First published, in slightly abridged form without footnotes, in the April-June

2014 issue of Strategic Review at pages 108-117. The full text appears below.

Today a great struggle is being played out

in the streets of Bangkok: which coalition

shall control the fantastic instrument of

aggrandizement which is the Thai state?1

But when that struggle will have been

played out, bigger questions will remain.

A return to passable economic progress

hobbled by unstable coalition politics and

an internationally uncompetitive educa-

tional system? A return to earlier vigor

and innovativeness? A slide into an Ar-

gentinian or Marcos-era faux populism

ending in economic ruin?

Headlines focus on the turmoil but thelatter is what really matters.

We can gain insights by observing thefuture actions of important Thai figurescompared to the present and to the past.

Background to Today’s Street Drama

As it moved into the modern world ofinternational trade and then domesticeconomic development, Thailand’s strongadvantages formed the social and physicalcapital on which it now coasts during itspresent tribulations.

In the 19th Century authority, centralizedbut not overwhelmingly powerful, couldcollect revenue and direct investment andprograms to acculturate the differentregions to a point where cultural, regionaland religious divisiveness have not beenmajor hindrances as in many other coun-tries. Relatively low population densityreduced population pressures on the landsuch as existed in Vietnam and in Java.

The 1855 Bowring Treaty opening thenation to foreign trade, and its neverbecoming a colony, had the unanticipatedbut happy result of ensuring the interna-tional competitiveness of the Thai econo-my right up to the present day.

The Thai military held top positions ofauthority in decades up to the early ‘70s,but this did not impede substantial eco-nomic development, in part because theybrought in wise technocrats like Dr. PueyUngphakorn and Dr. Sanoh Unakul torender advice and to manage the econo-my. They welcomed foreign advisorsmany of whom, like economist ForrestCookson, took up long residence in thekingdom.

These military choices were in markedcontrast to the attitudes of several nearbycountries which chose to drive out edu-cated citizens, deprecate openness to for-eign thinking and foreign economic rela-tions and expel or severely disadvantageimmigrant Chinese who in Thailand weremost responsible for the vigor of its busi-ness sector.

Thailand is endowed with multiple naturalresources but not to the extent that itssociety and economy have become dis-torted by the “resource curse” as has hap-pened to Brunei and Indonesia.

The 1970s Challenge: Well Done

The success of economic developmentand spread of education and foreign con-tact brought new groups to influence inthe late ‘60s and early ‘70s leading to ten-

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sions with the dominant military/bureau-cratic coalition whose politically neuteredsilent partners and financiers were theSino-Thai business community.

At the same time there was rising con-cern in Bangkok about unrest amongsome hilltribe peoples in the North ofthe country and rebel activities in theNortheast, both under strong communistinfluence, about the impending defeat ofthe Americans in Vietnam, and about therising power of Communist China.

The result was great intellectual and polit-ical ferment, leading in 1973 to the col-lapse of the dictatorship of Field Mar-shals Thanom Kittikachorn and PrapatCharusathien and to their temporaryexile. Though still not powerful the risingforces were able to topple the militaryrulers due to their own genial incompe-tence aided by internal military divisionsat the top.2

The fall of the military unleashed an evenmore vigorous outpouring of ideas andactors, in all parts of the political spec-trum and even drawing in (and welcom-ing to the public debate) voluble foreign-ers like Peter Fedderson, then head ofContinental Grain Corporation’s Bangkokbranch, who did public battle over thethen extant rice export tax with BajrIsrasena, the head of the Internal TradeDepartment. In the area of internalsecurity Gerry Waller, a British subjectwith long Asian experience in dealingwith communist-supported rural unrest,was similarly active in brain-stormingwith other foreigners, with Thai civilian

experts like Dr. Somchai Rakwijit andwith many among the Thai military.

Journals of informed thought publishedarticles arguing for new approaches topublic issues, like the Thai Social Science

Revew, then edited by out-of-box thinkerand intellectual gadfly Pansak Vinyarat,later imprisoned by the military as athreat to national security after their 1976return to power. Even the English lan-guage newspapers published unusuallylengthy analytical pieces on the kingdom’sproblems and prospects.3 It was likeParis in 1848.

