Mark Teufel interviews Ji Ungpakorn

Giles Ji Ungpakorn

A couple of days ago journalist Mark Teufel completed an interview with Giles Ji Ungpakorn. PPT is pleased to be able to provide readers with the English-language text, lightly edited by us:

MT: Ji, thanks for this interview. Since last year we had little contact. I would like to ask you some personal questions before speaking about development since the end of last year, if you will allow me.

GJU: Yes, I am happy to answer.

MT: A British journalist, Andrew Spooner, gave up on blogging about Thailand, because his family had been put under massive pressure. He was not the first one. We remember what happened to CNN’s Dan Rivers and the BBC’s Jonathan Head. How about your family, are you haunted by “loyalists”?

GJU: Well, I am over here in Britain, and my wife is here. And before I left Thailand, my son had already come over with his mother, and so really the only family member I have left in Thailand is my older brother Jon, and he is not considered to be linked to my political activity. We feel very safe in Britain, because the Thai authorities can’t touch us here, and so safety isn’t really an issue for us right now.

MT: As far as I understand your political ideas, you embrace very much the ideas of Karl Marx. But some people say, you are a communist, worse, they say, you are a “republican communist”. May be, in a few words, you could explain the difference between your political beliefs and communism [as it is widely understood]?

GJU: Yes, sure…. As far as Marxists like me are concerned, there are two kinds of Marxism or Socialism, if you like. One is what we call “Socialism from above” imposed either by Stalinist regimes like those that used to exist in Eastern Europe or Russia or China, or even a kind of socialism that … [is claimed by] a few Members of Parliament in a capitalist parliamentary democracy. That’s what we would call “Socialism from above,” but as Marxists we would argue that, really, Socialism has to be the act of the majority of ordinary working people. So we are in favour of “Socialism from below.” I am a Trotskyist, because Trotsky had a consistent opposition to Stalinism and dictatorship that occurred around the communist world. I come from a different tradition to the communist parties that people know about really.

MT: Coming back to your homeland, Thailand. Many people did not believe that elections would be held on time. Nevertheless, there has been a relatively fair election on July 3rd of this year. What is your theory, why suddenly, only 12 months after the bloody crackdown of protestors, who demanded elections, the government allowed fresh elections?

GJU: Well I think they would have had real problems if they haven’t held the elections when they did, because that was when the time of parliament ran out and Abhisit was about trying to claim that he was a legitimate Prime Minister through the due process of law. Which of course we know it wasn’t, because he was installed by the military after they got the judges to dissolve PPP. So if they would have postponed the elections from this year and pushed forward to another four years into the future, it would have been very difficult to justify that. They would have basically have to say that really they were involved in a military dictatorship. So in some ways I wasn’t that surprised. The reason they killed 90 people in order not to allow elections last year, was actually try to brake the red shirts, that movement. Even they planned to hold the elections a year later, I think that was the significance why they gunned down nearly 90 unarmed protestors last year.

MT: And after the elections, it seemed, that the Army Chief as well as the rest of the Ammart had accepted the defeat. What, do you think, was the reason for the restraint?

GJU: Now I wondered whether they would use all sorts of tricks and and cheating in the elections. And in some ways they did try to influence the elections when the head of the army made speeches against a Pheu Thai government and accused Red Shirts and Pheu Thai of being pro-republican and also terrorists. The media was obviously still controlled in the main by Abhisit and the Government.

MT: But it backfired. If we take the speech from Gen. Prayuth where he was linking the Pheu Thai to terrorists and the Democrat Party to the palace and saying that the voter can vote for or against the monarchy. Because the voters did not choose the Democrat Party, they did not choose the monarchy, if we follow Prayuth’s arguments.

GJU: Yes, you are absolutely right, his political judgment is questionable. It heavily backfired against them, because in some ways they underestimated the real grass roots support for Thai Rak Thai, or Pheu Thai, the Red Shirts. And in the way they tried to [use] propaganda … the evil [ones] are the Red Shirts, they couldn’t actually stop people voting for them. And … I was surprised by the land slide victory. I thought it would be perhaps a small victory. But this was a real landslide, and it proved really that the red shirts had enjoyed the support of the majority from the Thai population all through the crisis since 2006 coup.

MT: Now we see that the new government is not acting really very differently from the last one, concerning human rights, especially lèse majèsté. And concerning the democratic reform of the constitution. People say that Yingluck made a deal with the Ammart, allowing her to govern for two years, if she does not touch the army, lèse majèsté and the constitution. Do you think this could be the truth?

