarily with the passing of the 1997 constitution.

By the 1990s the liberal regime framers found broader support among reformist elements in the political classes, bureaucracy, non-governmental sector, the media and among segments of the middle class. Although resistant, statists in the military and the bureaucracy were unable to block this shift. Liberal parliamentarism was broadly supported by progressive elements within a Thai localist communitarian movement that had grown from the 1980s onwards and also from an internationally influenced liberal-rights and good government social movement that shaped the political discourse of the times. These articulated to popular struggles over resource rights, labour rights and citizenship rights.

Institutionally, the liberal-conservative regime was, in its later period, located both in parliamentary arenas, and in independent agencies of the state that were created in 1997 constitution. Ideologically, liberal regime framers sought to make the ideology of 'democracy with the king as head of state' their own by drawing on discourses of royal liberalism, which saw the king as a virtuous figure - a model citizen - whose talents could oversee emerging liberal forms. This was best symbolised by the idea that the king was like a super ombudsman. These ideas were taken to a broader public and socialised by a growing civil society advocacy that also strategically mobilised monarchical discourse (Connors 2007: 214-47). Although formally supportive of a constitutional monarchy, the terms of the liberal-conservative settlement left untouched the palace's position. This allowed for its authoritarian para-political capacity to be utilised when occasion demanded.

In this period, as in the 1980s, corruption among political and state elites remained endemic, and the military and bureaucracy retained corporate identities with a capacity to shape the social field (Pasuk and Sungsidh 1994). Liberal regime framers were caught in the crossfire of plutocratic politicians and predatory state elites. Political parties remained dependent on old-time party bosses and illiberal modes of electoral mobilisation, including vote buying and electoral fraud (Sungsidh and Pasuk 1996). Additionally, statist regime framer active within the military, the Senate, the Council of State and most significantly the Interior Ministry, and some politico-plutocrats, actively organised against the liberal-conservative settlement. Some 'money-politicians' allied with statist elements to derail the passing of the 1997 liberal constitution, but failed (Connors 2002: 53-4).

The passing of the 1997 constitution coincided with the Asian economic crisis and the collapse of the Thai baht, leading to the resignation of the Chavalit government. The new coalition government, led by the Democrat Party, devised and promulgated the organic laws to make concrete the checks and balances that were at the core of the 1997 liberal constitution, while also embedding market rule according to International Monetary Fund (IMF) dictates after the 1997 economic crisis. The government's enforcement of IMF letters of intent stands as an act of stark and draconian power that reconfigured on a massive scale the nature of Thai capitalism with little regard for consultative process or deliberation. Prime Minister Chuan Leekpai regularly failed to engage with popular grievances, resorting to the rhetoric of due process, both bureaucratic and liberal. A number of activists were killed during this period, subject to the whim perhaps of local notables protected by state officials; the law could only offer a resigned hand (Human Rights Commission 2004).3 Thus, authoritarian structures of capitalism and the routine abuse of human rights accompanied the difficult project of institutionalising liberal forms of power and embedding the rule of law. The liberal regime framers promised, but failed to deliver, the structuring of a new logic of political action circumscribed by a universally applicable rule of law.

Electoral pluto-populist regime (1996-97, 2001-6)

The predominating centre of the electoral pluto-populist regime (2001-6) was big capital control of the state, a strong prime minister in Thaksin Shinawatra, and various policy-interest networks who were won to Thaksin's authoritative style of rule, his agenda of globalised capitalist development and limited social redistribution. Over time a significant social base supporting Thaksin developed among what Pasuk and Baker (2008: 70-3) have termed the 'informal masses', those rural and urban populations outside the formal working classes. Arguably, Thaksin's decisive action on health and credit and his populist language eased the insecurities (of the informal mass) caused by Thailand's unbalanced outward-oriented industrialisation strategy.

I use the term 'electoral populist' to indicate the limited democratic credentials of the Thaksin regime. Electoral mobilisation occurred in a social field marked by massive disparities of power and forms of political organisation that greatly depended on existing local notables in the regions (Kasian 2006; Somchai 2008). I use the term populist not specifically to refer to the Thai Rak Thai's popular policies but, following Pasuk and Baker (2008: 68-70), to refer to Thaksin's 'three narratives' of giving, being of the people and acting on their will, an idiom he developed in his relationship with the 'informal mass'.

The structural circumstances of the rise of Thaksin and his willingness to forge a new political direction for Thailand have been widely explored (Pasuk and Baker 2004; McCargo and Ukrist 2005; Hewison 2004). These include the post-crisis recovery of the Thai economy and the emergence of a dual economy of export liberal capitalism and domestic mercantile capitalism and a global agenda that retreated from the liberal democratising agenda of the 1990s, in part because of the securitisation of foreign policy (see Connors 2006). It was in this environment that Thaksin Shinawatra launched an assault on the fragile liberal-conservative settlement.

Institutionally, Thaksin Shinawatra's regime reduced the available political space by transforming liberal institutions from within rather than by outright destruction. His politicisation (which is to say his instrumentalist use rather than constitutional use of the collective state) of the formal institutions of the 1997 settlement re-introduced in a new form the shadow of authoritarianism that circumscribed the space for liberalism premised on emerging but still very much flawed processes for application of impartial rules. This was evident through the partisanship of the Electoral Commission, the effective disablement and indifference towards the National Counter Corruption, the marginalisation of the National Human Rights Commission, and the war of attrition against the Auditor General (Hicken 2006). Perhaps most ominous was the Emergency Decree on Public Administration in Emergency Situations, gazetted in July 2005 without parliamentary debate and subsequently opposed by the Democrat Party. Thaksin (International Herald Tribute, 26 August 2005) claimed 'This is a decree which makes Thailand a full democracy because we don't use martial law any longer'. While ostensibly designed for the insurgency in the 'deep south', the Decree enabled the prime minister to proclaim an 'emergency situation' when public order or security was endangered. The Decree directly attacked the 1997 Constitution by removing the right to hold accountable, through the Administrative Court, state personnel involved in the prosecution of the Emergency Decree.5 The Decree and the means of its proclamation was simply the highpoint of Thaksin's legal authoritarianism. It granted officials the ability to hold suspects without charge for longer than the martial law it replaced.

The electoral populist regime of Thaksin Shinawatra was, at least in terms of direct consequences for human rights abuse, one of the most illiberal of the three non-decisionist regimes that traverse the post-1976 period. During the Thaksin period the security and policing apparatuses of power, already habituated to deploying unscrutinised modes of power, carried out some of the worst excesses of state power in modern Thai history. Extra-judicial killings consequent to the government's declaration of the 'war on drugs' in 2003 became routine, while major massacres occurred in the south of Thailand in April and October 2004 (McCargo 2006). From a human rights perspective, these episodes were the nadir of a regime marked by erosion of the liberal-conservative settlement. Nevertheless, the regime's authoritarian inclinations were decidedly popular with people long ruled by governments heavily biased towards central development objectives, bureaucratic imperatives and big business.

