It has been widely translated as “Thainess”. But “Thainess” may not be accurate when describing Thai Niyom, Prime Minister Prayut Chan-o-cha’s latest catchphrase and sort-of policy. The correct term in English, I propose, should be “Thaiism”, just like populism ( Pracha Niyom), nationalism ( Chat Niyom), conservatism ( Anurak Niyom), authoritarianism ( Amnat Niyom), or alcoholism, you know, the excessive use of alcohol to drown out grief and the pain of broken promises.
What is Thaiism? Officially, it’s a plan to uplift the well-being of the people and eradicate poverty in a sustainable manner, and such ambitious goals can be achieved through … through what? That’s not clear, and that lack of clarity is precisely the essence of Thaiism: the excessive use of Thai instinct, Thai improvisation, Thai vagueness, Thai rhetoric, and Thai mental acrobatics to turn fiction into reality.
In a week when a rare black panther was butchered and the notorious Timepiece Collector receded from the headlines, the PM had an important meeting with chairman of the US joint chiefs-ofstaff Joseph F Dunford Jr. The two military men discussing war games and cooperation, Cobra Gold and anti-terrorism. But politics was the subtext, and Gen Prayut proudly announced to Gen Dunford he would pursue a “Thailand First” policy, a variation of President Trump’s bumpersticker tagline. Meanwhile the timing of the poll, the PM said, “will be determined by me and legal procedures.” As if they weren’t the same thing anyway.
The PM also said that Thailand is moving towards “true democracy”, that the timeline and the roadmap have been kept, and that we don’t need to use the same methods as the US in solving problems.
That sounds like a bunch of Thaiisms to me – an excessive deployment of the justification that we’re unique and thus operate above all recognised rules or concepts. Maybe it’s something worse than Thaiism: absolutism, chauvinism, despotism. The PM who claims the sanctity of law and constitution still wields Thor’s Hammer of Section 44, the one law that rules them all. Exceptionalism? No, diabolism is more like it.
To promote Thai Niyom, the PM will send 7,800 teams – soldiers, social workers, local leaders – to meet people in order to listen to their problems and find a way to solve them. Making us wonder if that’s not the job of the government anyway, regardless of Thai Niyom or any other fancily-coined term. Gen Prayut, oblivious to the implication of such dubious idealism, compares his plan to what China does by sending a few million state officials to “talk to people” and fix their woes. China, of all places, listening to its people, really? The 7,800 Thai Niyom squads will be tiny compared to what China does, but we can see that the analogy actually makes sense, in a disturbing way.
Delaying the election and yet at the same time dispatching his people to “talk to the citizens” sounds cheeky at best and unabashedly populism at worst. And we thought the regime hate that term made so popular by You Know Who. The PM insisted many times he has no intention of planting the seed that will ensure the extension of his power, that the Pracha Niyom scheme is geared towards the benefit of the people. We’ve heard that a million times, and in another world, it might have sounded convincing. But the straight-faced flip-flopping on the election date is cavalier, and the increasingly frequent signals that the general is likely to metamorphose into a politician, with the backup being legally engineered, only ruins any credibility he still has left. And that’s not much in the first place anyway.
The vow that we’re moving toward “true democracy” is probably that most Thai of Thaiisms. It’s meaningless coming out of politicians and even worse coming out of a coupmaker (think of a hunter who says he loves wild animals but has one stewed in a pot; we’ve heard that a lot this week). Thaiism in this day and age also means intolerance to criticism, and that’s no way to achieve democracy, true or fake. The cynical charges dished out at peaceful protesters at the Pathumwan Skywalk, the summonses sent to academics, the scrutiny and possible censorship of political satire planned by students – all of this sounds like a bad joke to the declaration of “Thailand first” and “true democracy”.
Assigning it a proper definition, Thaiism (or Thainess, mind you) should in fact be a positive word: it should mean our ability to adapt, to appropriate foreign elements and make it local without bastardising the original spirit. It should mean our ability to be excessively resilient, to weather the hardship through hard work and stubbornness, through smiles and if necessary through luck. It should mean action and not rhetoric, truth and not lies, reality and not fiction. Wake me up then.