Constitutional and political makeup

Thailand is a constitutional monarchy. The head of state is King Bhumibol Adulyadej (Rama IX). The previous head of government was the Prime Minister Taksin Shinawatra, who leads a coalition headed by his own Thai Rak Thai Party. A new constitution was introduced in March 200 reforming the legislative system. The legislature comprises a 500-member House of Representative (the Lower House) which consists of 400 constituency MPs and 100MPs drawn from party lists. The maximum term of a government is four years, but the PM can dissolve parliament earlier. There is also a 200-member Senate (the Upper House), also democratically elected but for a period of six years. Senators cannot stand for re-election.

Bust, boom and bust

As Thailand entered the 21^st century and the third millennium, the country was also rather shakily, recovering from the deepest contraction of the economy since the 1930s. Until July 1997, everything was hunky-dory in Thailand. Or that, at least, is what the World Bank and most business people and pundits thought. The Kingdom’s economy was expanding at close to double-digit rates and the country was being showered with strings of congratulatory epithets. It was a ‘miracle’ economy, an Asian ‘tiger’ or ‘dragon’ ready to pounce on an unsuspecting world. Thailand has become the ‘Cinderella’ of Southeast Asia – a beautiful woman long disguised beneath shabby clothes – an academics and journalists were turning out books with glowing titles like Thailand Boom, Thailand’s Turn: Profile of a New Dragon and Thailand’s Macro-economic Miracle. Wealth was growing, poverty falling and Bangkok was clock-full of designer shops, meeting the consumer needs of growing – an increasingly hedonistic – middle-class.

Of course even in the heady days of double digit economic growth there were those who questioned the direction and rapidity of the country’s development, and mid-1990s Bangkok was overstretched, its transport system on the verge of collapse and the air barely fit to breath. While a few breezed from boutique to club in their air-conditioned Mercedes, around one million people were living in slum conditions in the capital. Deforestation had become so rampant, and so uncontrolled, tha the government felt impelled to impose a nationwide logging ban in 1989. Even the kingdom’s national parks were being systematically poached and encroached. In the poor northeastern region, incomes had stagnated, causing social tensions to become more acute and millions to migrate to the capital each dry season in a desperate search for work. In some villages in north, meanwhile, AIDS had already spread to the extent that scarcely a household was not touched by the epidemic.

Most of these problems, though, were viewed by many analysts as side effect of healthy economic growth – problems to be managed through prudent planning and not reasons to doubt the wisdom of the country’s boarder developed strategy.

Economic crisis

Then everything went horribly wrong. Thailand local currency, the baht, went into freefall the stock market crashed, unemployment more than doubled, and the economy contracted. Bankrupt business people, the nouveneau pauvre, cashed in their Mercedes, and wives were put on strict spending diets. Almost overnight, apparently prescient commentators, who had remained strangely silent during the years of growth, were offering their own interpretations of Thailand’s fall from economic grace. A district whiff of schadenfreude filled the air. Epithet writers went back to their computers and came up with titles like the ‘Asian contagion’, the Asian mirage’, ‘Frozen miracles’ and ‘Tigers lose their grip’. In Thailand itself, locals began to talk of Thaitanic as it sank faster the doomed liner.

The financial crisis of July 1997 quickly became a much wider economic crisis. The failure of the economy was, in turn, interpreted as a failure of government. Prime Minister Chaovalit Yongchaiyut tried to sound convincing in the face of collapsing currency and a contracting economy, but he resigned before the year was out. Chuan Leekpai, his successor, manfully struggled to put things right but after little more than two years at the helm was trounced in a general election in early 2001 by telecoms billionaire Taksin Shinawatra. Perhaps most importantly in the long term, while Thailand was on the economic ropes, Parliament approved a radically new constitution aimed at cleaning up Thailand’s notoriously corrupt political system.

In the 1970s some scholars suggested that the country could be encapsulated by reference to the ‘four Rs’: rice, rivers, religion and royalty. Today, computer parts, replaced rivers as arteries of communication and religion has become so commercialized that Thais have coined a word to describe it: Buddhapanich. Only the king has stood head and shoulders above the fray, the one thread of continuity in a country changing and re0inventing itself with bewildering speed.

‘Traditional’ Thai life is becoming the stuff of history as modernity engulfs people and places. But just as the recent past becomes sepia-tinted, so the future becomes less compelling. The country’s green movement has long lamented the environmental cost of economic growth, and sociologist have highlighted the wasted youth, the drug culture and the underclass as evidence of the corrosive social effects of modernization. Tourism has brought its own problems as popular island creak under the pressure of growing number of visitors. Some educated Thais blame tourists for the explosion of the sex industry and the proliferation of AIDS. Where Thailand is headed as it continues its roller coaster ride is as much a mystery as a challenge.