Despite Thaksin's emergent authoritarianism, the liberal impulse that had emerged from processes of transition and which had influenced sections of the bureaucracy continued (especially in the Ministries of Justice and Health). And, despite authoritarian inclination, Thaksin was unable to control or disperse a royally-liberal mass movement that emerged against him and which eventually was his undoing (see Connors 2008). State media largely ignored the early protests against the Thaksin government in late 2005, and the government did not move to outright repression. In that sense, Thaksin's dismantlement of the liberal-conservative settlement should not be overstated. In contending with competing social forces in a still relatively open system of state power, he was not able to repress opposition outright. Furthermore, Thaksin had not been able to eliminate statist forces. While his direct repoliticisation of the military by appointing loyalists after assuming office surely played its part in ripping up the liberal-conservative settlement, it also led to a counter-offensive from rekindled statists who began to mobilise, plot and eventually overthrow Thaksin in the 2006 coup.

Decisionist regimes

Decisionist regimes are centred on junta control of state apparatuses, with real or nominal support from the palace. They are premised on the fact that a state of exception, one which the existing constitutional order cannot resolve, is held to exist (by them). Decisionist regimes suspend the existing order and assume effective sovereignty. In deciding that a state of exception exists a junta declare themselves, by their actions if not in name, sovereign, in accordance with Carl Schmitt's (1988: 5) anti-liberal formula that 'Sovereign is he who decides on the exception'. As Heiner Bielefeldt (1998: 26) notes, 'the state of exception in which the entire legal order is at stake, reveals the factual primacy of “rule of man” over “rule of law”'. In rupturing the messy and emergent expressions of liberal or other forms of political legitimacy by a political decision that suspends existing order, a decisionist phase is the moment when all political actors can see who holds sovereign-might to regulate social order. Recurrent decisionist phases in Thai politics indicate the fragility of constitutional order and the persistence of authoritarianism in the military and palace. This is codified in Thai law and enables decrees and a constitution issued by military junta to have the force of law. This 'convention' was given legal precedent in a Supreme Court ruling in 1952 that concluded that a government established by a coup d'tat may not at first be legally legitimate, until people come to accept the new government. This acceptance bestows effective legitimacy. It concluded this had occurred, and ruled the Phibun government legitimate (see Somchai 2007: 193-5). This has provided a legal basis for all subsequent coup regimes and the laws they issue.

In some senses, the regularity of decisionist interventions in Thai politics has meant that the ability to define states of exception is in part seen by the political classes as one more component of the arsenal of state power that lies above regime form. Whether welcomed or not, it forms an overarching possibility that structures political behaviour. It also explains the strategic compulsion requiring that Thaksin staff the military with loyalists. While a state of exception is far from the norm, the mobilisation by statist forces to threaten or indeed act in a decisionist manner is a long term feature of Thai politics and accounts for constant coup rumours, even during the liberal-conservative period. When non-negotiable statist military and palace preferences are ignored the use of a reserve veto is often the penultimate stage before the exercise of a state exception. Veto is largely exercised in unknown dealings of power brokers. Decisionist intervention may be understood as a consequence of certain political boundaries being transgressed and vetoes ignored or defied. The politics of 2005-6 witnessed an extraordinary exercise in brinkmanship, with Thaksin testing how far he could go - emboldened by popular support - in entrenching a new power balance between statists, liberals and pluto-populists. In that sense he provoked a decisionist intervention.

Decisionist phases are not particularly amenable to structural analysis, but are rather impelled by the particular mix of institutional and voluntarist elements that play themselves out at crisis moments (in some senses, these may be seen as pent up demand from structuralist pressures) when state actors utilise positions to usurp regime forms. The 1991-92 decisionist phase that attempted to restore the liberal bureaucratic-authoritarian status quo of the 1980s, was occasioned by military and bureaucratic actors threatened by the rise of capitalist control over the state. Statist forces utilised the networks of village heads around the nation to support their re-entrenchment, gathering millions of signatures in support of the pro-military 1991 constitution (Amon 1992: 82). This ended with the persistence of cross-class protests demanding an expanded democratic space and a non-political role for the military (see Hewison 1993). Blocked and defeated, the military withdrew from excessive public intervention for some years, but not until the massacre of May 1992. In this decisionist phase a military installed government passed numerous laws favouring business interest and regulation. At the head of that government was Thailand's most renowned liberal, Anand Panyarachun, who was the main protagonist of an authoritarian legislative process for the purpose of capital interest. This liberal-statist alliance during a decisionist phase is indicative of Thai liberalism's ability to pragmatically work with statist regime framers.

The decisionist regime of 2006-7, the building of which re-activated the social base of statist regime framers, involved the wholesale suspension of the 1997 settlement, the imposition of martial law across the country, draconian restriction on political activity, overwhelming media control and the mobilisation of state resources for the political objectives of destroying the Thaksin regime. This objective entailed direct deployment of power by circumvention of the formal process in the representative realm. Yet, the 2006-2007 decisionist regime was in some senses liberal-regarding, reflecting elements of the social base that supported the coup.

The regime's interim constitution of October 2006 declared a commitment to the international norms of human rights, while ensuring the process of governing and re-constitutionalisation of power was under its control. The 'permanent constitution' of 2007 - put to a highly manipulated referendum and passed in August 2007 - sanctioned the reproduction of key elements of the 1997 constitution, including the liberal agenda of rights and the independent agencies of the state. In effect, notwithstanding the odious curtailing of political activity and its flagrant abuse of human rights and the international norms it pledged to uphold (Asian Human Rights Commission 2006), the regime put in a place a constitution that promised the maintenance of liberal historic gains. It did so while opportunistically re-asserting the position of the bureaucracy and military through a semi-appointed senate and by passing a new draconian Internal Security Act. It also enhanced the power of judicial oversight at a time when that judiciary was judged to be politicised and corrupt. The regime returned the country to electoral rule in just over a year, and reluctantly accepted the December 2007 election that returned pro-Thaksin forces to power. This decisionist regime is best understood as occasioning a pragmatic understanding between erstwhile competing liberal and statist regime framers to offset Thaksin. The constitutional settlement of 2007, in the unlikely event that it survives for long, is the ground upon which new statist/liberal contests will be played out - assuming that residual elements of the electoral populist regime are dealt with. Until that time more statist-liberal alliances can be expected.

