Loud actions, still voices

Tom Plate reviews Thailand's moderate majority

By Tom Plate
Pacific Perspectives Columnist

Friday, November 3, 2006

Bangkok --- It is entirely possible that Thailand may just be the most interesting political place right now.

It is a place that has had a semi-coup, yet hasn't lost its cool.

It's also a place that's openly reviewing the pluses and minuses of democracy as if genuinely unsure about what would work best for it -- at least for the time being.

And it's also a place where Western scare stories about the dangers of China's economic rise ring hollow. In fact, so many of its top leaders are as fluent in Mandarin as they are in Thai that its cabinet meetings could be conducted in the language of Beijing just as easily as of Bangkok.

Unsurprisingly, China, on the whole, is viewed as a huge economic plus in Southeast Asia, notwithstanding misgivings and worries about the future. In part, that's because Beijing speaks the language of economic development and doesn't give knee-jerk lectures like the West when a military coup (of sorts) take place.

This coup had been exceedingly upset with the previous prime minister for months, and the uproar more or less did little more than re-affirm the primacy of the monarchy.

The Sept. 19 military move that pushed out the former prime minister (democratically elected but allegedly the head of a corrupt administration) has its severe critics here. One of them was a taxi driver driven to despair. As if speaking for all of Thai's poor, he committed suicide in protest and became a national martyr overnight.

But generally speaking, Thailand isn't a nation of extremes. Its pleasant and patient people are no worshipers of self-immolation, and so far this 60-year-old man is the sole in such political suicide.

It is true that the ousted prime minister, last sighted playing golf on mainland China after cooling his heels in his London apartment, was popular with the more desperate classes -- but mainly because of his many promises many of which he didn't keep, to reduce their economic misery.

Unless the current military government somehow manages to pick up economically where Thaksin Shinawatra left off, the Thai people may take time in demanding a full return to democracy. Pressing practical concerns will naturally demand much attention; they tend to prioritize getting results over realizing abstract theory.

In the United States many geopolitical theorists size up the rise of China as a threat rather than an opportunity. Instead of putting on their Adam Smith eyeglasses and seeing the economic value of having 22 percent of the world's population back on their economic feet as viable consumers (especially for Southeast Asian exports), they put on their John Foster Dulles spectacles and imagine new bad-guy actors engaged in a full-blown cold war.

America's unmovable pessimists may still prove utterly correct -- who knows? But their way is not the way most people see things Chinese in Thailand -- at least judging from the presentations at the Asia Pacific Business Outlook conference organized here earlier this month by the Marshall School of Business at the University of Southern California.

In fact, several outspoken Thai business and political leaders at the conference took an openly optimistic perspective on China. One well-known leader laughingly scoffed at the China-as-threat hypothesis, reminding his luncheon audience that without the positive gravitational pull of the ever-rising Chinese market, Thailand might never be fully recovered from the near-deadly Asian financial crisis of 1997-1999.

We Americans in the audience took note that the Thai leader focused on China's contribution, not America's. The truth is that the United States, bogged down in Iraq, has slipped a notch or two in Southeast Asia -- perhaps not irredeemably, but definitely noticeably.

Another oddly noticeable attitude here is that of the new military government toward its Muslim minority: it is taking a much less harsh line on this Muslim population living in its southernmost provinces. By contrast, the Thaksin government had been cruel toward all Muslim protestors -- mostly Thais of Muslim Malay dissent.

Strikingly, current Prime Minister Surayud Chulanont, speaking for the junta, has just publicly apologized to these Muslims; for the unforgivable atrocities committed by the government's security forces in the cold-blooded Thaksin-ordered crackdowns.

The apology was long in coming but most welcome. The brutality had been condemned not only internationally but domestically as well. Thais do not like to view themselves as common thugs, but rather as a pleasant, smart and hardworking people who are tolerant and open-minded. And this, it seems to me, is rather what they are -- and wish to remain.

The views expressed above are those of the author and are not necessarily those of AsiaMedia or the UCLA Asia Institute.

Date Posted: 11/3/2006

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