THAILAND: Premier Hit for Dragging Country away from Democracy

By Marwaan Macan-Markar Reprint | | Print |

Marwaan Macan-Markar

BANGKOK, Mar 1 2002 (IPS) - With words like “shameful” and “acts of oppression,” critics are assailing Thai Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra for dragging his country away from its current status as one of the most democratic in South-east Asia.

On Friday, the prime minister drew fire following revelations that the government had intimidated one of Thailand’s respected pollsters after the results of its recent poll portrayed government figures in poor light.

“It is shameful. The prime minister is using executive authority beyond anyone’s comprehension,” a clearly livid Kraisak Choonhavan, chairman of the Senate Committee on Foreign Affairs, told IPS. “The polls provide one of the best barometers for us to judge how we and our policies are faring.”

Local newspapers were as harsh in condemning the manner in which military officers, members of the special branch of the police and officials from the ministry of university affairs, had repeatedly visited the office of the Bangkok-based Assumption Business Administration College (Abac) Poll, at Assumption University.

“The separate visits by military officers, police officers and top civil servants to the Abac poll office are acts of oppression that should not be seen in a modern democracy,” wrote the English-language daily ‘The Nation,’ in an unusual front-page commentary.

The ‘Bangkok Post’, another English-language daily, declared in an editorial that it was hard to believe “this type of thing goes on in a democratic state such as Thailand. This is not Nazi Germany of the late 1930s and early ’40s. What will the authorities do next?”

The poll that prompted this display of government intimidation was conducted between Feb. 5-9, where Abac researchers queried 1,302 people about the public image of the Thaksin administration and political issues that have been in the news of late.

While the results of this survey were particularly severe on the public image of the country’s powerful defence minister and public health minister, they also faulted the Thaksin regime for conflicts of interest involving government members.

The polling body is defending its findings. “We believe that the methodology used in gathering the data is correct,” Abac Poll director Nappadon Kanika told IPS.

University Affairs Minister Sutham Saengprathum, however, disagrees, telling the ‘Bangkok Post’ that the poll’s conclusion was biased since not all the respondents had been counted.

Such a confrontational posture is, in fact, the stance that the government has taken all week on another issue that calls into question its commitment towards democracy — stamping on the rights of a free press.

In this case that has been dominating media coverage since Monday, the Thai government decided to revoke the visas of two foreign correspondents working here for a short article critical of Thaksin they had written in the January issue of the Hong Kong-based weekly magazine ‘Far Eastern Economic Review’.

But the prime minister has remained defiant, even asking the United States to keep off after Washington raised the issue of press freedom with Bangkok. “Don’t pay any attention (to the United States). I will not easily accept this as it is detrimental to the country and interferes with our sovereignty. I will not give up,” he told reporters.

“This is a major shortcoming of this government. Thaksin doesn’t like criticism,” asserts Sulak Sivaraksa, a social commentator. “He believes in a myth that his party is above criticism because of their large margin of victory at the last election.”

But beyond this, “we are gradually witnessing the emerging of a strong government, using the tentacles that such regimes use to suppress dissent,” says Vitit Muntarbhorn, professor of law at Bangkok’s Chulalongkorn University.

The prime minister has lent sufficient credence to these views by the political script he has followed during his first year in office, and which shows little tolerance for divergent views.

After his party, Thai Rak Thai (or Thais Love Thai), swept to power at the January 2001 elections with the largest victory margin in the country’s history, Thaksin set his sights on riding rough over the country’s independent media.

In August, the press accused the government of trying to manipulate the media through economic pressure and backroom business deals, which ranged from a curb on government advertising in the critical media to pressure on management to prevent critical voices from being heard.

Then, Thaksin went after the senior civil servants and academics who chose to aver from some of his policies. “Some, like the president of the Thai Bankers Association, were told to shut up. Others were ridiculed, such as the former president of the Thailand Development Research Institute. The less powerful, including many state officials, have been forced out of their jobs,” states the Friday edition of ‘The Nation’.

And in late January, Thaksin stole another march over his political opposition by merging his Thai Rak Thai party with a smaller opposition party, an alliance that ensured Thaksin the support of 289 members in the 500-seat parliament. Another smaller party in the opposition’s ranks may cross over to join the Thaksin government.

While the prime minister defends this concentration of power, rights advocates like Vitit shudder, since it gives Thaksin sufficient support in parliament to amend the country’s 1997 Constitution.

Till this year, that document, described as the “people’s constitution” for its many features upholding human rights and democracy, could not be amended because its authors had placed a five-year moratorium on changes on it. But this restriction runs out later this year, enabling Thaksin to seek change if he wants to.

The Thai public, according to Vitit, should have learnt by now that “democracy as we have it is not a guarantor of human rights, since we are seeing the emergence of a strong one-party state.”