Politics

Politics during an economic crisis: 1997-2000

Chaovalit was, in a sense, unlucky to take over the reins of government when he did. Economic conditions were a cause for concern in the country in late 1996, but no one – scholar or pudding –predicted the economic meltdown that was just a few months away. He appointed the well-respected Amnuay Virawan as Finance Minister. But the collapse of the baht, Bangkok stock market, the property and finance sectors, and a hemorrhaging loss of domestic and international confidence created conditions that were impossible to manage. Even so, his performance was hardly memorable. S the Economist tartly put it, “he dithered when decisions were needed, bumbled when clear words might have helped, and smiled benignly while the economy got worse”. The central bank spent a staggering US$10bn trying to defend the baht’s peg to the US dollar, and interest rates were raised to 1300% for offshore borrowers in an ultimately futile attempt to keep the speculators at bay. The baht was allowed to float cabinet reshuffles during August did little to stem the criticism of Chaovalit and his administration, and there was talk of military intervention – though the army commander-in-chief quickly distanced himself from any such suggestion. In September, Chaovalit used his promised support for a vote on a new constitution to defeat a no-confident motion. Even so, the end of Chaovalit’s administration was in sight. On 7 November, Chaovalit resigned as Prime Minister after less than a year in Power.

Following Chaovalit’s resignation, Chuan Leekpai, leader of the Democrat Party, stitched together a new seven-party, 208-person coalition and became Prime Minister for the second time. Given talk of military intervention a few months earlier, it was a relief to many that Thailand had achieved a peaceful change of government. The key question, however, was whether Chuan could do any better than Chaovalit, particularly given the mixed make-up of his coalition government. Chuan and his finance minister, Tarrin Nimmahaeminda – the year’s fourth – variously implemented the International Monetary Fund’s rescue package and even manage to negotiate a slight loosening of the terms of the package.

The economic crisis enabled a coterie of young, reform-minded politicians to gain high office – like urbane, US-educated foreign minister Surin Pitsuwan. Fed up with coups and corruption, and backed by an increasingly assertive middle-class, these politicians were committed to change. As Chuans’s special assistant, Bunaraj Smutharaks, explained to journalist Michael Vitikiotis, “If we don’t seize this opportunity to instigate changes, the future generations will see this crisis as a lost opportunity”.

Under Chuan’s leadership, Thailand became a role model for the IMF and foreign that Chuan faced throughout his second stint as premier was that the economy didn’t bounce back after Thailand Inc had taken the IMF’s unpalatable medicine. Many foreign commentators praised China’s efforts seeing him as hones and pragmatic. But domestic commentators tended to depict him as bumbling and ineffectual. Toadying to the IMF while Thailand’s poor were squeezed by multilateral organizations and Thai companies were sold to foreign interests at “fire sale” prices.

Thaksin Shinawatra takes over

The beginning of January 2001 saw the election of Thaksin Shinawatra and the Thai Rak Thai party, in a landslide victory over Chuan Leekpai and the Democrats. Thaksin won for two reasons: first, he made ground promises and second, his opponent, Chuan, was stuck with the charge that he had sold the country out to the IMF and foreign business interests. A good dose of populism won the day. But his victory was remarkable in one telling respect: for the first time in Thai political history a party won (almost) a majority of seats in the lower house of Representatives. While Taksin decided to form a coalition he had no need to do this. And a few months later the election a minor party – Seritham – with 14MPs merged with Thai Rak Thai to give Thaksin an absolute majority. Here was a man with an unprecedented mandate to rule.

Thaksin won the election by promising the world or at least rather more than the dour Chuan could manage. Fed up with three-and-a-half years of belt tightening, the electorate grabbed at Thaksin’s pledged of grants of one million baht (US$23,200) to each of Thailand’s 70,000 villages, a debt moratorium for poorer farmers, cheap medical care, and more. But Thaksin was more than a populist prime minister; he brought to Thai politics a business sense honed whilst managing one of the country’s most successful companies. Rather than handing out bottles of fish sauce and B100 noted to poor farmers in a crass attempt to buy their support he employed pollsters and consultants to judge the mood of the electorate. Moreover, he delivered on his promises: the debt moratorium was introduced in July 2001 and in October 2001 health care became available to all Thais at a standard rate of B30 per visit.

