Kings Countries & Constitutions - SEA NIP

Kobkua Suwannathat-Pian

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2012
• ISBN:
  9781136002625
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politik & Internationale Beziehungen
• Subtopic: Politik

Providing a detailed analysis of Thailand's political development since 1932, when Thailand became a constitutional monarchy, until the present, this book examines the large number of different versions of the constitution which Thailand has had since 1932, and explains why the constitution has been subject to such frequent change, and why there have been so many outbursts of violent, political unrest. It explores the role of the military, and, most importantly, discusses the role of the monarchy, which, as the author shows, has been crucial in holding Thailand together through the various changes of regime. The author brings to light original and largely unseen documents from the Public Records Office and US National Archives, as well as drawing upon her extensive knowledge of politics in Thailand.

Part I

Analysis of Thai Constitutions

CHAPTER 1

Understanding Thai Democracy

FORM RATHER THAN SUBSTANCE

Much has been said about the failure of democracy in Thailand, which is symbolized by the existence of the political vicious circle.¹ There seems to be consensus among well-informed observers of Thai politics that a great measure of the responsibility for this unhappy development is squarely laid at the door of the military and the People’s Party. Yet even when the most-hyped version of democracy lauded by Pridi (the political ‘brain’ of the People’s Party and the 24 June 1932 revolution) and his supporters, was put in place as in 1946, it was quite clear that the essence of democracy as understood by the Western society was very much lacking.² The same could likewise be said of the Constitution drafted by the conservatives and royalists in 1949 which is oft-quoted and lovingly referred to as the most democratic version of all Thai Constitutions, perhaps with the exception of the 1997 Constitution. Thus far, a Thai version of democracy appears to be nothing more than a series of documents written to ensure the power and interest of those who affected its drafting. In fact Thai Constitutions may be used as evidence to support an ongoing power struggle among the various factions of its ruling élite since the version of 27 June 1932 was introduced. The Thai masses, who neither understood nor much cared about the intricacy of democracy, appeared only to function as uninterested lookers-on most of the time.

From a Western vantage, democracy is a political heritage that claimed its roots from the Greco-Roman cradle of civilization. Both Plato and Aristotle are recognized as the philosophical minds behind the basic democratic principles and process practised in the Western world today. From these two great political philosophers originate the two main elements of Western democracy: the principle of democracy (Plato); and the process of democracy (Aristotle).³ Basically, Plato provides the principle that good government is government that can give the most to individuals both for their physical and mental needs without jeopardizing the good of the commonwealth. The stress on the right of individuals to enjoy life to its maximal level became the primary principle of Western democracy – government that is best is government that least governs – became the prime objective of the state more or less until the second half of the nineteenth century, when the principle of individualism increasingly posed real and dangerous threats to the well-being of society as a whole. Individualism was then tempered by another great principle put forward by Jeremy Bentham and John Stuart Mill, the principle of utility that emphasizes egalitarianism or ‘the greatest happiness of the greatest number’. In short, the rights and liberty of an individual must be curtailed or qualified if they are to affect the well-being of others in the same society; it was then the duty of the state to provide some ground rules which would ensure the basic egalitarian rights (greatest happiness) to its citizens (greatest number).⁴ Thus the principle or purpose of democracy is for an attainment of the maximal interest of the people both as individuals and as a part of the whole/society. While Plato talks about a philosopher-king as a means to attain the aim of ‘democracy’, it is Aristotle who basically provides the process by which the principle of democracy could be obtained through individual participation of all members of society.⁵

It is evident that democracy as nurtured and developed in the West can never exist with only one of its main components in existence. Democracy is alive if and when both its principle and process are truly put into practice. The failure of the Thai democracy has, in spite of the reasons given by both scholars and politicians, mostly to do with the fact that, since its introduction by the People’s Party, democracy in Thailand concentrated almost entirely on process and very little indeed on principle or ideology of the system. Thus it came to pass that each time the country gave the appearance of the four main elements of the democratic process - a Constitution, political parties, Parliament and elections - it was generally accepted that the cause of democracy had been well served. For example, the 1933–1938 period, the 1946–1947 period and the 1972–1973 period. It is not surprising that, in such political situations, a written Constitution, regardless of its contents or its countless failures, becomes the first criterion for democracy in Thailand, even though it has been repeatedly proved that a Constitution, no matter how well it is written, offers no realistic resistance against those anti-democracy elements that rampage among the Thai ruling élite.