Three years of intellectual and politicalferment and civilian rule brought aboutlasting and substantial changes inThailand’s foreign relations and in therelationship between the Thai countrysideand its primate city Bangkok.

Central to these changes was the entryonto the public stage of new faces fromthe middle class like Dr. Krasae Chana-wong who founded the New Force Party,and Sino-Thai banker BoonchuRojanasathien and M.R. Kukrit Pramojwho together founded the Social ActionParty modelled on Singapore’s People’sAction Party. Thailand’s version of aRenaissance Man, Kukrit was a minorprinceling under Thailand’s system ofdeclining descent as shown by his titleabbreviated to M.R. He is best knownabroad from his portrayal of theSarkhanese prime minister in the 1963Marlon Brando film The Ugly American.

In creating the SAP Kukrit split off from

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the Democrats, who remained honorablecivilian opponents of military rule butdevoid of reform ideas. Kukrit on theother hand continued the tradition ofroyal involvement in rural uplift, like 1967Magsaysay Award winner Prince SittipornKridakara who is known affectionately asthe “father of Thai agriculture.”

In the perspective of 2014 several ele-ments of this period remain very impor-tant. First is the involvement of widesectors of the public (including foreignresidents) in the moves for reform ofeconomic policy toward the countrysideand toward the structures of public par-ticipation. Second is that these activeand vocal reformists included high-statuspersons like Boonchu4 and Kukrit.Third is that the king aligned himselfwith these reforming trends, encouragingstudents before the military’s 1973 over-throw and easing the transition in thefinal hours of the dictatorship by encour-aging Thanom and Prapat to chooseexile.5

The status and power changes during the1973-1976 period were too much formany to accept who had been disadvan-taged in those years, and they launchedthuggish movements to restore militaryrule, centering on a massacre of studentsat Thammasat University in October of1976. Twenty years of indecisive con-tention between civilian politicians andthe military now followed.

Apparently the king had second thoughtsabout his suppport of reform during the73-76 years, leading Kukrit himself to

write forcefully and publicly (in a 1977editorial in his Siam Rath newspaper) ofhis disappointment with the king, sig-nalling the beginning of an erosion ofroyal legitimacy as seen even by a staunchroyalist. Kukrit began his column by re-marking that people ask him frequentlyhow he knows about so many things andanswers with a long discussion aboutintrospection, which is the method ofattaining knowledge taught by theBuddha 2,500 years ago. Kukrit thenwrites:

“From looking within myself, I feelthat our country these days hasdrastically changed. Those of youwho are reading this column mayalso look within yourselves. Somevalue which we used to consider soaugust, is it still thus? My answer isone of indifference. I cannot careless whether it is august or not.

There formerly were some thingswhich were such an inspiration,arousing noble feelings in ourhearts and bringing tears to oureyes. Is it still thus? My answer isalso indifference. No such feelingsexist anymore.6

Though cloaked in vagueness andabstraction, the “value” to which herefers can be only the monarchy, becausehis words in Thai can be used only forthe king or for the Buddha himself—butKukrit has just remarked favorably on thewisdom of the Buddha.

Other groups in the military and in those

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surrounding the palace continued and in-creased efforts to reverse politicalreforms, leading many more among thepublic, not just a princeling intensely loyalto the throne, to express disappointmentwith the course of events runningcounter to widely felt needs for reform.

Succeeding years saw a complex interplaybetween military and civilian forces, sev-eral constitutions and coups d’etat andeven, surprisingly, substantial furtherecononomic and political liberalizationunder a military-installed but respectedcivilian leader, Anand Panyarachun.7

This period ended with the adoption in1997 of the country’s most progressiveconstitution, sometimes called thePeople’s Constitution due to the unprece-dented public participation in its drafting.