The state of exception and competing authoritarianisms

Following the elections of late 2007, it is difficult to designate current Thai regime form as the situation remains unclear. While politics has shifted from the decisionist phase engendered by the royalist coup to the electoral redux of the pro-Thaksin forces, the post-coup constitutional order is now fundamentally split, with decisionist politics lurking in the background. The elected Samak government which assumed office in early 2008 faces legitimacy questions from strategic elites largely as a consequence of its supportive relationship with Thaksin. The immediate focus has shifted to the courts, with various battles taking on a quasi-rule of law character. These include cases regarding electoral fraud, bribery and the alleged corruption of Thaksin and his associates. Against this background, the contesting regime framers are mobilising different idioms, with elements of the bureaucracy, military and judiciary opting for rule of law discourse, civic virtue and liberal problematics (this is an extended version of a discourse already deployed in the 1980s), and finding support among the opposition Democrat Party and the People's Alliance for Democracy, the group that organised mass rallies against Thaksin in 2006. The pro-Thaksin forces, including left-wing elements who recognise Thaksin's electoral mandate, are mobilising around democratic legitimacy and anti-privilege themes (see Connors forthcoming).

The fight against Thaksin through the courts and the broader fight to establish the rule of law in Thailand are abundant in paradox. In the present conjuncture, calls to follow the rule of law and to depend on the courts for impartial decisions are problematic. While there may be some hope of impartiality, the pending issues on corruption, party dissolution, constitutional amendment and electoral fraud that face the newly elected government are now fundamentally political questions that will be determined by balance of forces (partly indicated by the great rotation of senior civil servants that the Samak government has initiated) rather than legal rationale. This is not to say that specific legal decisions will necessarily be subject to direct intervention - but it is to say that legal deliberation on the facts will be influenced by the balance of forces.

Legal decisions on these matters will be of great consequence; in effect the judiciary are being asked, by default, to determine which mode of social order and its respective social base will prevail in the current struggle. Its judgments may well be pragmatic and possibly self-defensive. Asked if he could guarantee judgements free of favour (towards those close to Thaksin) the serving Attorney General (The Nation, 28 April 2008) responded: 'The situation is critical and conflicts are everywhere. We have to be cautious. We must be able to justify our decision. What can I do? If I favour powers that be today, the government is changed in the next two days, how can I survive then?' At the time of writing, the Attorney General appeared to be trying to delay various corruption cases against Thaksin and his associates. And, with good reason; pro-Thaksin forces questioned the legitimacy of the Assets Examination Committee set up by the decisionist junta of 2006-7 to examine corruption during the Thaksin era. The Constitutional Court ruled the committee to have legal status (The Nation, 30 June 2008), confirming the continuity of the 1952 ruling discussed above. In the current conflicted political terrain when different forces are playing absolute games for state power, the law is largely one arsenal in that struggle.

The current state of Thai politics brings into greater focus the existence of an 'ambivalent state' that traverses post-1976 Thai history, in which competing modes of legitimation, forms of leadership and the exercise of power have not settled into any enduring pattern of dominance. This has led to the resurgence of a more acute authoritarian impulse expressed in the decisionist politics of the present, and to which the liberal current is attached. In accepting the legitimacy of the 2007 constitution, but hoping to amend it, liberal regime framers have clearly indicated a willingness to use extra-constitutional means in their battle against the new forms of authoritarianism represented by the Thaksin government. The liberal current has implicitly supported the resurgence of conservative-authoritarian state structures in their willingness to find allies in the battle against pluto-populism. Liberal regime framer's historical experience of semi-democracy in the 1980s, pragmatic accommodation to the military and the palace, and elective affinity with the ideology of 'democracy with the king as head of state' are likely factors in the belief that liberalism will find a more hospitable ground for growth in a statist semi-democratic environment than a pluto-populist one. Thaksin, after all, was clearly intent on dismantling liberal political institutions and appeared unlikely to accommodate them in the limited ways that statists did during the liberal-conservative regime period.

Conclusion

The contest and co-existence of the three currents discussed in this paper reflects competing agendas for social order that are formed around different and changing coalitions of social forces, with none finding durable presence to completely dominate the state. Since 1976 the complex pattern of forces that have come to occupy each current has shifted, their realignment contingent on a range of factors that come to bear on the task of social order and capital accumulation. Thus, as much as Hewison (2008: 202) can speak of 'contingent democrats', to indicate the shifting position on democracy of the Thai bourgeoisie and the middle class, one may also speak of 'contingent authoritarians', to recognise those liberal and plutocratic regime framers who will utilise power, or condone its use, for the purposes of stemming power from below, in the struggle against statist regime framers, or against each other.

With political centres of power in Thailand unwilling to submit to the rules of the game, a moderated version of the politics of survival and accommodation so astutely observed by Midgal (1987) elsewhere, has obtained and structured political behaviour there. Everyone has to assume the rules potentially will not hold. In a field defined by highly personalised power, competing elites play games that reflect and relate to existing power centres, and necessarily mimic neo-patrimonial features of favour and advantage. The forces of competing hegemonic projects have to take account of this reality and build their own networks. Because power is then subject to the competing demands of informally personalised networks, conditions of insecurity emerge that require mitigating actions that further personalise the political arena.

The clash of regime framers laid the basis for the current authoritarian paradox in Thailand. In the battle between modes of order, each force competed with the other and attempted to restrain the other, ultimately resorting to authoritarian methods. Each force has failed to become institutionalised, leaving strategic elites to play games of absolute advantage, further enforcing the authoritarian impulse. Each force necessarily articulates to existing state institutions or supportive elements therein, whose substance is neither liberal nor democratic. The two positives of Thailand's political history, liberal conceptions of power and the democratic franchise, have in a tortured historical process produced a negative: a decisionist authoritarianism of state and liberal regime framers.

Acknowledgements
The author thanks Chris Baker, Bill Case, Kevin Hewison, Kyaw Yin Hlaing and Duncan McCargo for offering useful suggestions on an earlier draft. Research for this article was made possible by an ARC Discovery Grant and support from the School of Social Sciences, La Trobe University.

Michael K. Connors is on leave from School of Social Sciences, La Trobe University, and currently teaches at the Department of Asian and International Studies, City University, Hong Kong.

Notes

1 The specific governmental mix in each period cannot be treated in this article. Only the general features are dealt with.


2 In Prem's first cabinet of 37 members, 25 came from political parties, members coming from Kukrit's SAP, Chart Thai and the Democrat party (The Nation, 13 March 1980, p. 8).