There are those, however, who feared that Thaksin was too powerful. Like Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, he not only headed the country, but also the country’s largest and most influential media group. He had little time for the checks and balances of the new constitution – designed to prevent Thailand reverting to its old political ways – and when his family’s company purchased the only remaining private television station, iTV, journalists and commentators critical of his ways were promptly sacked.

Liberal authoritarian

As his first term progressed Thaksin revealed an authoritarian side that was increasingly alarming. With an economic boom slowly re-establishing itself, a whole set of social problems had to be evaporated. To this end, in 2003, a war against drugs was declared. This wasn’t poster campaign or an attempt to stop smuggling. It involved the wholesale extra-judicial murder of thousands of suspected drug dealers, drug addicts and anyone else the police didn’t really like that much. Some commentators felt that the notoriously corrupt Thai police were just getting rid of their competition, other that this form of social cleaning was the only way to control the nefarious criminals who ran the illegal drug trade. Organizations such as Amnesty condemned the deaths – many victims were shot in the back or executed with a single headshot while restrained – though the international community, to its shame, was largely silent.

The year 2003 also marked the invasion of Iraq with Thailand taking its place as the tenth largest member in the coalition of the willing. This was a bold step for a country not known for foreign adventure. The troops, all of whom were used in civil activities, left in 2004, just in time for the beginning of an insurgency in the south of Thailand that is slowly coming to dominate the nation’s politics.

The Muslim south has long felt apart from the mainstream of Thai society. With another period of economic prosperity in place – something which hardly touched the Muslims of the south – a series of demonstrations, killings and bombings took place. However, it wasn’t until October 2004 that an event occurred that gave this insurrection a sense of legitimacy and urgency.

After violent demonstration outside a government building in the small town of Tak Bai, hundreds of Muslim demonstrators were arrested. Beaten and shackled, they were then loaded into army trucks like human logs, stacked one on top of another, four or five deep. More than 80 died of suffocation. A wave of violence followed with Buddhist monks and teachers becoming targets and explosions a regular occurrence.

Thaksin’s response to the situation was surreal. He ordered school children around Thailand to make origami cranes – the bird is a symbol of peace and goodwill in Asian cultures. Millions were loaded onto planes and dropped onto the Islamic communities of the south. The bizarre rationale was that the tiny paper birds would show the Muslims that the rest of the country cared about them. The insurgency gathered pace, draconian emergency rule was declared – suspending many judicial and constitutional rights – and by September 2005 the death toll had reached 1000.

Second term

The December 2004 tsunami came to overshadow many of the events in the south.  Thaksin’s handling of this disaster was seen by most – at least initially – to be efficient and statesmanlike. An election was called soon after in February 2005 and with the economy in a full-scale boom and free face whitening cream for female voters, Thaksin’s TRT won a landslide.

Yet, Thaksin’s style of rule, popular with the impoverished masses but not with the middle classes and Bangkok elite, soon began the divide Thailand. Early in 2006, and fuelled by an alleged tax-avoidance scam by the Shinawatra family who’d just sold their large telecoms company into foreign hands, a series of demonstrations aimed at Thaksin’s ruling party began to turn into a serious movement. Alongside this, Thaksin was accused by certain parts of the media of not showing sufficient respect to the king and even of lese majeste – a serious offence in Thailand.

With demonstrations now becoming massive affairs – up to 200,000 people – and with deadlock on the streets, Thaksin, desperate to re-assert his authority, called a snap election penciled in for April 2006. His opponents, led by the Democrat Party, realizing they could never beat Thaksin at the ballot box, decided to withdraw all their candidates, effectively boycotting the election. This led to a constitutional crisis that eventually caused the annulment of the ensuing Thaksin landslide. A period of stalemate ensured, only resolved after a series of negotiations when Thaksin agreed to take on the role of caretaker PM and stand down by October 2006 when new elections would be called.

September 2006 changed everything. On the morning of the 19 September (UK time) the BBC’s news website began reporting that PM Thaksin – then in New York at a UN conference – had declared a state of emergency. By the afternoon the BBC were reporting that tanks were on the streets and Thaksin’s government had been replace by an army council – a full scale military coup had taken place.

If you walked around the streets of the capital a few days later you’d be forgiven for wondering whether anything had happened at all. IN a move designed to win over the masses a national holiday was declared and by the end of the first week locals were delivering flowers and food to the army. A typically Thai sense of surreal fun descended on the capital and tourists posed with the tanks for photo-ops. The couple had seemed to unite the nation: peace prevailed.