The Rise of the Shinawatra Clan

Many expected Thaksin Shinawatra to be-come a forward-thinking and public-spir-ited Sino-Thai in the tradition of Boon-chu Rojanasathien. His political launchwas certainly auspicious, from the PalangDharma (“Power of Righteousness”)Party. But his commercial intensity de-graded that party’s good image and finallydestroyed it, so in 1998 he founded hisown party, the Thai Rak Thai. Thaksinsurrounded himself with clever think-erslike Pansak and for the first time broughtto Thailand systematized political organi-zation and campaigning coordinated withprogrammatic appeals, which led to gen-uine rural uplift and inevitably to a suc-cession of electoral victories.

But while he and his advisers were con-ceiving and executing popular programsof inexpensive health care and “OneTambon One Product” rural develop-ment, they were also plotting big changesat the top. During the 2001-2006 periodof solid electoral power, the Thai RakThai machine began to dominate everysector of the economy and state onbehalf of Thaksin’s family and friends:banking, communications, media, foreignaffairs, the courts, the police. At the endthey were moving on the military and thelast bastion of resistance, the royal palace.While they did not reach the depths ofpresent-day Argentina, the direction wasclear.

In the Asian context, this was the samemodel as the Marcos crime family used intaking over the Philippines with the 1972declaration of martial law,8 except theShinawatras used the opening providedby the 1997 People’s Constitution.9 Butthe result was the same: their massiveenrichment, growing public unease at cor-ruption, abuse of power and the family’simpunity due to its domination of thelegal system, and final collapse due to aprovocative incident. In the case of Mar-cos, it was the assassination of BenignoAquino; in Thaksin’s case the sale usingcontroversial financial manipulations tosell shares of his telecom firm AIS toSingapore’s Temasek Holdings.

Just as Imelda Marcos continues to denyher family’s involvement in corruption(even though the Philippine governmenthas managed to claw back from Switzer-land over US$600 mn of stolen funds ),

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so Thaksin’s sister Yingluck continues todeny any motivation of corruption in herproxy government’s promotion of a riceprice support scheme.10 Her disregardof extensive official documentation ofthe corruption in pressing ahead with theprogram is one among the bill of particu-lars in the accusation against her of negli-gence in office.11

The 21st Century Challenge: Not Well

Done

Like the Marcos crime family, the Shina-watras began as champions of the com-mon man but ended as looters. Howeverthey dominate the reformist politicalspace with a faux populism responding toserious domestic stresses.

What is dramatically different now, compared to

the 1970s, is the stance of the kind of high-sta-

tus persons who are the natural opponents of the

Shinawatra clan. The Democrat Party hasremained true to its patrician oppositionmodel relying mainly for support onBangkok and its traditional popular basein the South but with no effectual appealto those at the bottom of the system inother regions. The party’s leadership is content with this status and with relyingon rabbits to be pulled out of a hat bythe military, the courts, the independentagencies, or street demonstrations. This isthe kind of attitude that inspired M.R.Kukrit to split off to form the SAP in the‘70s, but that has not happened now.Instead high-status or economically pow-erful figures have come together in abackward-looking and emotional move-ment centered on the symbolism of the

monarchy. That royal link was useful inthe ‘70s but alone insufficient. It tookreal programs and policies then and thesame will be true this time. In additionthe banked moral capital of the monar-chy is depleting as noted below.

A National Reform Committee, estab-lished in 2011 to develop proposals andheaded by Anand and famous Dr. PrawetWasi, has rendered a final report11 withone serious proposal (decentralization)and numerous other anodyne recommen-dations. But even for that it risksremaining a bureaucratic exercise ratherthan the property of hard-charging politi-cal reformers high in status or at leasthighly empowered. (Think Bismarck inPrussia or Magsaysay in the Philippines.)

This writer queried 17 high-status Thaifriends, the kind who would have beenleading the charge had they lived in themid-70s, why the Democrat Party is sofebrile and why none among their set hasstepped off the verandah at the RoyalBangkok Sports Club onto the politicalbattlefield. Only two provided substan-tive replies while most offered recusals,suggesting some (perhaps fatal) combina-tion of unease with the subject andabsence of insight.