3 In 1999-2000, nine activists were killed.


4 By including the years 1996-97 here I am suggesting that the Chavalit government pre-figured the Thaksin regime. I have argued elsewhere that in some senses Chavalit's own ruminations on the need for Thailand to develop a Thai version of the Japanese Liberal Democratic Party (a party of coalition factions), in part, influenced Thaksin's own political party conception of one-party government. This is a point that obviously needs further exploration, given the direct capitalist base of the Thaksin regime in contra-distinction to the mixed military, bureaucratic-capitalist, and capitalist base of Chavalit government. Chavalit was in his own way a potential populist leader, his mumbling ideological utterances on the Thai people and his intended redistributive policies indicating a shift in this direction. The point is that elements in the state were already moving towards the need to secure stable rule by one party government - one of Thaksin's main achievements. The economic crisis changed the terms upon which this project could be advanced.


5 Royal Thai Government, Emergency Decree on Public Administration in Emergency Situation, B. E. 2548 (2005) Government Gazette Vol. 122, Part 58a, 16 July B. E. 2005.

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Working Paper on Human Rights

Please see the new working paper on "Ambivlalent about rights" regarding Thailand at the Southeast Asian Research Centre's working paper series

http://www6.cityu.edu.hk/searc/doc.aspx

The paper explores the conditions that give rise to human rights abuses in Thailand.

Country Needs Change, So He Wants to Make History

This piece appeared in the Bangkok Post on 2nd April "Country Needs Change, So He Wants to Make History"

Going for History

Having long hoped for an intra-elite solution to his circumstance, and having failed dismally, Thaksin Shinawatra has now opted for history making. And he’s inviting the people to make it with him, to bring back “true democracy”.

“Thailand Needs Change”, read the banner behind the ex-prime minister as he delivered his address from an unknown location to his red-shirted supporters gathered around Government House in Bangkok on Monday night (30th March).

On screen he attacked the Privy Council and the military. Having promised to name his opponents when he fled to England last year, it has taken visa revocation, further legal stings and the termination of two crony governments by the courts to untie his tongue.

The will to take on a system fully and in name is a watershed moment, but Thaksin is only half there, reserving his fatal revelations only for the Privy Council. Thaksin has rarely looked like the bourgeois revolutionary that others have hoped him to be. His pledges of loyalty to the monarchy, his prostration before a picture of the king while in exile in Hong Kong, and his government’s genuflection to sufficiency economy while in office do not suggest a republican sentiment. Ideologically speaking, Thaksin never had a republic in mind, and his continued public declaration of loyalty to the monarchy should not be taken as a ruse.

But now, with all the fervour and emotion of focus-group demographics, he is striding forth as the symbol of that promiscuous variable – democracy. This, even as some in the pro-Thaksin Democratic Alliance Against Dictatorship (DAAD) have long believed that Thaksin uses the popular movement for his own ends. They too are willing to use him.

The question to ask is why does a self-declared democratic movement fall back on someone like Thaksin, a gifted but impulsive political operator so frightfully contradictory that any popular movement that returned him to power would need to watch its back.


The answer to that question, and to progressive acquiesce to rival elite camps more broadly, lies in organization and politics. As long argued by Ji Giles Ungpakorn, there is a lack of independent pro-democratic and leftwing forces of sufficient size and clarity to intervene in struggles in such a way as to advance a progressive agenda. In such organizational absence, individual leftists and progressives have joined both the yellow and red camps, seeking a free ride through history for their more radical politics.

In doing so, they have momentarily ironed out contradictions, refused to reveal their politics, and failed to come to terms with the limits of their influence. This strategy of simplification reveals itself as a politics of alliance, silence and accusation; alliance with the “lesser evil”; silence on the former and on their own politics; accusations directed at the “greater evil”.

They have surrendered in part the responsibility to offer criticism publicly (necessarily circumspect) of things they criticize privately. Both red and yellow movements are partly led by phrase-coiners and image-makers who deliberately, on message, manage and distort, seeking to win support by insincere argument and selective truth.

This raises the question of the place of honesty and openness in social change. And it raises the issue of political adventurism, for a failure to fully appreciate the social forces at play in street politics is prone to dangerous consequences.

The People’s Alliance for Democracy may be episode one in this scenario, the DAAD episode two.

Since the coup of 2006, each incident has been grist for the mill of partisan interpretation. Countervailing facts are not to get in the way of propaganda, winning an argument, or making the case for the anti or pro-Thaksin forces. Moreover, there has been moral and peer compulsion to take sides, with people’s commitment to democracy questioned depending on the perspective of the judge and executioner.

“Democracy lovers” the world over have rallied hard and long for the pro-Thaksin forces (red-shirts, politicos and an amorphous mass), while painting the anti-Thaksin forces as reactionary and under the control of conspiratorial elements in the military, palace and privy council. There is little recognition of the democratic and liberal impulse that mobilized thousands of people against Thaksin. Moreover, Pro-Thaksinites or pro-redshirts have painted NGOs as stooges and out of touch, long-time human rights activists are maligned by those who judge their work to be tainted by political bias, and one time pro-democracy heroes are denounced as fascist demagogues.

Given the events of the last three years, it’s not hard to see how a plausible case can be made that the principle struggle now unfolding is between democracy and authoritarianism (with pro-Thaksin forces awkwardly assuming the democracy mantle). The facts seem to speak for themselves: coup, contested constitutional referendum, party annulment of TRT and PPP, and the recent installation of a Democrat-led coalition as government.

To that case, the famous Italian Marxist Antonio Gramsci has the best response: “A given socio-historical moment is never homogeneous; on the contrary, it is rich in contradictions.” The “democratic versus authoritarian” narrative that has captured international attention is as misconceived as it is overbearingly homogenous.

Little attention has been given to the contradictions that exist in Thailand today, with political discourse captured by yellow/red-coloured politics of illusion/delusion, and their respective cheer squads.

The struggle has multiple dimensions, no doubt, but a dominant feature of recent events has been the pacting of statist conservatives and elite liberals against the emergent competitive authoritarianism that Thaksin represented before his fall from office. The politics of the recent past have not been a war of the rich against the poor – a view that has oddly become popular - but of regime type against regime type.

The statist-liberal pact is a historical compromise of some weight, with various institutional and ideological mechanisms in place (including network monarchy/royal liberalism). Since the 1980s liberals and statists have co-operated and contested regime form. After May 1992 and successive defeats, statist conservatives and liberals moved to an uneasy compromise represented in the 1997 constitution. As history now records, that attempt to politically engineer the emergence of liberal democracy with a “strong executive” partly assisted Thaksin’s authoritarian rise.

And so now it is back to the future, with the current situation being one of liberals and statists occupying a complex political terrain of contest and cooperation (something short of an alliance). They seek to return Thailand to a path that is mutually acceptable, some form of elite liberal-conservative hybrid democracy.

They may not succeed in this.

