I have followed closely PAD’s “showdown” demonstrations that started on Tuesday, August 26th with the avowed purpose of bringing down the government of Samak Sundaravej. The PAD cited Article 63 of the Constitution, enshrining the right to peaceful assembly, to justify its action (Nation, August 26th).
The storming of the NBT, “invasion” of the Transport Ministry, Finance Ministry and Ministry of Agriculture and Cooperatives compounds is indeed as Srithanochai in New Mandala commented a “veritable rebellion (what the constitution calls an attempt to seize power by unconstitutional means) is going on in Bangkok. If it was the military, one would call it [a] coup d’etat…”
What intrigues me is the remarkable restraint shown by the government despite the lawlessness in occupying public installations and even destroying public property in the process (so far: compound fence and an elevator in main building 2 (government house) were damaged. People also intruded in the 44th, 41st, and 26th buildings and toilets were damaged; a “seven-figure sum to repair the 5,000square metre yard and garden”, Nation August 28th a), hooligan behavior towards a female official by PAD guards (Nation, August 28th b).
It appears that many found the behavior of PAD demonstrators over reached the limits of political decency. Polls conducted by Bangkok University on August 27th found that about 71 per cent disagreed with the raid of the NBT station, while 68 per cent found unacceptable the siege at Government House and ministries.(Nation, August 27th a). Tulsathit Taptim of the Nation strongly criticized unbridled “raw impulses” taking over PAD, turning itself into its own worst enemy: “While we can live with traffic nightmares or disruption of school routines, we cannot call seizing a TV station, intimidating news anchors and paralysing public works a non-violent campaign for democracy. Nor was it a show of civil disobedience, because the much-acclaimed political practice isn't supposed to harm or terrorise innocent people doing their jobs.” (Tulsathit, August 27th). A Nation article warned “In the end one must ask whether the group (PAD) is pro-democracy any longer, even if they may have good intentions for society and were pro-democratic at the beginning. The public must not be tempted to support knee jerk attempts to bring about regime change because the only change is from one regime to another, without any democratisation in Thailand” (Nation, August 27th b) (italics by blogger). Business leaders urged restraint on all sides fearing that the PAD demonstrations would lead not only to more violence and bloodshed but also affect investor confidence and drive tourists away (Nation, August 27th c).
There are of course secret machinations going on behind the scenes, a “trump card” (Thanong, August 28th) in the form of Gen. Anupong Pachinda, the Army chief, who became the Army chief in the latest military reshuffle, signed by Prime Minister Samak on Tuesday, Aug 26th perhaps as some kind of reward for staying by the side of Samak (along with First Army chief Lt-Gen Prayuth Chan-ocha on Aug 26, the launching of PAD’s demonstrations at the Supreme Command Centre as a base to deal with the PAD attacks against his administration (Wassana, August 27th):“The prime minister, who is also the defence minister, rewarded them for the protection within hours yesterday by quickly approving the military reshuffle list.” The approval of the military reshuffle list has further strengthened Gen Anupong Paochinda, the Army chief, as the most powerful figure in Thailand. “Whichever side he picks, that party will win in this power play. But at the moment, it’s too hard to read his mind yet.” (Thanong, August 28th).
Prime Minister Samak has been warned not to use "draconian" measures to eject the protesters from the government house compound, the use of force would only provoke more violence and a more serious crisis, leading to military intervention (Nation, August 27th b), that violence will spiral out of hand (Nation, August 27th b).
Some commentators in New Mandala site opined that if the same thing happened in the Canberra government center, the police would have been already called to disperse the crowds. The counter argument put forth was that Thailand’s government is in no position to take the moral high ground. However, is there any objective basis to support the worst case scenario that violence will indeed spiral out of control?
Under the best scenario, where the red shirts are not called by Samak to teach the PAD a lesson (surely with disastrous results for the government) and no provocateurs planted to provoke Thai style berserk rage & violence - what is it that cannot be handled by a professionally trained and well equipped riot control group of law enforcement officers? Or had funds earmarked for training and purchase of non-lethal suppression equipment been diverted elsewhere such that there is scant training for non-lethal crowd control, and the police are as easily volatile as the crowds they are trying to disperse? The line between suppression and oppression is very narrow indeed absent a highly trained and equipped crowd control force of "law enforcement" officers.