Recent Bangkok press articles describethe emergence of a group of “Men ofState” (rathbukkhol), former high officials,to discuss the current conflict. The pub-lished images of their lunches, consistingmostly of septuagenarians, octogenariansand nonagenarians at Bangkok’s PoloClub, almost comically highlight the ab-

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sence of people in their 30s and 40s tocarry out the reform job that might bedone.13

In short, no rising, energetic, charismatic,powerful champions with vision, driveand genuine programs have emerged todo battle with the declining Shinawatraclan as did in fact emerge to do battlewith the declining military/bureaucraticcoalition in the ‘70s.

Other Very Big Issues

Thailand’s strong heritage of skilled man-agement, vision and conservative financeare easing the country’s path through thepresent turmoil. But four issues, move-ment on which can serve as leading indi-cators, are immensely important to thedirection which the kingdom will take.

The moral center of the kingdom The im-mense personal prestige of King Phumi-phon is easily attributed to his character:he has compassion from his mother (acommoner) and the common sense, in-formality and approachability of oneraised abroad among ordinary peoplewith the intention to be completely func-tional among them. It was never expect-ed that he would succeed to the throneand indeed his mother hoped to protecthim from that fate.

Equally true is that the king’s barami (Thaifrom the Sanskrit term for perfection)rests upon centuries of investment inmoral and social capital in the form ofTheravada Buddhism. Imbibing the val-ues of this faith has allowed the Thai to

live in relative peace compared to theirneighbors and it is this which builds anappreciation for the barami of a supremesymbol of national unity.

The importance which the ChakriDynasty has in the past assigned to thisaspect of rule can been seen in thefounding of the strict Thammayut orderof monks by King Phumiphon’s ancestorKing Mongkut (styled Rama IV), whoruled from 1851 to 1868 and was con-cerned with a decline in the purity of thedominant Mahanikaya order.14.

The Thai Sangha has been allowed todecline to a presently catastrophic state oflassitude, careerism, financial corruption,sale of merit and internal conflict inwhich some monks excoriate others as“threats to national security” while stillothers become famous from fortune-telling and the sale of amulets. Cam-paigning and lobbying bring high liturgi-cal offices. This writer has been up closeto many incidents of funding of Bud-dhist programs in which “leakage” hasfigured, or what would be called corrup-tion in a profane context. Tremendoussums pass though sanctified hands with-out effective financial accountability.These facts are not secret, evoking fre-quent and pointed condemnation in thepress.15

Foreigners raised in a secular traditionmay find this subject ineffable and ab-stract but like air it is central to the sur-vival of the Thai throne, the peaceabiltyof the Thai state and the welfare of theThai people. And of course to foreign-

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ers who aspire to deal with them.

The public presentation of the Crown Property

Bureau Forbes Magazine controversiallylists King Phumiphon as among theworld’s wealthiest monarchs16 by includ-ing both his personal property and theCrown Property, the latter being theassets (mainly land) seized from RamaVII in the transition from absolute toconstitutional monarchy in 1932. TheCrown Property Bureau which adminis-ters these assets, immune to externalaudit and legal accountability, is answer-able solely to the king himself. While noone questions the king’s personal integri-ty, it is well known that Thai kings (likekings everywhere) have struggled for cen-turies against irregularities in the manage-ment of their property. There is no rea-son to think the present generation ofmanagers differs.

Many who are devoted to the king as aperson of great merit waver in their alle-giance to those managing the throne onhis behalf, precisely because of the lackof transparency in the management ofthese enormous assets. One famous crit-ic, Professor Somsak Jeamteerasakul,researching CPB asset management, hasspoken of the contemptuous treatmenthe received. From an initial phone callto the CPB he was shunted from personto person, finally and unexpectedly end-ing up with a high personage on theother end of the line who casually dis-missed his enquiry with words to theeffect “Why would you want to knowthat?” Some even draw from this situa-tion an equivalency between Thaksin and

the king: both controlling enormous andnon-transparent fortunes above the law.