Within a few weeks a new PM, General Surayud Chulanont, was installed and the hand-fought-for, though ultimately flawed, 1997 constitution was shredded. New elections and a new constitution were mooted for later in 2007 and a civilian cabinet was put in place. With Thaksin skulking in China and the country united behind the king, a feeling of optimism grew.

It didn’t last long. After the civilian unity cabinet made a serious of poor judgments regarding foreign investment, leading to a mini stock market crash, and several bombs exploded in Bangkok on New Year’s Eve, killing nine people, authority seemed to be draining from the new regime.

By March 2007 a great deal of uncertainty had crept back into Thai society, Efforts have been made to root out the corruption of the Thaksin years to create a more enduring constitution. Whether this will meet with success will be decide by events. With Thaksin waiting in the wings and an ageing king on the throne the future is decidedly up a grabs.

Getting to grips with the Thai political system: The traditional way of doing things

Thai politics has traditionally been a game of money, not of ideas. In rural and provincial constituencies – and that means over 90% of constituencies – candidates were expected to buy their votes. It was estimated that been B20 billion and B30 billion, or a staggering US$800 million-US$1.2 billion, was spent on the November 1996 elections  – widely thought to have been the dirtiest in Thai election history (quite a claim). Bank of Thailand figures show that an unusually high sum of money was transferred out of commercial banks during the lection period – the assumption being that a significant slice was withdrawn for vote buying.

Until the electoral reforms of 1997, it was common for whole villages to be bought. In the 1995 elections villages cost B30, 000 to B50, 000 and up-country bank branches ran out of B100 notes as they were pressed into hundreds of thousands of eager hands. No wonder Banharn, the leader of the Chart Thai Party which won the largest number of seats in the 1995 election, earned himself the nickname ‘Mr ATM’;  all one hand to do was key in the right series of digits and out would  spew B100 notes.  In 1996, Gordon Fairclugh of the Far Eastern Review accompanied the northeast MP Newin Chidchob while he pressed the flesh in Buriram. Fairclough wrote that the MP “paused to talk to a young girl” and then “handed her a crisp B20 note, and she got her first lesson in what politics is all about”. Boonyok Hankla, an elder in a village in Lampang province in the north, explained the farmers’ electoral logic to Gordon Fairclough is simple terms: “The MP gets what he wants, and we get what we want.” Another farmer in Lampang, 59-years old Jai Manefan, added: “They’re generous with us, so we have to give something in return. I don’t think that’s really vote buying, do you?

In Bangkok, idea and integrity have always counted for much more. It is this divide in the electoral environment which accounts for the fact that few parties – until Thaksin’s victory – managed to bridge the gap between the rural and urban electorates (or rather between Bangkok and the rest of the country). The tale of Thailand’s electoral history has been a tale of two constituencies: a comparatively sophisticated urban (capital city) electorate, and the rest. Nor has it just been a case of the votes of constituents being bought; candidates have also traditionally put themselves up for sale. The notion of being a committed party animal was rate. B10 or US$400,000 was said to have been the going rate to encourage a politician to switch allegiances in 1995, and it was probably rather more in the 1996 contest. And as up country voters tend to and it was probably rather more in the 1996 contest. And as up-country voters tend to vote for characters, not for parties or policies, candidates usually took their supporters with them when they indulged in a spot of party-hopping.

The Thai political system, then, has always been something of an anomaly. It was widely thought to be ‘fair’, even before the reforms: PollWatch, an independent organization with around 50,000 workers, watched out for fraud and intimidation during the vote itself; newspapers have been notably free and free-wheeling compared with those in some neighboring countries; and the army, at least over the last decade, has kept well out the way. Yet elections in Thailand are still about power, wealth and muscle. The association of truly vast sums of money with the democratic process traditionally meant that so-called ithiphon muut or ‘dark influences’ were always close at hand. Godfathers after lavishing millions on a candidate or party expected their reward after their chose ones had won. Money politics ruled and violence was not far from the surface.

But while this approach to politics may have been acceptable from the 1950s until the 1970s, by the 1980s there were calls for greater accountability and transparency, and an end to the money politics. By the 1990s these had become more insistent still in late 1997 a new constitution was passed with the single but monumental purpose for cleaning up Thailand’s political system.

Parliamentary and political reform

On 27 September 1997 parliament approved a new constitution remove bold – the country’s 16^th since 1932 – by massive margin. Two weeks later the king signed the 171-pages constitution, with its 336 articles, into law. The constitutions, which was months in the drafting, had its origins in the widespread belief that the only way to change Thai politics was to radically reform the political system. The new constitution, it was hoped, would set the kingdom off a new democratic path where money politics might be replaced by debate. It has three key objectives: to stamp out electoral corruption; to end short-lived coalition governments; and to decentralize power form the center to local people.