Protests led by the Democratic Alliance Against Dictatorship may intensify and develop the infrastructure required for long term political mobilization. Open sentiment against aristocratic privilege and bureaucratic/ military power may become a political force. The shoddy ambitions of a one-time authoritarian leader might well morph into a more enduring egalitarian ethos that comes to challenge the historical pact of statists and liberals.

But where such politics will end in the absence of principled political leadership which can speak openly about the failings of its chosen symbol, and which acknowledges the democratic malaise (2001-2006) under the man who now promises to return Thailand to a “true democracy”, no one knows.

Parliamentary Cretinism of the Commentariat

Parliamentary Cretinism of the Commentariat
Appearing in the Bangkok Post, 21 Oct, 2008.

In the next few days it is possible that blood will fall on the streets of Bangkok, as anti-Thaksin hand-clappers meet pro-Thaksin foot stompers. Impending constitutional amendments and the coming judgement on the Rachadapisek case, the proximate cause of the mobilisation, will be met with acclaim or opprobrium depending on which side of the chimerical divide you stand. In time, if found guilty by the courts, ex prime minister Mr Thaksin may be absolved by amendments

In preparation for the war of international opinion, eager propagandists from the pro- and anti- Thaksin sides will have been in touch with their respective Western conduits, spinning tales of arms purchase, blood-letting intentions and military machinations. These Western mouth-pieces can feel the brush of history on their cheeks and readily spray innuendo and hearsay to the media, all the more to be one with the great Event.

Each side speaks of a likely coup from the other side, each of a violent denouement induced by the other. As disciple-zealots go into overdrive, their account of events will be partisan. Prepare for more stories of the kind that followed October 7, of amputated limbs of uncertain status, of naturally combustible people, and of police following ISO standards for crowd dispersal.

As wannabe royalist guardians (the People’s Alliance for Democracy) face off against authoritarian apologists (The National United Front of Democracy Against Dictatorship) and respectively don the masks of law versus democratic-mandate, the shrill, international media Chorus of Misunderstanding grows louder. “Settle your differences by the ballot”, they say. “Respect the election outcome”, and all other sorts of sanctimonious dross.

The naïve among them will expect that the Thai political system functions like any other electoral democracy, even given the contending forces now antagonistically poised. The pro-Thaksin propagandists will pretend that the system can function – because they hold the House.

The Chorus of Misunderstanding will explain to its attention-deficit audience that middle-class Thais have forgotten the beauty of institutionalised conflict by numbers, that they have given up on parliamentary democracy. And suitably impressed by their superior morals they will move on to the next story, Angelina and Brad’s efforts to save Africa. The Chorus will conveniently forget the very corruption of the institutionalised system of conflict by numbers (2001-2006) by the pro-Thaksin forces they now support; they’ll point an accusing finger only at those who swept away the debris (the coupsters and their backers), and those who now challenge the PPP government.

What might one make of the call made by the pro-Thaksin commentariat to let the government govern and for PAD to go home. Pious and admirable calls no doubt, but the Chorus is talking to itself, while also spinning a tale that says there is a workable system of democracy in Thailand.

Karl Marx in his brilliant reflections on the rise of simpleton Louis Bonaparte (The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte 1852) coined the term “parliamentary cretinism”. He scorned the efforts of the effete parliamentary opposition who assumed, even in those exceptional times, that the parliamentary chamber was the locus of power, and who therefore chose to fight there. He noted that such ‘parliamentary cretinism’ robbed people of sense and captured them in an imaginary world of nominal struggle, while all around them ‘the rude external world’ intruded on fundamental questions of power and sovereignty. Marx recounts that these cretins imagined a ministerial scalp was taking them closer to victory, while baton-in-hand the Bonapartist coup of December 1851 approached.

What strikes anyone looking at Thailand right now is the absence of domestic parliamentary cretinism. Few strategic actors believe that things can be settled in orderly parliamentary debate and electoral competition, the struggle is no longer contained by rules of the game. The cretinism is external, imposed by a commentariat that is conceited about their own nation’s democratic credentials, and who are more than willing to take a bet on Thaksin’s pro-Western and pro-democratic stand, while glossing his regime’s authoritarianism.

In the realm of parliamentary politics, the pro-Thaksin forces are unparalleled in their knowledge of the rude external world and what is required to master it. They eschew parliamentary cretinism, even if they realise the value of an electoral majority in the current battle against the conservative establishment that threatens them. They wish to control the state, to penetrate its inner sanctums and to ensure that the state’s general line accords with their party preference.

As for the anti-Thaksin opposition, it too is not to be accused of parliamentary cretinism. Their mobilisation of a mixture of royal liberalism, reactionary nationalism, military apologism and state-corporatism reflects ample knowledge of that ‘rude external world’ which will decide who wins this current battle.

That there are not enough institutional incentives to induce parliamentary cretinism is one reason for the high likelihood that blood will colour red the streets of Bangkok in the coming days.

Thailands "new politics" Charade

Please click on title to read article on the People's Alliance for Democracy (Phase 2) as it appeared on Asia Sentinel

or click here for Bangkok Post version

The 'New Politics' charade
Bangkok Post 8th July

By Michael Connors


No longer content with the old slogan of Thaksin Tid Khook, Samak Awk Pai (Thaksin in gaol, Samak get out), Sondhi Limthongkul, the core leader of the People's Alliance for Democracy (PAD), has called for "New Politics". I heard Mr Sondhi's New Politics speech delivered from the stage on July 4, near Government House in Bangkok. It was the 41st day of the PAD's new round of street protests.

New Politics turns out to be a startlingly reactionary proposal to move Thailand's parliamentary system towards a form of appointed corporatism, or what might be called a selectoral democracy: 30% of MPs would come from elections, perhaps one per province, and the rest of the MPs would derive from various occupations and associations. Mr Sonthi says the proportion is not fixed, it's up for debate.

The rationale for wanting to dismantle Thailand's electoral system is evident: pro-Thaksin forces keep winning elections. And as Mr Thaksin is said to represent everything bad about Thai politics, he cannot be allowed to wield power directly or indirectly. Thus, for Mr Sondhi - and it would seem the PAD leadership as a whole - there is now a need to bring about a revolution in political representation.

The idea of examining alternatives to electoral democracy is not without some merit, for it is common knowledge that massive amounts of money are required to win parliamentary seats, making parliament a millionaire's playground and a source of further monopolisation and corruption.

It wasn't always so, Mr Sondhi told the rally. In the 1970s, socialist politicians in Thailand could get elected on the basis of their ideology and popular support, but the emergence of dirty politics in the 1980s crushed any such possibility in the present.

New Politics has interesting antecedents. The PAD leadership has clearly been speaking to military figures (this is now well-documented in the Thai-language press) who tried to stifle the emergence of parliament in the 1980s.

