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East Asia
Thaksin's Challenges by John C. Walsh Thailand's slow crawl from authoritarianism to democracy was accelerated by the electoral success of the Thai Rak Thai party. Under the dynamic leadership of Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra, Thai Rak Thai -- which literally means Thais Love Thais -- achieved an unprecedented parliamentary majority for a single party in the January 2001 election. With a genuine ideological stance, a team of advisors drawing together ideas from business, academia and government, Thai Rak Thai seemed set to dominate the political scene in the Kingdom. Thaksin himself led the way in creating the party with a hand-picked team of individual experts. Using modern focus group and voter research techniques, policies were created that were of genuine interest to people. No other political party had ever before seriously engaged in reaching out to the people. Indeed, as Thailand prepares to vote again nearly four years later, still no other party has managed to produce any coherent manifesto. Thai politics have generally rested on patronage and local favouritism. Love them or hate them, Thai Rak Thai have brought Thai politics into the twenty first century. Yet controversy has never been far away. Thaksin Shinawatra is Thailand's richest man, in addition to his political office. His money has largely been made through his business interests in telecommunications. He claims to have no contacts with Shin Corp, as his company is now called. It has become a hugely successful, diversified corporation. An investigation was made into whether Thaksin had concealed assets by transferring them to his private staff (maid, gardener and driver, among others), while he had been a minister in a previous coalition government. This investigation came very close to seeing him removed from office. But he survived. Other crises have arisen from outside sources. The outbreaks of SARS and of avian influenza - bird flu - have threatened the crucial Thai industries of tourism and food exports. The government has so far just about managed to stumble through these crises without falling flat on its face. However, the war against drugs and the campaign against dark influences are initiatives that have raised more concerns than they have settled. The illegal drugs industry in Thailand has a long and complex history. The main contemporary threat is from synthetic drugs such as methamphetamines and ecstasy which are aimed at young people. Many of these drugs are manufactured in remote bases in the forested borderlands with Myanmar by ethnic minorities. When the campaign was launched, there was much talk of eradicating this problem once and for all. The result has been the deaths of more than 2,000 people. Police sources claim that these were nearly all the results of drugs gang members killing each other to avoid incrimination or resisting arrest. Human rights groups want proper investigations into what they claim were extra-judicial killings (Amnesty International Press Release, July 21st, 2004). In any case, there has been little appreciable impact on either the supply of or demand for drugs. The war against dark influences has had much less spectacular results. Therein lies its problem. Everybody in Thailand knows that corruption is rife throughout the Kingdom. From traffic police issuing unofficial on the spot fines to the massive black hole in the school milk fund, it cannot be avoided. Yet the campaign against these dark influences has failed so far to identify a single high profile figure. The campaign is no longer, therefore, considered by many people to be a serious attempt to eliminate corruption. However, of all the problems, the one that seems now most dangerous is that of the South of Thailand. In this border region with Malaysia, the majority of people are Muslims, while the remainder of Thailand is strongly Buddhist. For several decades, some in the South have agitated for autonomy or independence. This has resulted in a low level of violence over the years. Yet this has now escalated and killings by both separatists and police occur on an almost daily basis. Buddhist monks, school teachers and judges have been targeted as representatives of the state. In response, police stormed the Krue Se Mosque on April 28th, 2004 resulting in the deaths of 107 Muslim youths and police officers in a day of much bloodshed ("Mosque Drenched in Blood," Bangkok Post, April 29th, 2004). The situation has been enflamed by the raised level of consciousness of international injustices to Muslims - stimulated possibly by foreign teachers and money - and by Thaksin's decision to send troops tto Iraq to support the US-led occupation. Those troops have since returned home, but the violence throughout the Southern border region may already have reached a level that is self-sustaining. References and Further Reading "Mosque Drenched in Blood," Bangkok Post, April 29th, 2004. Amnesty International, "Thailand: Human Rights Must Be Central to Government's Actions," July 21st, 2004, http://news.amnesty.org/index/ENGASA390112004. A noteworthy and critical treatment of the Thaksin government to date is Pasuk Phongpaichit and Chris Baker's Thaksin: The Business of Politics in Thailand (Chiang Mai: Silkworm Books, 2004). More about East Asian History: http://www.suite101.com/welcome.cfm/18175 About the Author(s): John C. Walsh is Assistant Professor of Marketing at Shinawatra International University, Contact: jcwalsh@shinawatra.ac.th; http://www.geocities.com/jcwalsh102 See under Our Contributors to find out about the Author(s) of this article. |
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