By the time PM Thaksin Shinawatra had been deposed by the army in September 2006 it was clear that the optimism created by the 1997 Constitution had been squashed. Thaksin had openly fluted and abused the constitution, revealing its weaknesses and precipitating a national crisis. Under his rule corruption and cronyism had flourished, the judiciary made irrelevant and human rights had been abused.

On the first moves of the new post-Thaksin military sponsored government was to set in motion a process of creating a new, more robust constitution. The talk has been of a national referendum to secure its mandate and of the new document contains enough checks on power to stop any future abuse. At the time of writing March 2007, Thailand was a nation without a democratically elected government nor a legal framework for one to exist. Many commentators fear for the worst but the Thais have a way of pulling rabbits from a hat – either way they are good to need to some neat tricks to solve this one.

Getting to grips with corruption

A question much debated in the bars of Bangkok or bars in Pattaya is why is Thailand so corrupt? Putting aside for one moment the fact that Thailand is clearly not unique in being corrupt, there are various arguments that do the rounds. Some people point to the fact that Thailand is a ‘soft’ state without the rigid rules that apply in countries like Singapore. Being soft and fuzzy means that people can argue that corruption is really not that bad – just part of the cultural landscape. Polls reveal, for example, that most Thais do not regard giving a few hundred baht to a public servant to ensure speedy service as wrong. Others highlight the low salaries paid to civil servants and other in public service. Civil servants’ salaries are pitched low because everyone knows that they benefit from corruption. The logic becomes circular: civil servants are paid little because they are corrupt/they are corrupt because their salaries are so low. Suthichai Yoon, a commentator for The Nation, described in 1998 how senior officers in the Police Department set targets for the number of motorists who have to be fined. For each fine, the policeman on the beat receives 20%, the being passed up the ladder to line the pockets of more senior officers. To meet the targets, innocent motorists are framed.

There is now a more concerted effort to educate people regarding the corrosive effects of corruption: the misallocation of resources, the lower economic growth rate, the loss of competitiveness – and the fact that it is the poor who are hurt most by corruption. All-in-all, corruption is far from being just a harmless part of the cultural landscape. In April 2002, police spokesman Major-General Pingsapat Pongcharoen told reporter Shawn Crispin, “Many Thai people are sick and tired of police corruption. Thai society is changing – the police must change too.”

Foreign relations

Thailand is founder member of ASEAN – the Association of Southeast Asian Nations. This was created in 1967 as a bulwark against communism but now comprises all ten countries of the region, including the communist countries of Vietnam and the Lao People’s Democratic Republic. In general terms the country is Western-leaning and has conducted, over the years, joint exercises with the United States armed forces, for example. It is also a keen supporter of the war against terrorism.

Thailand’s most delicate relations are with its neighbors, and particularly Cambodia, Laos and Burma (Myanmar). The former two countries are small, poor and economically weak and there lurks the constant fear of economic domination by Big Brother Thailand. Indeed, this is more than just a fear. Thailand is the largest foreign investor and controls much of each country’s economy.

The bureaucracy

Thai bureaucracy, like that in the other counties of Southeast Asia, is a many-headed hydra. Becoming a civil servant, or in Thai kharatchakan (‘servant of the crown’), brings with it considerable prestige, a certain amount of power, a great deal of job security and a small salary. One way that bureaucrats have overcome the last of these is by king muang- literally ‘eating the country’ – extracting from the land and its people far more than their own meager salaries. There are also many committed government officials who act in what they perceive to be the best interests of the people they (in theory) serve.

In spite of King Chulalongkorn’s reform of the civil service a the turn of the century, and the more recent decentralization connected with the 1997 constitution, the relationship between bureaucrats and the people is still a “top-down” one in which the official talks and the people listen. To a large extent, this is just a reflection of Thai social relations, and the pervasive superiors-inferior/patron-client ties. In general, petty officials are recruited locally.  They will usually have been educated to secondary school level and have little chance of advancing to the higher echelons of the civil service. More senior officials are university-educated and often have their roots (and hearts) in Bangkok. A challenge for the bureaucracy today is that Thailand’s rapid economic growth during the 1980s and much of the 1990s dramatically widened wage differential between the public and private sectors. With a decline in the prestige associated with joining the civil service and becoming a kharatchakan, fewer talented young Thais are being enticed into the bureaucracy.