Wikileaks: King, Thaksin and “democracy”

PPT hasn’t posted on any Wikileaks material for a while, and it is time to get back to the cables. In this cable, dated 18 May 2006, U.S. Ambassador Ralph L. Boyce looks at the deeper meanings of the political struggle going on in Thailand and the future of democracy as the king intervened in April 2006 to eventually have an election annulled by the courts. For more background, see the important cable by Boyce on the very same day.

He begins with a clear statement:

At issue is not just who will be the next prime minister. Rather, this is a confrontation between different models for Thai society, playing out in the struggle between the beloved King, and all he represents, and the popular prime minister, and what he portends. Right now, the momentum is running against Thaksin [Shinawatra], who may have to pay a high price for his hubris. But in the longer run, the King is old and the Thailand he represents is changing.

While Boyce’s royalism is clearly showing in this loaded set of words, he at least sees the real nature of the political struggle between the nostalgic past and the less certain future. He continues on the king, presenting the royalist and palace position:

On the one hand, the King represents traditional Thai values: respect for age and authority, moderation, modesty, and Buddhist values. He is the father of the people, his country is the Thailand of the rice farmers. He champions “sufficiency economy,” in which people eschew debt and dreams of quick riches, and instead build their lives around honest labor and prudent investment. Pictures of him are everywhere in the country, iconographic images often showing him with the elderly, the poor, and children.

He then returns to the idea of an era past:

On the other hand, to some the King represents an old and perhaps out-dated order. His periodic interventions in Thai politics may, as in 1992, have had a positive influence, but he has also supported military governments and condoned their human rights abuses in the past. Governments come and go, but the King has been there since before most Thai were born. Knowing this to some degree discourages the Thai from taking the training wheels off their democracy, building strong institutions and relying on them, instead of the monarch, to unify their nation and defend their rights.

Just as footnotes, it remains debatable whether the1992 intervention was positive and Benjamin Zawacki at Amnesty International might want to revise his own royalist ideas on the king and human rights as expressed at the FCCT in May 2011, where he claimed the king was a force for better human rights.

Thaksin is seen to represent a “modern political and economic order. He is decisive, not risk-averse, confident about himself and about Thailand’s place in the world.” Thaksin is seen to represent all that is big and bold about capitalism in Thailand: “He tells the rural people to do what he did — borrow money, think big, leave behind your rural roots, play the system, and strike it rich.” This was Thaksin’s “war on poverty.” It made him exceptionally popular.

Boyce then explains that “to some people Thaksin represents everything that is wrong with development in southeast Asia.” PPT guesses he means himself and his yellow-shirted interlocutors.

He is greedy, corrupt, inherently undemocratic under his facade, (did we mention corrupt?), conceited and self–promoting. In his heart, he defers to no one — not to age, not to Buddhist hierarchy, and not to the King.

Not to appeared to pissed by Boyce, we might add that his own democratic country, engaged in two wars and was torturing suspects at the time, seemed to treat democracy as little more than a facade….

Boyce is not completely against Thaksin’s role:

He introduced many positive aspects to Thai politics: his party had a platform that attracted rural voters, and he kept many of his promises to them, introducing the 30 baht health scheme and cheap credit for farmers.

He adds, though, that

the cost was high – a Prime Minister who, in the end, disdains many of the key features of a democracy, such as a free press and civil society, and was eager to grasp power more openly and greedily than any civilian PM before him.

Boyce reckons that the conflict has bubbled along for several years. But with the courts being asked to “demolish the April parliamentary elections and attempt to dismantle Thaksin’s political machine.” He is apparently gleeful that “there is a very good prospect that TRT will be dissolved and the party leaders, including Thaksin, banned from politics for five years.” He was wrong on the particular instance but right on the outcome, that had to wait for the illegal coup in 2006 and its dubious legal processes.

On Thaksin’s political future, Boyce says:

The King is 78. Even if “the worst” happens — Thaksin is banned for five years, or truly cannot return until the King dies — he knows he has time to make a comeback. He has cultivated a good relationship with the Crown Prince, expected to take the throne upon his father’s death. He is enormously rich. Thaksin cannot be counted out for the long term, whatever happens over the next few months.

That is an adequate summary and Thaksin’s “comeback” has been seen and stalled once already. Another is on the cards, and the royalists are fuming.

Boyce then goes on to admit again that what PPT would call the myth of the “King’s Thailand” composed “of poor but honest rice farmers is slipping into history.” It wasn’t ever there; it was the self-fulfilling myth of monarchy and elite. But Thaksin and his support had shown the myth for what it was, and this was galling for the royalists and the old men around the palace.

The U.S. Ambassador then moves to a People’s Alliance for Democracy-like account of how the attack on the most popular elected government in Thailand’s history was a victory for the democratic process. He is almost laudatory of PAD when he says:

Many Thai intellectuals view the current crisis philosophically, and feel that the democracy here will be strengthened by what has happened. In particular, the vigor with which the courts have taken on the entrenched power of the ruling party is unprecedented and encouraging. The Peoples’ Alliance for Democracy and opposition political parties have taken to the country road to try to bridge the perception gap on Thaksin and his policies between the city and the countryside, an important step to building broader support for real democracy.

Of course, this is nonsense, but Boyce was mainly hearing from PAD-aligned intellectuals. He seemed unable to see that a coup was around the corner. The idea that PAD and the Democrat Party were having an influence in the countryside – he means the north and the northeast – has been demolished in every election that has been permitted. PAD was simply dismissive and demeaning when referring to rural voters.

At this point, it is clear that Boyce has seen the real nature of the political conflict but remains under the spell of PAD rhetoric.