Thailand and its hybrid authoritarianism | Bangkok Post: opinion

Although she has been granted bail, the second arrest of Prachatai Online webmaster Chiranuch Premchaiporn on Friday exposes Thailand's solidifying "soft" civil-military authoritarianism. Such authoritarianism is "soft" because it is tailored for the globalisation age where domestic legitimacy and international credibility matter more than in past eras of outright military-authoritarian rule. This decidedly nuanced and disguised authoritarianism thus revolves around a necessary hybrid of a civilian democratic facade with a military spine.

Ms Chiranuch's case is merely symptomatic of this hybrid authoritarianism. Her first arrest transpired in early 2009 on charges of allowing offensive comments on Prachatai's web board in violation of Section 112 of the Criminal Code and the 2007 Computer Crimes Act. This time around, similar charges appear to have been filed by an individual, whose identity is unclear, in Khon Kaen province. Ms Chiranuch was ironically booked at Suvarnabhumi airport and taken by car to Khon Kaen after returning from a European international conference on internet freedom.

What her legal saga portends is growing censorship and selective persecution of those who are deemed to harbour the wrong thoughts. Freedom of expression in Thailand is an endangered commodity. To be sure, Prachatai is left-leaning in a country whose powers-that-be are shifting even more to the right. But Prachatai is no more to the left than its myriad counterparts in other countries that are receptive to dissenting opinions and open to fair comment and criticisms of the status quo and conventional wisdom.