Lest I be misunderstood, I am not an advocate of violence – any violence is contemptible. However, a citizenry must learn that part of democratic practice and political maturation consist not only in having rights and privileges but also the exercise of duties and obligations. If there is no respect for the law, society cannot go on. Each duty and obligation carries certain consequences for failing to fulfill or adhere to it. If you wish to overthrow the government you have to do it within the framework of the law, or else, face the consequences. One cannot claim exercising one’s right to “peaceful assembly” if according to Article 28 of the 1997 constitution “as long as they do not breach others rights and liberties or do not violate the Constitution and public morality”. If this provision has been abrogated in the 2006 Constitution, then Thailand will essentially fall into this very kind of mob rule and anarchy that we are now witnessing. Moreover, the option of gingerly treatment of PAD demonstrators that the government of PM Samak has to implement because of imponderable contingencies that could spark more violence will result only in reinforcing the mentality that you must’nt be firm with Thais who have come from a very pampered and relatively secure upbringing. (Note the Police offer of Bus Rides to Protestors (to return home!!), Bangkok Post, August 28, 2008) In this sense, democracy in Thailand will remain a fleeting dream, if it remains an inconsistent exercise where enforcement depends (or varies) on the presence of powerful symbolic accoutrements (who wants to manhandle people wearing yellow shirts?), backstage manipulation and backing by secret powerful persons and class. I seem unable to reconcile the brutal response of the police in the 2004 Tak Bai demonstrators that resulted in 85 deaths from suffocation and beatings. Is there one democratic lesson for young rural Thai Muslims and another for urban based and relatively more privileged demonstrators who have appropriated for themselves the colors and prestige of HM?
References:
Nation (2008), “PAD rally to aim at shutting down the gov't, August 26.
Nation (2008a) PM's Office to sue for damage to Government House, August 27.
Nation (2008b) Female official complains of "hooligan" behaviours” of PAD guards, August 28.
Nation (2008a)PAD's protest activities disapproved by majority, August 27.
Nation (2008b), The politics of morality vs electoral legitimacy, August 27.
Nation (2008c), More violence 'would dent investment', August 27.
Nation (2008d), PAD has gotten too far ahead of itself, August 27.
Thanong Khantong (2008), Army chief holds the trump card, Nation, August 28.
Tulsathit Taptim (2008), PAD must not become its own worst enemy, Nation, August 27.
Wassana Nanuam (2008), PM turns to military top brass for protection, Bangkok Post, August 27.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tak_Bai_Incident
http://rspas.anu.edu.au/rmap/newmandala
* the term "democratic literacy" is from Weerasak Krueathep, "Local Government Initiatives in Thailand: Cases and Lessons Learned", Asia Pacific Journal of Public Adminsitration, 26(6), December, pp. 217-239. an internet version is also available.
Thursday, August 28, 2008
Sunday, August 3, 2008
Arithmetical Justice, Selective Justice
Last Friday, August 1st, the Bangkok Post boldly headlined “GUILTY” Khunying Potjaman Shinawatra in the share tax evasion case. The criminal court sentenced her to three years in jail in what is called “a precedent-setting ruling in the first of a series of court cases looming over the Shinawatra family” (Bangkok Post, 2008a).
While I have little grasp of the finer legal aspects of this case not being a lawyer, my attention was piqued by the particulars of the case. According to the news: “the court found Khunying Potjaman and Bannapot had deliberately avoided paying 546 million Baht in tax for the transfer of 4.5 million shares in the Shinawatra Computer and Communications, now Shin Corp, worth 738 million baht” (Bangkok Post, 2008a). The verdict of guilty for evading 546 million Baht in taxes resulted in a three year sentence! If justice were purely a matter of arithmetical ratio and proportion, my mind deviously set out to calculate a “what if” scenario – what if by next March 2009 I won’t pay the taxes off my meager salary as an Acharn? I came up with 0.28 days (maximum) in the slammer! That translates to 6.72 hours in the crowded and mosquito infested Thai jail, much less time than checking the tortuously incomprehensible mid-term exams of my students. I consider myself a law abiding person however and regained my senses after briefly indulging in the gleeful fantasy of tax dodging with almost negligible punishment. I will contribute what is due to “Prathet Thai”.
Did the Thai criminal court go easy on Khunying Potjaman knowing that a more serious and just sentence of 10 to 20 years plus hefty fines, (as they do in South Korea) could provoke backlash in the form of a much dreaded worsening of present day instability? Or as my Thai colleague opined the (light) sentence caused the Shinawatra family to lose face (naa tek), suggesting that in the Thai order of things losing face is already enough punishment?
I don’t know. But when I recall the many injustices in the recent and not too recent past, of the countless big fishes that flouted the law with great impunity, I wonder if we will ever have real justice in this world. This is when perpetrators will not only have the certainty of being caught and punished but also punished in direct proportion to the severity of the crime committed.
Those for example who were responsible for “Hok Tulaa” and the “exceptional cruelty” of the massacre in Thammasat where many living witnesses can confirm that more than “one person died”? If caught, what punishment will the court mete out? Or should we not dig up the past and stir things up for the sake of “harmony”? Why not? Isn’t the insistence in outward harmony really just a disguise for oppression?