GJU: We don’t know whether there is a formal agreement or it is an informal agreement or whatever. But it appears to me, now, that the present government has decided that it will not touch the power and influence of the Army, and will not sack Prayuth, even [though] he has behaved [in] what I regard as an unconstitutional way in a democracy. They will not question the role of the Army in the society or in the media, they haven’t done anything to change censorship, and they are going to apply the lèse majèsté even in a harsher and stronger manner. And that indicates to me that they are trying to prove that they are not the enemy of the Army and the royalist elite. And, in a way, that’s how they are hoping they will not be opposed by the Army. I mean the Army just couldn’t stage a coup the day after the elections; that would have being completely disastrous. But I think what we are seeing is that the Army and the elite have held their positions and Pheu Thai is making terrible compromises. And it looks like they may well be going to knife the Red Shirts into the back. Because, I mean, what really matters to the Red Shirts right now are things like the release of all political prisoners, and stopping all cases in court. It is good many were released on bail, but we need to get these political cases against Red Shirts completely scrapped. That’s one thing the Red Shirts are really concerned about. The other thing is that those people who ordered the killing of unarmed Red Shirts last year must be brought to justice. And, for me, that means people like Prayuth, Anupong, the military, and Abhisit and Suthep, from the Democrat Party. It doesn’t look like the Government is going to seriously deal with these issues.

MT: Foreign observers are unsure whether Yingluck will be able to control the red shirts if she doesn’t start to deliver some more justice. She does not seem to challenge the inviolability of the security forces; she even enhances the lèse majèsté hunt. Do you think the red shirts might start to protest against Pheu Thai? And, observers say that the voters voted for Pheu Thai mainly to punish the military. Will the voters be disappointed because Pheu Thai is making friends with the Army?

GJU: Absolutely, yes. I mean, if you look at their pre-election program, Pheu Thai had nothing of substance to actually solve the Thai political crisis. They said nothing about the need to reform the Army or reform the judiciary in a roots and branch manner. They said nothing about bringing state killers to justice. In fact they said the opposite. “We are not going to attack the other side, we are not going to get even”. And the dilemma is really, that in reality, as you said, the reason why the Pheu Thai got elected by an overwhelming majority is because Red Shirts voted for Pheu Thai in order to slap the face of the military and the Democrat Party. And so there is a really sharp question being posed to the Red Shirt movement right now, and this is: will they really just cheer to the Pheu Thai government without any criticism … Are they going to allow people like Deputy Prime Minister Charlerm Yumbamrung, who is incidentally a really horrible gangster type politician, … are they going to allow him to say to Red Shirt Leaders to cool it, do nothing, are they going to allow that? Or are they going to sit down and discuss the problem they face and the real need to carry on building an independent social movement, independent of Pheu Thai?

MT: Do you think the Red Shirts will stand up against Pheu Thai?

GJU: What we have to consider is that the Red Shirts at the moment are in flux. On the one hand, there will be feelings like that is our government, we have won the elections, give the Yingluck government some time. On the other hand, there will be people feeling, well we can’t mobilize against the government, we shall protect the government against a military coup, or whatever attacks that the Yellow Shirts or the elite will organize. And then there will be other people who will be thinking, well you know, hang on, this government is only in power because the Red Shirts voted for them, and they have to take notice of that somehow. All these feelings are mixed up among the Red Shirts. And different people will lean in a particular direction. The problem is that we really do need the most progressive, … the people who really push for reform, … they need to get organized. Because, if there isn’t that organization to argue with people who want to give the government a chance, allow the red shirt leaders to cool down the movement. If we allow that, [it] really means splitting the Red Shirt movement in some way. If we do not do that [organize the more progressive movement] there won’t automatically be a struggle. And, when there isn’t a struggle, people will become demoralized, cynical and so on.

MT: Do you think there could be a split of Pheu Thai?

GJU: I think that ultimately if we are going to push for genuine democracy in Thailand, we do need a much more progressive party than the Pheu Thai. PT is not even as progressive as Thai Rak Thai, but Thai Rak Thai was problematic anyway. I think we need more than a party run by big business which has some pro-poor policies, but has terrible politicians like Chalerm and so on. There are of course PT members of parliament who are the leaders of the Red Shirt movement like Nathawut Saikua or Jatuporn Prompan, people like that are much more progressive, but their room to maneuver inside PT is very limited. And they can either be pulled by the top leadership of PT or pulled by the Red Shirt movement. But the Red Shirts movement would need to mobilize and have clear demands in order to keep people like Nathawut on the track. I think, in the short term, if splitting PT means that members of parliament would also split, you would have people say this is just allowing the opposition to take control of the government. So, in the short term, what would be much more important is to build a core of progressive people within the Red Shirt movement who are prepared to split with PT…. I think that is the key issue right now.

MT: Do you see any chance for a new left-leaning political party?