Indeed, selectoral democracy nicely fits with corporatist visions of the old "Revolutionary Council". The council, to which General Chavalit Yongchaiyudh was said to have an association, held that elections merely led to parliamentary dictatorship and proposed a form of corporate representation to realise the "general will" of the people.

A former communist, Prasert Sapsunthon, was the inspiration for this Thai appropriation of Rousseau, the French theorist of the social contract. Mr Prasert became a leading intellectual among military circles calling for non-elective forms of democracy.

When the Revolutionary Council effectively declared itself a provisional government during the political crisis of 1988, the elected Chatichai government took it to court for treason. It then faded into obscurity, but its ideas have never quite gone away, finding support among small rightist groups and even in some labour circles.

"New Politics" is unashamedly pro-military and even codifies the conditions under which military intervention may occur. Mr Sondhi has spoken of four conditions for military intervention: when charges of lese majeste are not acted on; when a government is incompetent; when corruption is rife; when a government betrays national sovereignty.

It is not clear if permissible military intervention according to the PAD's envisaged system of selectocracy is to be in the form of a coup d'etat or the exercise of some new administrative power to compel government agencies to rectify a wrong.

But what is clear is that the PAD has explicitly sanctioned ongoing military intervention in politics.

Of course, anyone looking at the Thai military will know that it is a conflicted organisation, with pro- and anti-government factions and both corporate and individual commercial interests. How such an organisation might work to protect the "general will" of the people is not at all clear, notwithstanding the fact that politicised militaries the world over become deeply corrupt and self-serving.

In part, the answer for the PAD lies in who controls the military. An important feature of Mr Sondhi's speech that went unreported in the press was the proposal to take the Ministry of Defence out of government control and place it under the Crown. At a time when Thailand is urgently facing the need to institutionalise its politics around public rules, the PAD is proposing to formally enhance the power of the monarchy.

For many observers, the PAD's latest thinking comes as no surprise. They say that from the start the PAD was associated with opportunist use of nationalist and royalist discourse in its call for a royally-appointed government to replace the Thai Rak Thai caretaker government in March 2006. That the PAD should now become an agent of political regression, willing to hand power to the military and bureaucracy, flows from the logic of its initial strategy to beat Mr Thaksin with the royalist and nationalist stick.

On the contrary, I would argue that whatever one may make of the early anti-Thaksin movement, its politics were, in part, a form of royal liberalism; it was legitimately concerned with the authoritarian slide during the Thaksin era.

And this means that the PAD's current phase is a significant departure from its earlier stance and is of great significance.

Most dangerously, the PAD's new turn has the potential to lend a significant social base to a conservative and reactionary form of corporatism.

In the 1980s, the semi-fascist corporatist politics of the Revolutionary Council were marginalised as Thai politics democratised. The council became a laughing stock and the organisation was dubbed the "Joke Council". Somehow, the PAD seems to have reversed Marx's dictum that history repeats itself, first as tragedy and then as farce.

The PAD's metamorphosis comes at an odd moment when it seems to be making ground. It played an opportunistic role in capturing the ministerial scalp of Jakrapob Penkair. It gave support to the legitimacy of the Assets Scrutiny Committee (ASC), whose constitutional standing was questioned by pro-Thaksin forces. The Constitutional Court affirmed its standing. And if the Office of the Attorney-General appears unconvinced of the readiness of many of the cases presented by the ASC, the National Counter Corruption Commission seems ready to take on some of the cases.

Just as its demands are being met, the PAD has now put itself at the extreme margins of Thai politics. Many people have already deserted the PAD because of its hyper-nationalism and attacks on progressive activists who express views different than its own. Some people have, it seems, been forced to leave. There are reports that speakers from the stage have called on Democrat party members to leave the rally.

How far the PAD has travelled is perhaps illustrated by reference to a rally I observed in the middle of last week. A well-known rock star called on the spirit of the 1950s dictator Sarit Thanarat to deal decisively with corruption. The best that can be said of that episode is that people were applauding on cue - after four weeks of clapping, it's almost a reflex.But the PAD leadership has no such excuse; it has embraced a politics so contrary to its starting point that it now looks as bad as that which it sought to slay.

"New Politics" may well be the dying breath of the PAD, as those who thought they were fighting for a form of liberal democracy desert its ranks.

A protester I was sitting close to was visibly angry with Mr Sondhi, shouting out: "Who are you to abolish parliament?"

Actually, that's an appropriate question for the last generation of Thai politics.

A Night with the People's Alliance for Democracy

A brief note on a visit to PAD Rally 2nd July 2008


During late 2005 I visited the Sonthi rallies in Lumpini Park and then at Royal Plaza as they transformed into PAD. It has been over two years since I observed a PAD rally. Last night I headed to the rally near Government House and Kromluang Chumphon. It was day 39 of PAD’s newest incarnation. Calls for “new politics” were aired frequently.

Chamlong occasionally came on the stage to introduce artists/musicians supporting PAD. He also handed a 100,000 baht donation someone had given him to Suriyasai in a formal presentation.

Former Industry Minister and until recently member of the Democrat Party Chaiwat Sinsuwong gave a spirited speech, some of which I couldn’t catch. Chaiwat was the chap who filed a suit against the People’s Power Party for being a proxy of Thaksin, which was rejected by the Supreme Court. Pressure from the Democrats to withdraw the suit led to his resignation from the party. On stage, he announced that there would be demonstrations across the country on the 4th of July. This is the day that Sonthi Limthongkul has set for announcing the details of PAD’s “Revolution”. Chaiwat, as did others, referred to nation, king and religion constantly and also praised the navy for being (apart from a top navy general) on the right side, of the sacred triad. Chaiwat called on civil servants to join the struggle, asking if they belonged to the government or the king. After Chaiwat’s speech a navy song was played at the rally, military pomp and all that.

Praphan Kunmee, former member of the National Assembly appointed after the coup in September 2006, spoke about the long struggle ahead and invoked the patience of Mao, Mandela, Gandhi and Ho Chi Min. The struggle for new politics Praphan announced was no longer a struggle of the rural areas surrounding the cities, but both working together. Praphan was one of those thousands of people who fled to the jungle and sought refuge with the Communist Party of Thailand after the massacre at Thammasat University in October 1976. Subsequently, Praphan is reported to have worked with Chavalit’s New Aspiration Party and is said to be close to Prasong – the anti –Thaksin former intelligence chief and President of the Council that drafted Thailand’s current constitution. Praphan noted that in the short struggle so far two corpses had been claimed: Yongyuth (former speaker of the house) and Jakraphop (former minister). He also claimed that former PM Thaksin had dispensed with the telecommunications business in 2006 in order to use his special knowledge to invest in energy.