Have we already forgotten the “buffet cabinet” serving in the late 80s (Murray,1996)? Surely, they stole more than 546 million Baht from the country. And those who fired at the peaceful “mob mu tue” of the Black May incident in 1992? How about those who gained handsomely from insider information when the Thai Baht was devalued as a result of the financial crisis of 1997? And thereafter, the leaders of the post-1997 bust that eagerly sold the country’s (failed) assets at the behest of the IMF and WB to foreigners - precisely one of the rationale for the reactive formation of the “Thai Rak Thai” party? And those responsible for the drug war where an average of 45 people were killed each day for three months just because their names appeared in the black list? The deaths in the Tak Bai protests falsely attributed to the weakened state of the victims due to Ramadan fasting (FACT, 2008)? More recently, last June 18, 2008, the Nation reported that the Assets Examination Committee found corruption that may have cost the state up to Bt110 billion (with a “b” as in boy, unless the Nation was sloppy in its editing) through the privatisation of state enterprises (Nation, 2008). Using Potjaman’s court ruling as reference, 110 billion Baht would amount to approximately 600 years in combined jail sentences. How many of the responsible for this alleged massive corruption will be brought to trial and convicted? And lest we forget, how about every conceivable report of “irregularities” (in the last two decades alone) in the Ministries of Commerce, Transport and Communications, Health, Education, and by the way, the Military (& Air Force & Navy)? The grossly overpriced Suvannabhumi Airport?
If we examine the international arena, the situation is even worse. If for a moment we forget the “excesses” of Stalin, Hitler, and Mao, we discover even more recent instances of grave injustices. The international press reported triumphantly the case of ex-Bosnia leader Karadzic who was finally caught after nearly 13 years on the run and charged for his role on the 44 month siege of Sarajevo that left 10,000 dead and the July 1995 massacre of about 8,000 Muslims in Srebrenica (Bangkok Post, 2008b). Is it also not the time to arrest Kissinger and put him on trial for his crimes against humanity - the carpet bombing of Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam? As Noam Chomsky said “if the Nuremberg laws were applied then every post-war (WWII) American president would’ve been hanged.”
The West has imposed its notions of progress and civilization on the rest of the world. We now know from this brief existence of ours in an increasingly fragile and dangerous world the concept of justice is imperfect and is biased in favor of the wealthy and powerful, especially those whose actions supported and benefitted the imperial capitalist system. If we haven’t yet, we should disabuse ourselves of the notion of Western moral superiority. How much farther in terms of human decency can development and progress in this age of globalization take us on this issue of justice? How is it that we seem to be much farther now from the possibility that a group of persons can “decide once and for all what is to count among them as just and unjust”? (Rawls, 1999:12).
References:
Bangkok Post (2008a), “Guilty”, August 1.
Bangkok Post (2008b), “Karadzic goes before court for first time”, August 1.
Chomsky, Noam interview with BBC's Francine Stock at London's St Paul's Cathedral, Dec 2002. Quote from video: http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=676452061991429040&q=chomsky&ei=5l6WSJ7VOYq0wgPLman1BA
FACT (2008), "Samak rewrites Tak Bai massacre" published by Bangkok Post, 26 February. http://facthai.wordpress.com/2008/02/26/samak-rewrites-tak-bai-massacre-bangkok-post/
Murray, David (1996), Angels and Devils: Thai Politics from February 1991 to September 1992 - A Struggle for Democracy? Bangkok: White Orchid Press.
Nation (2008), “State Enterprise workers join PAD protest”, June 18.
Rawls, John (1999), A Theory of Justice, Revised Edition, Harvard University Press.
The Trials of Kissinger
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-2815881561030958784&q=trial+of+kissinger&ei=aV-WSOGkLYOGwgOg-Pz2BA
While I have little grasp of the finer legal aspects of this case not being a lawyer, my attention was piqued by the particulars of the case. According to the news: “the court found Khunying Potjaman and Bannapot had deliberately avoided paying 546 million Baht in tax for the transfer of 4.5 million shares in the Shinawatra Computer and Communications, now Shin Corp, worth 738 million baht” (Bangkok Post, 2008a). The verdict of guilty for evading 546 million Baht in taxes resulted in a three year sentence! If justice were purely a matter of arithmetical ratio and proportion, my mind deviously set out to calculate a “what if” scenario – what if by next March 2009 I won’t pay the taxes off my meager salary as an Acharn? I came up with 0.28 days (maximum) in the slammer! That translates to 6.72 hours in the crowded and mosquito infested Thai jail, much less time than checking the tortuously incomprehensible mid-term exams of my students. I consider myself a law abiding person however and regained my senses after briefly indulging in the gleeful fantasy of tax dodging with almost negligible punishment. I will contribute what is due to “Prathet Thai”.
