Results (
Thai) 2:
[Copy]Copied!
Pittayaratee Limpavarote
Student No :5753000594
POL1101 Thai Politics and Government
Assoc.Prof. Pongsarn Puntularp
News : Reforms “Could Create Another Monopoly of Power.”
Chulalongkorn University political scientist Siripan Nogsuan Sawasdee, an expert on elections and democracy, talks to The Nation's Pravit Rojanaphruk about her hopes and trepidation about democracy and political reform in Thailand. Excerpts
What do you expect from the current junta-driven political reform process by the junta-appointed National Reform Council ?
If we look at military coup-initiated political reform, experiences around the world have shown it to be a failure. Some countries have used a military coup as a breakthrough, however, but reform needs to be repeated.
Judging from the composition of the NRC, this particular reform bid has not incorporated partners from the political conflict or even people in the middle ground, however. The second point is that Thailand has no common goal as to what direction the country should take.
What is needed is a consensus. However, the process seems to be dominated by one political side with no mass participation.
This risks undermining its own legitimacy. It appears that the National Council for Peace and Order (NCPO) already has its own road map, although what we need is to achieve a social contract through a deliberative process.
What are the best and worst case scenarios for the current reform process?
The best-case scenario is that the reform would succeed in strengthening checks and balances and reduce political monopolization. This would be a miracle.
The worst-case scenario is that it would end up creating political monopolization by another group and there would not be any checks and balances. Under this latter scenario, Thailand would be trapped in a cycle of military coups and in developing country reforms.
What's your view on the idea of allowing an outsider to become prime minister?
The talk about allowing an outsider to become prime minister reflects the inconsistency of political reform. When political reform began in the aftermath of the May 1992 uprising, the most important issue was to prevent an outsider from becoming prime minister and to increase the power elected body. Even the 2007 [junta-sponsored] charter dared not do away with this, but if it is to be reversed this time it would be tantamount to a slap in the face of the people and symbolic of an attempt to preserve the pre-1992 status quo.
If this is to be realized, it would take a long time for Thailand to become a democracy and we would return to a half-democratic system of the 1980s.
How difficult is it to teach your students and communicate to the public about the importance of elections and democracy?
What I was surprised with was that many of my freshmen students say democracy breeds social disparity and corruption. The view that democracy is not equivalent to elections also devalues democracy itself.
Democracy is certainly not just about elections, but how can we have democracy without elections? Election is a necessary factor.
What's important is that these people are middle class, well-to-do, educated and influential. When we consider this, we can't forge a common democratic goal.
In order to reform and democratize, we need to have a consensus that we won't resort to other political systems and will resolve problems within the democratic boundaries. But people devalue democracy when they say the goal can be to have an unelected body or an authoritarian system. The problem is that they never learn that military coups cannot solve problems.
The other side of the coin is that there're people who believe people who are elected can do anything, or see elections as a panacea for everything.
There're still a good number of people who think poor and less educated Thais are either foolish or corrupted as they sell votes or are manipulated by politicians, thus the election is always fraudulent.
These people haven't managed to overcome their illusion that vote-buying is the decisive factor in elections. A number of academic studies have revealed that vote- buying is no longer the decisive factor in determining election outcome. No academic is denying that it still exists though.
What we discover is that local level elections tend to be most involved with vote-buying as voters have no other external reason to differentiate between candidates. At national elections, vote-buying has reduced drastically, however, because people have reasons to make deliberate decisions.
The problem with reformers who want to reduce the number of elected MPs and elections is that these members of the junta-appointed National Reform Council can't explain whom and which group in society an unelected body represents. History has shown that elections are not flawless but there's nothing better.
My comments : The best case scenario is that the reform would succeed in strengthening checks and balances and reduce political monopolization. The worst case scenario is that it would end up creating political monopolization by another group and there would not be any checks and balances. Under this latter scenario, Thailand would be trapped in a cycle of military coups and in developing country reforms. So, it depend on thai people's mind what you will believing about this situation.
Being translated, please wait..