Allowing this kind of situation to existhas gravely damaged the standing of thethrone both in Thailand and abroad, sap-ping the enthusiasm of the public for thecentral unifying institution of the Thaistate.

On February 12 Professor Somsak’sBangkok home was fired upon by twogunmen while he was inside.17

Education The decreasing competitivenessof the Thai educational system will be-come a serious economic and then politi-cal issue with the coming closer integra-tion of the ASEAN countries and in par-ticular the transferability of professionalcertifications. In most countries the edu-cational establishment is a massive im-movable object and this is certainly truein Thailand. Its last significant enhance-ment was the general permission for Thaistudents to enrol in local international-curriculum schools, first permitted in the1990s. This has become a safety valvefor those at the top but the rest of thepopulation remains stuck in a systemwhose marginal performance will becomean increasing drag as the economy opensfurther.

It takes great resources of money and ofauthority to reform educational bureau-cracies. Now Thailand has neither.

Succession Just as he is responsible forbuilding the moral capital of the nation, aBuddhist monarch is obliged to prepare a

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successor exhibiting the Ten Kingly Vir-tues;18 otherwise his people are at risk ofturmoil. This is his final and most impor-tant task in the face of the inevitability ofpersonal passing but continuity of thestate.

The Thai look easy to rule but are not: ittakes great wisdom to succeed.

Many wonder whether a sealed envelopecontains instructions superseding the cur-rent designation of heir apparent, as hap-pened for example in the accession ofthe present Aga Khan.19

The Current Turmoil and the End

Game

Thaksin’s appeal to his pragmatic sup-porters is not fixed and eternal. Forexample his rural supporters cheered himas long as the cash was coming in fromhis ill-conceived rice price support pro-gram, which was destined to crash even-tually. But the political accident of theFebruary 2014 House dissolution pre-vented borrowing to maintain the publicillusion of soundness. As soon as thecash stopped, demonstrations against himpromptly started in the streets.

As frequent commentator ProfessorThitinan Pongsudhirak pointed out in awidely circulated article in February,“[T]he election on Sunday [February 2]was the first time a political party underthe control of former prime ministerThaksin Shinawatra failed to win out-right.”20 The Shinawatra clan are alsobeing pressed by the National Anti-

Corruption Commission, by the courts,and, gingerly, by the military. They havebeen weakened by their repeated poorjudgment not just in the rice price sup-port scheme which many economistswarned was fatally flawed, but also in abotched amnesty program, in electionstrategy, and in repeated well-documentedpro-corruption programs like public busprocurements.

Enormous restorative opportunities withhigh practical and symbolic impact existand it is not inconceivable that somegroup of high-status figures will jointogether to build a forward-looking ratherthan backward-looking movement. It hashappened before: rebranding after gen-uine rejuvenation. That would be animportant indicator.

Thailand No Longer a Special

Country? Some Indicators to Watch

for

Economic change and expanding com-munications are pushing Thailand to losethe enchantment (the term used by theGerman sociologist Max Weber) whichmade it such a special place and its poli-tics comparatively peaceful compared toits neighbors’. But it’s not an unstop-pable decline, provided that those on theway out in the royal family and amongthe commercial and traditional politicalelites wake in time from their slumbers.Otherwise Thailand’s special charm willmelt away and life there will become likelife elsewhere, empty of meaning andpurpose: one is born, stifles boredomwith sex, drugs, TV and trips to the shop-

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ping mall, then dies. At the same timepolitics becomes a vicious fight to thedeath (literally in places like Syria, figura-tively in places like Australia andAmerica). And where life is empty of

meaning, elections become nothing morethan (in Ambrose Bierce’s pellucid wordsand in Thaksin’s now collapsed rice pricesupport program) “an advance auction instolen goods.”

Footnotes

1 Jeffrey Race, “The Wheel of Life Turns at Rajprasong,” Bangkok Post May 23,

2007, downloadable at <http://madtomsalmanac.blogspot.com/2010/05/trying-

to-untangle-mess-that-is.html”>

2 Jeffrey Race, “Thailand 1973: ‘We Certainly Have Been Ravaged by Something,’ ”

Asian Survey XIV:2, February 1974, pp. 192-203, downloadable at

<http://www.jeffreyrace.com/document/as02_74.pdf>.