A singer, Rang, belted out songs about the king. He said no one wanted a coup because it would mean the end to the constitution that needed to be protected. During his time on stage he called on the (วิญญาณ) spirit of Sarit Thanarat (สฤษดิ์ ธนะรัชต์) to return and eliminate corruption. Sarit who died in 1963, was notoriously corrupt. The crowd, of around 4000-5000, applauded. The singer seems to have been travelling the country collecting money for PAD. On stage he presented 27000 baht to organisers from Chumphon.

There was lots of clapping, some of it by springed plastic hands waved by people. Plastic clapping hands and the spirit of dictator Sarit being summoned to eliminate corruption - a kind of surreal but appropriate montage for Thailand's "carnival of reaction" as Ji Ungphakorn has dubbed current trends in Thai politics.

The Coming of Selectoral Democracy 70:30

Amidst pastry-gate (Thaksin's lawyers found guilty of contempt of court), no-confidence debates against the Samak PPP-led government, and constant rumours of khaki-movement, Suriyasai Katasila has called for a new politics which he claims to be in line with the thinking of the People's Alliance for Democracy leadership.


In the 25th June edition of Manager Online Suriyasai called for a new politics centred on "sang chat" or "build the nation", which involves the removal of the "nominee government", waging the final war against Thaksinocracy, and the creation of a new political system, which I will call Selectoral Democracy.

Suriyasai wants to see 70% of office holders come from as yet to be defined processes of selection, and 30% from election. This proposed system of Selectoral Democracy is warranted, he argues, because big capital captures political power in the current system of "4-second democracy".

Echoing the politics of Thai-statist corporatism during the 1980s, Selectoral Democracy will involve people from different occupations in new political organizations at different levels working for the interests of people. That is to say, it is not merely a rejigging of the House of Representatives and Senate along the lines of semi-democracy. However, the new politics also genuflects in the direction of civic politics: people's participation will be promoted through more public hearings and referendums (Scandinavian countries are cited as examples).

Interesting proposals, no doubt, that are best tried in the court of democratic opinion. And on that note, the most worrying aspect of Suriyasai's article is not his critique of representative democracy and all its limits, which is a commonplace among right and left, but his considerations on how this new politics will come about in the current context:

"Some people will doubt where we begin: A coup d'etat, tear up the constitution, install a government of national unity? If at this moment society sees the importance and urgency of building the nation and new politics, the method is not that difficult an issue and might be easier than we think. It need not lead to killing and civil war as some people fear."

I assume the method will be revealed soon enough. One thing is clear, it's not hard to see who would benefit from selectocracy.


**************************************************************
The Thai article discussed above.

“การเมืองใหม่” ภายใต้การต่อสู้ของพันธมิตรฯ

โดย ผู้จัดการออนไลน์ 25 มิถุนายน 2551 19:36 น.

โดย สุริยะใส กตะศิลา

ภายหลังพันธมิตรฯ สามารถเคลื่อนขบวนหลายแสนคนฝ่าด่านกั้นของเจ้าหน้าที่ตำรวจ จนสามารถเข้ามายึดพื้นที่บริเวณหน้าทำเนียบรัฐบาลได้เป็นผลสำเร็จ โดยไม่มีเหตุการณ์รุนแรงเลือดตกยางออกอย่างที่หลายฝ่ายวิตกกังวล หลังจากนั้น พันธมิตรฯ ได้ตั้งเวทีถาวรขนาดใหญ่ที่สะพานชมัยมรุเชฐ และมีการเปิดปราศรัยปกติคล้ายๆ กับการชุมนุมยืดเยื้อที่สะพานมัฆวานรังสรรค์

ประเด็นที่ได้รับความสนใจและถามไถ่จากสื่อมวลชน กระทั่งกลายเป็นข้อถกเถียงตามมาในวงกว้างก็คือ การเปิดประเด็นของ 5 แกนนำบนเวทีปราศรัย ที่ชูธงปลุกมวลชน “ร่วมสร้างการเมืองใหม่” พร้อมๆ กับการวิพากษ์วิจารณ์โจมตีการเมืองแบบระบบรัฐสภาในปัจจุบันที่ไม่สามารถเยียวยาหรือแก้ไขวิกฤตการณ์ของชาติได้อย่างเท่าทัน

การเมืองใหม่ ได้กลายเป็นวาทกรรมการเมืองที่หลายฝ่ายออกมาตีความ ขยายความ ตั้งข้อสังเกต หรือกระทั่งเคลือบแคลงว่าพันธมิตรฯ มีวาระพิเศษหรือวาระซ่อนเร้นจากการชูธงผืนใหม่ใบนี้หรือไม่

ผมในฐานะผู้ประสานงานพันธมิตรฯ ซึ่งพอมีความใกล้ชิดทางความคิดกับแกนนำพันธมิตรฯ ทั้ง 5 คน ทั้งในห้องประชุมและนอกห้องประชุม

ผมเห็นว่า การชูธง “ร่วมสร้างการเมืองใหม่” ของทั้ง 5 แกนนำต่อมวลชนพันธมิตรฯ และสาธารณชนนั้น ถือเป็นการยกระดับการต่อสู้ของแกนนำ และมวลชนของพันธมิตรประชาชนเพื่อประชาธิปไตย

เป็นการยกระดับที่อาจดูเหมือนล้ำหน้า และเกินความเข้าใจของประชาชนทั่วไป แต่เป็นเรื่องจำเป็นที่ต้องพูด ต้องเสนอและต้องกล้าจุดประกาย ก่อนที่ทุกอย่างจะสายหรือ ถ้าเปรียบประเทศเป็นปลาก็เหลือแต่ก้างไว้ให้ลูกหลานเท่านั้น

เมื่อ 2-3 ปีที่แล้วถ้าเราย้อนไปดูการก่อเกิดของพันธมิตรฯ เคลื่อนไหวขับไล่ พ.ต.ท.ทักษิณ ชินวัตร ให้พ้นจากตำแหน่งนายกฯ และเปิดโปงความเลวร้ายของระบอบทักษิณ โดยชูวาทกรรม “กู้ชาติ” นั้น แม้สุดท้าย พ.ต.ท.ทักษิณ ต้องพ้นจากตำแหน่งโดยการรัฐประหาร และต่อมาระบอบทักษิณ ได้ถูกรื้อถอนไปในระดับหนึ่งก็ตาม

แต่ทุกอย่างก็ไม่ได้ข้อยุติ ซ้ำร้ายหลังการเลือกตั้งได้รัฐบาลนอมินี ยิ่งพบชัดเจนว่าการเมืองไทยมีทิศทางกลับไปสู่ระบอบทักษิณ และความเป็นใหญ่ของ พ.ต.ท.ทักษิณ ชินวัตร กระทั่งกลุ่มทุนการเมืองในนามพรรคไทยรักไทยเดิม

