As the people change, so too does politics

As the people change, so too does politics

Can Thailand rise above political conflicts? We first have to understand what kind of conflicts we are facing. When talking about conflicts, we tend to think about those between individuals or institutions. This is not what we have at hand.

A protester with a white mask at an anti-government rally last month. A more just political space can help Thailand surmount political conflicts. THITI WANNAMONTHA

The conflicts our society are facing come from unprecedented economic and social changes, both in depth and breadth.

In the past 30-40 years, Thai society has gone through dramatic changes. Although our education system has many flaws, we cannot deny more people than ever before now have access to education. There are now more people working in the industrial and service sectors than in the agricultural sector. Thailand is therefore no more a primarily agricultural country.

In the past decade, the income of workers in the industrial and service sectors has increased by 74.4%. We can say Thais, for the most part, are no longer poor. They also have more access to information. Most families now have TVs in their homes.

Amid such overwhelming changes which expose them to more risks, people want the state to reduce uncertainties in their lives. This is because the old mechanisms which reduced risks in traditional society have all but disappeared. Citizens now need the government to protect them from risks and to provide them with some guarantees.

But the ability of the modern Thai state to do so is not very high. Firstly, it is because the political system is not conducive for a new set of risk-protection mechanisms. With top-down centralisation and no decentralisation, it is difficult to pressure local authorities to provide protection at a local level.

Secondly, the country's transition into an industrial and service society is not a meaningful one. To start with, 94.2 % of Thai industry is comprised of small factories. Without labour unions, how can they have bargaining power? The government also does not know how to help amid rising economic uncertainties.

The educated middle class also faces more risks from the expansion of neo-liberalism. This is not true only for Thailand, but the whole world. The inability to curtail inflation, for example, has effectively reduced their savings. Worse, the government no longer wants to provide protection guarantees for savings.

Higher education which used to be accessible to ordinary people has also become privatised, or semi-privatised, which has steadily made it more expensive.

All these changes have led to the conflicts that run much deeper than differences between individuals or institutions. Although there have been several attempts to discuss political reform, the prevailing social environment is still largely resistant to change.

All past political reforms since King Rama V have something in common _ they might have led to great changes in many aspects, but one thing they all want to preserve is the existing social hierarchy.

Meanwhile _ be it out of necessity or ingenuity _ the Thai elites have been flexible enough to incorporate new players into their system. For example, during the reign of King Rama V, the newly educated joined the bureaucracy. They were new players. Although they might have faced some discrimination stemming from the belief that the officials should come from genteel families, but they were eventually co-opted by the system.

After 1932, I think there was even more ingenuity to incorporate new players into the elite class. During the Sarit Thanarat regime, the strongman shut down political space. But he opened up vast opportunities for social mobility.

It is the same with the Oct 14 Uprising of 1973. White-collar professionals had important roles in opening up society. Freedom became like a religion. But their numbers were still relatively small.

In the past, the number of new players who could move up the social ladder was not large, which is the opposite of what is happening now.

Now we have groups of people who want to be part of political bargaining and national policy-making because they need the state more to set policies for them. These groups of people have two distinct characteristics. First, their numbers are massive. Second, they are pah thuen (uncultured).

During the Oct 14 Uprising, the main drivers were university students who had been subjected to a systematic socialisation process to accept the social hierarchy of power in Thai culture.

But today's political players are different. They do not know the "high" and "low" in social strata. They do not pay attention to it. Yet they want to have equal participation in public policy making to those who operate in the social hierarchy. Political readjustment is more difficult than before, and not possible if we continue to resort to the old method of trying to incorporate new elements into the old system.

It is difficult to rise above political conflicts. But if we can cross over the current obstacles, Thai society will experience monumental changes. The old social hierarchy will never be the same again because it is no longer deemed acceptable.

Before, we talked about freedom, but not equality. The new players want to be part of the system, and on an equal basis with others.

Many countries have failed to rise above their conflicts and ended up in chaos and bloodshed. Can Thailand make it?

Many people now want to move toward a more acceptable social and political environment. But this is where the difficulties lie.

The crucial factor that will enable us to rise above the conflicts is the available political space. When we talk about reform, political reform is normally the last thing people think about. No one is talking about fair distribution of power.

I believe we can go beyond the current conflicts if there is sufficient political space for rising conflicts to be worked out.

It must be a space with fair bargaining power, where no one is gaining or losing too much, and with fair mediators. We must have a judiciary the people can trust and which does not sway with colour-coded politics.

We need to create a political space that is fair and just.


Nidhi Eoseewong is a professor of history, and a writer and columnist. The article is a translation of his talk entitled 'Rising above conflicts in transitional Thailand', organised by the Thailand Information Centre for Civil Rights and Investigative Journalism.

Do you like the content of this article?
COMMENT