Examples are plentiful. King Prajadhipok, mindful of the fact that the days of the absolute monarchy were numbered, tried to take the democratic bull by the horns. In spite of his own belief that ‘a real democracy is very unlikely to succeed in Siam … [and] even be harmful to the real interest of the people’, the King was truly of the opinion that it was a ‘necessity’ that Siam must adopt democracy willy-nilly and ‘play that sort of game… sometime’.⁶ By taking initiatives and by launching a royal kind of political ‘reform’, Prajadhipok hoped to forestall first the irrational ‘majority of people’ who would through sentiment and not through rationality ‘clamour for a Parliament’. Second, and of more importance, was the royal desire to circumvent the rule of Western democracy and tailor it to the palate of the court and the ruling conservative élite.⁷ Judging from the draft Constitution submitted to His Majesty by the former American adviser, Francis B. Sayre/Phraya Kalayanamaitri which was rejected by the Supreme Council of State as being ‘unfit and undesirable’, this first-known version of a written Constitution was anything but ‘democratic’ either in form or in substance.⁸ It was in fact the document of a desperate attempt by a supporter of the old regime to upgrade and strengthen the absolute monarchical institution by institutionalizing certain aspects in the hope of alleviating its self-destructive flaws. Outstanding among the said efforts to institutionalizing the monarchy was the institution of the Crown Prince or heir apparent which had revealed at least one of its serious inherent weaknesses since the ascendancy of King Vajiravudh to the throne.⁹ Sayre’s recommendations concerning the said institution aimed to ensure that only a capable candidate ascended the Thai absolutist throne.

Something similar can be said of the Stevens-Siwisanwaja draft in 1931. It recommended a setting up of the post of a premier together with a cabinet and a legislative council, in addition to the Supreme Council already functioning.¹⁰ Both versions were drafted with a mind to save the supreme power and the dignity of the throne and of maintaining the status quo of the ruling élite. The draft documents introduced no significant political changes such as one might expect of a change from an absolute monarchy to a limited monarchy of some sort. Both inserted some cosmetic elements into the existent system with the intention of creating a desired effect for the appearance of a ‘democratic’ rule: a written constitution, a prime minister and his cabinet (Sayre’s draft); a written Constitution, a legislative council with members appointed and elected, prime minister and cabinet (Stevens’ and Siwisan’s draft).

It was quite clear that none of those involved in the exercises of the political ‘reform’ during Prajadhipok’s search for a new and acceptable political formula to bolster up the position of the Chakri dynasty was aware of the principle of the democratic system. This is even more amazing when one considers that two of the drafters were products of the very system of democracy which proclaimed as its supreme objectives the rights, liberty and happiness of individuals.

It can be stated that, on the whole, the attitude of the conservatives and the royalists towards the rule of democracy has changed very little. Democracy is nothing more than a means to verify the power and position of the monarch. One royalist clearly points out that a written Constitution is but a lifeless document which has failed even to make clear its basic principles. In comparison with the monarchy, which is a permanent and solid institution, a written Constitution carries no weight in Thai society. In his opinion, the monarchy represents the main pillar of the Thai nation in the same manner as the American Constitution represents the foundation of the American nation.¹¹ Maintaining that democracy is not a system but a process of getting things done – another well-known conservative scholar explains that the great King Chulalongkorn ruled in accordance with democratic principles.¹² The confusion and muddled thinking concerning democracy was without doubt a deep-rooted cause of this political system not being able to make any significant headway among the country’s conservative élite.

If the blindness of Prajadhipok and the conservatives could be excused by a natural inclination to safeguard the political interests of the monarchy and the old regime, it was almost inexplicable why the new élite of the post-1932 period, who proclaimed themselves promoters of democracy, should likewise overlook the primary objectives of the political ideology that they chose to serve. It was true that the People’s Party issued the Six Principles by which the party would rule the country. Yet until its final demise in 1957, the leaders of the People’s Party, Pridi Phanomyong included, had miserably failed to realize the political blueprint of their choice. The People’s Party Constitutions of June 1932, December 1932 and May 1946 are evidence of how little, if ever, the spirit and objectives of democracy were upheld. The first two written Constitutions of the Thai kingdom were much preoccupied with efforts to make certain that political power remained within the grasp of the People’s Party. Within the context of these two charters, the Thai masses had little chance of either learning about or exercising their ‘supreme power’ in any meaningful manner. Even the 1946 Constitution which received much praise from Pridi and his supporters, was in essence but a polished version of the first two constitutions. It aimed to perpetuate the power and position of the civilian wing of the People’s Party led by Pridi at the expense of its principal rivals, the military and Field Marshal Phibunsongkhram.¹³ It is quite accurate therefore to conclude that the People’s Party and its associates were just as blind as the leadership of the old regime in the undertakings to safeguard their political interests, to the point that democracy, introduced to the country, appeared to be but an empty shell.

