MEDIA-THAILAND: Thaksin’s Departure Spells Press Freedom

By Marwaan Macan-Markar Reprint | | Print |

Marwaan Macan-Markar

BANGKOK, Apr 10 2006 (IPS) - With Thaksin Shinawatra stepping down as Thailand’s leader, the country’s media are rediscovering traits that had earned them a reputation for in the region – criticising and exposing those in power.

Signs of renewed liberalism taking root were visible over past two months, when tens of thousands of largely middle-class citizens of Bangkok took to the city’s streets to rail against the Thaksin government and calling for his resignation.

But it was in the country’s state-controlled broadcast media that the first cracks began to appear, when television stations began, although marginally, to report anti-government voices that had been shut out for most of the five years that Thaksin had ruled.

”They began to report news critical of the government because of the political momentum on the streets and because there was a very high sense of political awareness among the people,” Supinya Klangnarong, a media rights activist, told IPS. ”If they didn’t, they would have been seen as being out of touch with the people.”

Even some of the country’s major Thai-language newspapers, which are independently owned, reflected a shift from being soft on the Thaksin administration to echoing anti-government voices.

”The coverage was so different to what had been before and it was clear that the mainstream press were enjoying a level of unprecedented freedom,” Kulachada Chaipipat, a Thai representative of the South-east Asia Press Alliance, said in an interview. ”It was bold and there was no sign that they were afraid of threats and harassment.”

This political space for free and open debate and reportage that had been pried open by the anti-government demonstrators remains one of the highpoints of the uncertain political road that Thailand has taken. It ended, partially, last Tuesday with Thaksin’s surprise announcement that he will not accept the premiership for a third term despite his ruling Thai Rak Thai (Thais Love Thai – TRT) party winning 55.5 percent of the votes cast at a snap parliamentary poll on Sunday.

According to Supinya – she herself was at the receiving end of Thaksin’s hostility to criticism, but a court dismissed libel charges brought against her by the telecommunications giant owned by the premier’s family – the prevailing spirit of media freedom will be hard to suppress. ”There is a feeling that we have got back the freedom we had before,” she said.

Even seminar halls reflected this shift in the air, where there was a sense of liberty to discuss politics with barbs aimed at the government without fear of retribution. Such confidence was attributed to the strength of numbers willing to come out in public and declare their opposition to the Thaksin administration. On the eve of the elections, over 100,000 Thais took to the streets to chant ”Thaksin, oak pai!” (Thaksin, get out!)

That the TRT and its leader were no friends of a critical media – nor academics and bureaucrats who spoke their mind – became apparent shortly after the January 2001 poll, when Thaksin led his party to a thumping triumph. By the time it was returned to power for a second term at the February 2005 elections – winning an unprecedented 377 of the 500 seats in parliament – the Thaksin administration’s hostility towards critics had become legendary.

Pressure, however, was not applied through the usual methods autocrats are famous for, such as critics being jailed for their comments. Rather, the media had to face new forms of intimidation, such as threats of advertising being withdrawn, assets being investigated and efforts to move journalists from their beats.

In July last year, editors from across the country’s newspaper world closed ranks in a manner not witnessed since 1997 and stood up to an emergency decree imposed by the government to crackdown on the violence in the country’s southern provinces. The law gave sweeping powers to the prime minister to censor media reports from that troubled region, home to the country’s Malay-Muslim minority.

By August 2005, Thailand’s press council, a self-regulating media body, had recorded close to 50 libel cases filed against journalists for a range of reasons, which was almost twice the number of libel cases filed against journalists in all of 2004.

Little wonder that when Reports Without Borders, the Paris-based media rights watchdog, released its annual press freedom rankings in October, Thailand had slipped from being 59th on its global list in 2004 to 107th by 2005.

Don Pathon, regional editor for ‘The Nation’, an English language daily, captured the working atmosphere in the newsrooms during the past five years when he said, ”Journalists were constantly reminded that Thaksin was thin-skinned and we could expect retribution and nasty reactions.”

”The tendency for people to censor themselves was there, while at the same time being conscious of our responsibilities,” he explained. ”We had to take risks.”

Thaksin’s intolerance towards his critics was legendary and he often struck a dismissive tone when his administration was found wanting. Once, after a U.N. human rights envoy faulted Bangkok for its record of abuses, Thaksin famously shot back: ”The U.N. is not my father.”