Did the Thai criminal court go easy on Khunying Potjaman knowing that a more serious and just sentence of 10 to 20 years plus hefty fines, (as they do in South Korea) could provoke backlash in the form of a much dreaded worsening of present day instability? Or as my Thai colleague opined the (light) sentence caused the Shinawatra family to lose face (naa tek), suggesting that in the Thai order of things losing face is already enough punishment?
I don’t know. But when I recall the many injustices in the recent and not too recent past, of the countless big fishes that flouted the law with great impunity, I wonder if we will ever have real justice in this world. This is when perpetrators will not only have the certainty of being caught and punished but also punished in direct proportion to the severity of the crime committed.
Those for example who were responsible for “Hok Tulaa” and the “exceptional cruelty” of the massacre in Thammasat where many living witnesses can confirm that more than “one person died”? If caught, what punishment will the court mete out? Or should we not dig up the past and stir things up for the sake of “harmony”? Why not? Isn’t the insistence in outward harmony really just a disguise for oppression?
Have we already forgotten the “buffet cabinet” serving in the late 80s (Murray,1996)? Surely, they stole more than 546 million Baht from the country. And those who fired at the peaceful “mob mu tue” of the Black May incident in 1992? How about those who gained handsomely from insider information when the Thai Baht was devalued as a result of the financial crisis of 1997? And thereafter, the leaders of the post-1997 bust that eagerly sold the country’s (failed) assets at the behest of the IMF and WB to foreigners - precisely one of the rationale for the reactive formation of the “Thai Rak Thai” party? And those responsible for the drug war where an average of 45 people were killed each day for three months just because their names appeared in the black list? The deaths in the Tak Bai protests falsely attributed to the weakened state of the victims due to Ramadan fasting (FACT, 2008)? More recently, last June 18, 2008, the Nation reported that the Assets Examination Committee found corruption that may have cost the state up to Bt110 billion (with a “b” as in boy, unless the Nation was sloppy in its editing) through the privatisation of state enterprises (Nation, 2008). Using Potjaman’s court ruling as reference, 110 billion Baht would amount to approximately 600 years in combined jail sentences. How many of the responsible for this alleged massive corruption will be brought to trial and convicted? And lest we forget, how about every conceivable report of “irregularities” (in the last two decades alone) in the Ministries of Commerce, Transport and Communications, Health, Education, and by the way, the Military (& Air Force & Navy)? The grossly overpriced Suvannabhumi Airport?
If we examine the international arena, the situation is even worse. If for a moment we forget the “excesses” of Stalin, Hitler, and Mao, we discover even more recent instances of grave injustices. The international press reported triumphantly the case of ex-Bosnia leader Karadzic who was finally caught after nearly 13 years on the run and charged for his role on the 44 month siege of Sarajevo that left 10,000 dead and the July 1995 massacre of about 8,000 Muslims in Srebrenica (Bangkok Post, 2008b). Is it also not the time to arrest Kissinger and put him on trial for his crimes against humanity - the carpet bombing of Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam? As Noam Chomsky said “if the Nuremberg laws were applied then every post-war (WWII) American president would’ve been hanged.”
The West has imposed its notions of progress and civilization on the rest of the world. We now know from this brief existence of ours in an increasingly fragile and dangerous world the concept of justice is imperfect and is biased in favor of the wealthy and powerful, especially those whose actions supported and benefitted the imperial capitalist system. If we haven’t yet, we should disabuse ourselves of the notion of Western moral superiority. How much farther in terms of human decency can development and progress in this age of globalization take us on this issue of justice? How is it that we seem to be much farther now from the possibility that a group of persons can “decide once and for all what is to count among them as just and unjust”? (Rawls, 1999:12).
References:
Bangkok Post (2008a), “Guilty”, August 1.
Bangkok Post (2008b), “Karadzic goes before court for first time”, August 1.
Chomsky, Noam interview with BBC's Francine Stock at London's St Paul's Cathedral, Dec 2002. Quote from video: http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=676452061991429040&q=chomsky&ei=5l6WSJ7VOYq0wgPLman1BA
FACT (2008), "Samak rewrites Tak Bai massacre" published by Bangkok Post, 26 February. http://facthai.wordpress.com/2008/02/26/samak-rewrites-tak-bai-massacre-bangkok-post/
Murray, David (1996), Angels and Devils: Thai Politics from February 1991 to September 1992 - A Struggle for Democracy? Bangkok: White Orchid Press.
Nation (2008), “State Enterprise workers join PAD protest”, June 18.
Rawls, John (1999), A Theory of Justice, Revised Edition, Harvard University Press.
The Trials of Kissinger
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-2815881561030958784&q=trial+of+kissinger&ei=aV-WSOGkLYOGwgOg-Pz2BA
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