GJU: I think that the more progressive Red Shirts who want to bring the Army leaders to Justice, the Democrat leaders to justice, the leaders who ordered the killing, the people who want to scrap lèse majèsté and to push for a more democratic society. They will not be all left wing, I mean it will be made up of a coalition of people who will regard themselves as liberals, or socialists, or whatever. It doesn’t mean that this has to be left leaning. On the other hand there is a misunderstanding in Thai society and the more progressive Red Shirts. That more liberalism will lead to more democracy in Thailand. Liberalism is very strange in terms of practicality. I mean the liberal intellectuals in Thai society supported the coup d’etat in 2006. The Democrat Party and the military actually support more free market and economic policies than the Pheu Thai or Thai Rak Thai or Thaksin who finally realized that he had to mix free market with Keynesian policies in order to intervene in the market. I think there is a lot of confusion. People think the old elite is somehow against the free market. In fact it is the opposite. But, nevertheless, I think that there will be people who don’t regard themselves as socialists, and may be even the majority of the people in the Red Shirt movement who want real democracy are not thinking of themselves of socialist. They will think of themselves as liberals. But it is very important we get together people who believe very strongly that we cannot sit around and allow the PT to destroy the aspirations of the Red Shirt movement.

MT: Everybody agrees that salaries must be increased and low income groups must be supported in order to reduce the income and wealth gap. But some arrangements smell strange. For example the rumor that income tax will be reduced from 30 to 23% while the minimum wage is still not  decided and agreed on. What do you think about these political projects?

GJU: I think that the proposal to increase the minimum wage throughout the country is long overdue and it’s very important. And it’s quite important to note, that a quite a few employers actually feel they could afford it.

MT: Even Korn [Chatikavanij] said, it is necessary …

GJU: Yes, and I mean, you can see this, because increasing salaries will stimulate the economy and also it is a process by which a country can move a rung up the ladder, from a low wage, unskilled economy to a higher waged, skilled economy. And I think that there are many capitalists or capitalist politicians who recognize something that … like places like Singapore and so on. But there are contradictions because, in the same time they are saying this, it looks like they are backpedaling.… They are saying, well,  may be we only increase the minimum wage in 7 provinces to begin with. And when that will happen, who knows. And, at the same time, they are trying to reduce the income tax for the rich. This is classical for a party which is capitalistic like Pheu Thai or Thai Rak Thai, which actually tries to win over a section of the population who are ordinary workers or small to medium farmers. There are these contradictions going on and the only way you can put pressure on this government to deliver the minimum wage is if the labour movement comes out and protests. And, really what I would like to see is the labour movement joining hands with the more progressive parts of the Red Shirts and pushing together for social justice, economic justice, and bringing the killers of Ratchaprasong from last year to justice as well.

MT: Surapong Subwonglee in 2008 and Abhisit in 2009 were speaking about a land tax. But nothing happened. I did not find any information in the PT political agenda. Will there ever be such a tax?

GJU: I hope there will be, but I don’t think that this is going to be delivered by the PT if PT is left to determine policy on its own. They are just paying lip service. They know that this is a real issue, they know that there is great inequality in Thailand, but they have no intention to do anything about it. And, I mean, that’s not really very surprising. Korn comes from a very rich capitalist family, Thaksin Shinawatra went to great length to reduce his tax, some would say tax avoidance, that’s in their interest. And I think the people who talk about progressive tax, a land tax and so on, are also talking about the need of building a welfare state in Thailand. Another thing to consider is whether the issue of land tax will affect the palace; the holdings the royal family have. And so it would be a really require root and branch change in Thai society. But that doesn’t mean it can’t happen. It means that we have to mobilize in order to push for this.

MT: If the Pheu Thai fails to deliver the urgently needed reforms. What might be the next development?

GJU: It is difficult to predict the future.… At the moment either the progressive red shirts will get together and will mobilize to put pressure on the government; that would be one scenario. Another is that the Red Shirt movement is too weak to do that and people become demoralized and cynical. And when this happens, when the next elections take place, PT might not win. Or even before unprincipled politicians like Chalerm change side, or anyone else, then the government will fall and no one will come to help.

MT: Ji, thank you for this interview. Do you have any private plans you could tell us without hurting your privacy? Many people might be interested. Because you have a lot of farang fans, who highly respect your sharp analysis….

GJU: I would like to return to Thailand in order to carry on my role as an academic, to lecture and so on. That is very unlikely, unless the lèse majèsté law is scrapped. But the more urgent reason, why the lèse majèsté law has to be scrapped is because there are people, innocent people, in prison right now. People like Somyot and many, many others. They need to be released from prison. In the short term, I see my role as trying to encourage the more progressive Red Shirts to do something about this government. To discuss the way forward. And part and parcel of that is to have a clear analysis of what we are facing. A clear analysis of the nature of the royalist elite. The role of the Army, the role of the palace.

MT: Thanks, and hope next time we speak we can speak in Thailand.

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