ด้วยเหตุดังนั้น การประกาศฟื้นพันธมิตรฯ ภาค 2 จึงเลี่ยงไม่พ้น แต่ภายใต้สถานการณ์ใหม่จึงดูเหมือนธงการต่อสู้ของพันธมิตรฯ จึงเป็นธงผืนใหม่และใบใหญ่กว่าเดิม คือธง “โค่นระบอบทักษิณ ไล่รัฐบาลหุ่นเชิด” ในความหมายของ “สงครามกู้ชาติครั้งสุดท้าย”

ในขณะเดียวกันก็ประกาศสงครามครั้งใหม่ คือ การชูธง “สร้างชาติ” ภายใต้วาทกรรมการเมืองใหม่ ไปให้พ้นระบบรัฐสภาของนักเลือกตั้ง หรือประชาธิปไตยแบบ 4 วินาที หรือลัทธิเลือกตั้งเป็นใหญ่

“การเมืองใหม่” ในความหมายของพันธมิตรฯ จึงเป็นการเมืองที่เอาประชาชนเป็นศูนย์กลาง ลดอำนาจหน้าที่ของตัวแทนหรือผู้แทนลง เพิ่มบทบาทและอำนาจให้กับประชาชนมากขึ้น

คงไม่มีใครปฏิเสธว่า ประชาธิปไตยแบบระบบรัฐสภา หรือประชาธิปไตยแบบผู้แทนได้ถูกประจานไปทั่วโลกว่ามีขีดจำกัดและไม่มีศักยภาพในการรับมือกับวิกฤตการณ์ของโลกในยุคทุนสามานย์เป็นใหญ่ กระแสการพัฒนาประชาธิปไตยในทางสากลทั่วโลกจึงเริ่มให้ความสำคัญกับการปรับปรุงปฏิรูประบอบประชาธิปไตยให้ประชาชนมีส่วนร่วมอย่างเข้มข้นมากขึ้น

ในบางประเทศ โดยเฉพาะกลุ่มประเทศในแถบสแกนดิเนเวีย ไม่เพียงแต่ลดบทบาทและอำนาจในการตัดสินใจของผู้แทนลงเท่านั้น แต่ยังเพิ่มและถ่ายโอนเคลื่อนย้าย “อำนาจในการตัดสินใจ” ไปที่ประชาชนในฐานะเจ้าของอำนาจอธิปไตยโดยตรงมากขึ้น ในรูปแบบของการประชาพิจารณ์ (Public Hearing) และประชามติ (Referendum) มากขึ้น

การเมืองใหม่ในความหมายของประชาธิปไตยแบบใหม่ จึงไม่ใช่แค่ต้องให้ความสำคัญกับที่มาหรือกระบวนการในการตัดสินใจใช้อำนาจเท่านั้น หากแต่ต้องสร้างหลักประกันว่าประชาชนทุกสาขาอาชีพ ทุกชนชั้นจะเข้าถึงอำนาจในการตัดสินใจหรือกำหนดทิศทางในการพัฒนาประเทศอย่างเป็นรูปธรรม ไม่ว่าจะเป็นชาวไร่ ชาวนา กรรมกรผู้ใช้แรงงาน คนจนในเมือง คนจนในชนบท ชนเผ่าชายขอบ พ่อค้าวาณิชย์ นักธุรกิจชนชั้นกลาง ผู้หญิง คนพิการ คนด้อยโอกาสทางสังคม เป็นต้น

กล่าวเช่นนี้ย่อมแน่นอนว่าไม่ใช่แค่สัดส่วนหรือที่นั่งในอำนาจนิติบัญญัติ (ส.ส.-ส.ว.)จะต้องมีองค์ประกอบและหลักประกันที่หลากหลายเท่านั้น ในขณะเดียวกันอำนาจบริหารก็ต้องมีพื้นที่ให้กับคนกลุ่มต่างๆ เหล่านั้นในระดับที่แน่นอนเช่นกัน

ข้อเสนอที่ท้าทายของแกนนำพันธมิตรฯ ที่เสนอสูตรผสมของผู้เข้าสู่อำนาจในสัดส่วน 70:30 กล่าวคือเพิ่มกระบวนการสรรหาผู้ดำรงตำแหน่งทางการเมืองเป็น ร้อยละ 70 และลดที่มาของผู้ดำรงตำแหน่งโดยวิธีการเลือกตั้งลงเหลือร้อยละ 30 จึงเป็นเพียงการนับหนึ่งหรือริเริ่มจุดประกายให้สังคมได้ขบคิดถกเถียงขยายผลในวงกว้างต่อไป

ทั้งนี้ ในรายละเอียดหรือโมเดลของ การเมืองใหม่ จึงจำเป็นที่ผู้รู้ นักวิชาการ สถาบันการศึกษา มหาวิทยาลัย และภาคส่วนต่างๆ จะนำไปขบคิดขยายผลเพื่อก้าวพ้นลัทธิเลือกตั้งที่ทุนเป็นใหญ่ ประเทศซื้อได้ และประชาชนเป็นเพียงผู้มีสิทธิเลือกตั้งที่ว่านอนสอนง่ายเท่านั้น

ที่กล่าวมาข้างต้น หลายคนอาจสงสัยว่าจะเริ่มตรงไหนอย่างไร ต้องปฏิวัติ รัฐประหาร ต้องฉีกรัฐธรรมนูญ ต้องตั้งรัฐบาลแห่งชาติหรือรัฐบาลเฉพาะกาล อย่างนั้นหรือ ผมกลับเห็นว่าวิธีการอาจไม่สำคัญเท่ากับหลักการ หากวันนี้สังคมเห็นความสำคัญและความจำเป็นเร่งด่วนว่าเราต้องร่วมร่วมกันสร้างชาติและสร้างการเมืองใหม่แล้ว รูปแบบวิธีการก็อาจไม่ใช่เรื่องยากและอาจง่ายเกินกว่าที่เราคิดและอาจไม่ถึงขั้นต้องรบราฆ่าฟันกันกลางเมืองอย่างที่หลายฝ่ายกังวล

วันนี้ พันธมิตรประชาชนเพื่อประชาธิปไตย ได้ขอเป็นผู้ถือธงนำ และประกาศเป็นพันธสัญญาในการต่อสู้ครั้งนี้ร่วมกับผู้รักความเป็นธรรมทั่วไป สงครามครั้งสุดท้ายโค่นล้มระบอบทักษิณจึงเป็นเพียงระยะผ่านสู่ สงครามอันศักดิ์สิทธิ์ คือการ ร่วมกันสร้างการเมืองใหม่ ให้ปรากฏเป็นจริง...