On the incapacity for political learning

There are several common positions held on what has happened in Thailand since 2001 or since the 2006 coup, whichever is seen as the “major turning point” in Thai politics.

One position that we kind of like is that the combination of economic crisis, new constitution and the resulting advance of electoral politics saw Thaksin Shinawatra and his Thai Rak Thai Party “sleepwalking into history,” [clicking opens a PDF] offering national political-electoral platforms that came to be seen as a challenge to the royalist status quo. Voting for a party that promised and delivered opened people’s eyes to the possibilities offered by electoral politics that far exceeded the old “money politics” model.

From our perspective, this is not an outcome we expected at the time Thaksin was first elected. We’re pretty sure that Thaksin didn’t expect it either, hence our pilfering of Jakrapob Penkair’s emphasis on “sleepwalking.” Nor did Thaksin imagine that the palace and associated elements of the capitalist and royal hangers-on elite would find his politics such a challenge. That opposition pushed Thaksin even further to so-called populism and a political alliance with voters in rural and working class electorates.

For an academic account that tells some of this story, download this PDF by Pasuk Phongpaichit and Chris Baker.

Another perspective is one that hasn’t changed at all since about 2003-4. The Nation reports on a “Senate-organized seminar.”  In  fact, the “seminar” was little more than an opportunity for the incandescently bright yellow “group of 40 senators” who are mostly appointed junta spawn senators to “explain” an unchanged perspective on Thai politics that refuses to learn from events and elections or to admit that people have changed.

While Thaksin might have sleepwalked, this lot have been asleep at the wheel.

It seems that the unelected lot want “independent candidates be allowed to join the electoral race as a way to counter parliamentary dictatorship.” The latter terminology reflects the incapacity for any clear thinking on elections. Essentially, they refuse to believe that every election since 2000 has returned a pro-Thaksin government has anything to say about the mood of the electorate or the electorate’s refusal to accept coups, whether judicial or military.

One of the “panellists” was “former senator Chirmsak Pinthong.” Chirmsak once collected some valid criticisms of Thaksin in government but since has become caught up with the People’s Alliance for Democracy and a personal hatred of Thaksin. Back in 2010, he was howling about “civil war” and suggesting that Thaksin supporters are either paid by the tycoon or are traitors to the royal Thai state. As for those who were duped into voting for pro-Thaksin parties or into becoming red shirts, Chirmsak couples “the poor” with the “ignorant.” Like other right-wing intellectual Chirmsak remains so resolutely dismissive of many millions of his fellow citizens.

Hence, Chirmsak dismisses elections by talking of “a political party owned by an individual …[where the] party founders had no ideology and relied on their financiers to sustain the party.”  For Chirmsak – and he is absolutely logical and consistent in this –  the solution is appointed “independent MPs.”

Funny that, for his buddies organizing the “seminar” are appointed. And, they are “independent” of the ruling party. But they are the flunkies of the palace, military and every other hierarchical and unelected institution in the country.

Chirmsak’s position has been heard over and over again from those who hate the idea of the “poorer classes” having a say in government if that say doesn’t accord with their “betters” wishes. For this lot, people are best kept in their place and not heard too much. It is ever so much better if the toffs run the show.

Nothing has changed at all for the toffs who seem resolutely blind to change.