3 Jonathan Swift [pseud.], “What Now, Thailand?,” Bangkok Post, a series of five

feature articles published from March 30 through April 3, 1976.

4 In July of 1973, with Thailand still under a military dictatorship, Boonchu dared

to state publicly in an address to Ministry of Finance officials

“We all know what the result of [Thailand’s] developmental efforts have been: the

wealthy have been developed to greater wealth, while the poor are as poor as

ever . . . .” He added “It is well known that many of those who are responsible for

the administration of the nation’s business are lacking in personal rectitude.”

Full text at Bangkok Bank Monthly Review, 14:9 (September 1973) pp. 544-548.

5 The king’s statement appears in the Bangkok World issue of September 21, 1973.

Details of the overthrow of the military are recounted in the Asian Survey article

above.

6 Kukrit Pramoj, “Rice Far from the Ricefield” (in Thai) Siam Rath, August 13, 1977.

7 In a 2014 public statement Dr. Arthit Urairat gave some insight into the financial

motivation to be prime minister of Thailand. He stated that when he was House

Speaker in 1992 with the duty to propose a prime minister for the king’s approval,

he was offered 200 million baht (about US$8,000,000 at the time), as well as the

Ministry of the Interior (an extremely lucrative cabinet position), in exchange for

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nominating “a certain person.” He instead nominated Anand, now considered to have

been among the kingdom’s greatest prime ministers. See

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L_9tjYYbIZU> (in Thai) starting at minute 6.

8 Jeffrey Race, “Whither the Philippines,” Institute of Current World Affairs,

downloadable at <http://pws.prserv.net/studies/icwa/jef-23.pdf>.

9 Thanong Khanthong in his political analysis article “Thaksin Gambled and Lost

His Shirt” published in The Nation on October 2, 2006, asserts that Thaksin was

planning to declare martial law “to get rid of all his political opponents” in an

eerie echo of what Marcos actually did in the Philippines in 1972.

10 As reported in the Bangkok press on February 23, 2014.

<http://bangkokpost.com/opinion/opinion/396498/rice-politics-threatens-to-

sink-the-economy>.

11 “Corruption and Agricultural Market Intervention,” presented by Dr. Sirilaksana

Khoman at the Ethics and Executive Leadership Course, Sasin Graduate Institute

of Business Administration, Chulalongkorn University, October 30, 2013,

downloadable at <http://www.jeffreyrace.com/document/mors_d68.pptx>.

12 <http://en.nationalhealth.or.th/node/177> for an English summary. Full texts

in Thai appear at <http://v-reform.org/v-report/complete-documents-of-

national-assembly/>

13 <http://www.siamintelligence.com/man-of-state-member/>

14 <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dhammayutika_Nikaya>

15 Sanitsuda Ekachai (Editorial Pages Editor), “Sangha Feudal Hierarchy Has to

Go for Good,” Bangkok Post, October 30, 2013.

16 <http://www.forbes.com/sites/investopedia/2011/04/29/the-worlds-

richest-royals/>

17 In Thai at

<http://www.komchadluek.net/detail/20140212/178795.html#.UxQlqeOSwqM>

18 William J. Klausner, “Law and Society,” Thailand Law Forum, downloadable at

<http://www.thailawforum.com/articles/lawwilliam5.html>.

19 “[T]he family gathered in the drawing room to hear the reading of the will, which

had been brought in a locked case from Lloyds Bank in London” from “The Aga

Khan’s Earthly Kingdom,” Vanity Fair, February 2013

<http://www.vanityfair.com/society/2013/02/aga-khan-spiritual-leader-multi-

billionaire>

20 Thitinan Pongsudhirak, “Electoral Democracy Can Still Succeed”

<http://www.bangkokpost.com/opinion/opinion/393433/electoral-democracy-

can-still-succeed>