To emphasize the argument further, let’s take the post-war period of 1946–1947 as an illustration. By May 1946, the country had put in place a written Constitution, political parties, Parliament and elections – the perfect process of democracy, yet the period had been marked by the Government’s high-handed methods against its opponents with little regard to the rights and liberty of its citizens. Corruption and abuse of power were rampant among MPs and government officials. The terms ‘eat brick, eat cement’, ‘eat spades, eat hoes’, and ‘eat soil, eat sand’ were derisively coined to describe the favourite unsavoury pastime of the Government’s parliamentary supporters and its principal officials. Ironically this was also the period to which Pridi would fondly refer as ‘perfect democracy’.¹⁴

This short survey confirms beyond doubt that the Thai version of democracy was a defective model, a distortion of its Western counterpart. It emphasized only the process of democracy without paying much attention to another equally important side of the system, namely the principle or objective of democracy: the guarantee for life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness of individuals within the confines of the common good. The Thai ruling élite, before and after 1932, and in fact right up to the 1990s, primarily thought of their own interests, and most of the time paid only lip-service to the well-being of the people they were supposed to serve. When Thai leaderships talked about democracy, most of the time they were talking of how best to safeguard their political and socio-economic power and position, normally through manipulation of the process of democracy For these purposes, the term ‘democracy’ was a mere political blanket to cover the political agenda of individual factions. Within this political scenario, a Constitution would more often than not be written to maximize the power of the interested group or faction concerned, and not for the promotion of the common good of the state or for the individual’s rights and privileges. It was not surprising, therefore, that every time power changed hands from one faction to another, there was a real need to abrogate the extant Constitution and to write a new one, to find a new method of manipulating the electoral institution and electorate, and to keep an elected Government pliable to the will of the new faction in power. There has hardly been room for the objective of democracy; its place was repeatedly supplanted by the political interests of the ever-changing factions within the Thai ruling class.

What makes Thai democracy so confusing even among the informed sector of the society is perhaps the habit of an insistent ‘holier-than-thou’ claim on democracy by the various élitist factions. As we have seen, Pridi and company claimed that the ‘perfect’ democracy had been attained as early as 1946 with the passage of the May Constitution in that year; the old conservatives and royalists likewise stated that the March 1949 Constitution represented the true spirit of democracy; the new rightists opted for the 1976 Constitution as the best assurance for the rule of democracy; and the post-1988 military leadership strongly supported the Interim Constitution of March 1991 and the Permanent Constitution of December 1991 as ideal charters for the rule of democracy. As could be expected, none of these Constitutions gave much thought to the attainment of the basic rights and liberty of the people. Instead, they have all been written to make supreme the power and authority of the state – for which, read group or faction in power – namely Pridi and his supporters, the Democrats and the court party, the ultra-rightists of the post-1973 era, and the National Peace Keeping Council (NPKC) – and its supporters of the 1990s respectively.

Conversely, when the Thai élite talked about undemocratic regimes or systems, what was meant most of the time was a rule or administration that favoured their political opponents and, by inference, posed a serious disadvantage to their own political agenda. Democracy practised in Thailand from 1932 to the 1990s is at best the rule of a benevolent despot, and at worst a system of power-sharing among greedy, self-centred and unscrupulous politicians and bureaucrats. Evidently the system had little to do with ordinary people who were allocated only an insignificant part in the overall political scheme of this power-struggling and power-sharing exercise among the ruling élite. There has been neither respect nor compassion for the masses per se. The masses would become valuable only during the short period leading up to an election. Even then, they would more often than not be persuaded, manipulated, cajoled or coerced to cast their votes for candidates of the ruling class’s choice. Frustration and disillusionment are common among those who keenly wished to see the country free itself from the grasp of self-serving ruling cliques and their accomplices. One respectable political scientist sums up the political development up to the early 1990s as a political system wherein political parties/phak kanmuang have transformed themselves into parties of corruption/kinmuang; parliamentary elections are conducted ‘in violation of the [elections] laws’; and a Government thus formed is ‘the Government of the rich/nai thun, by the rich, for the rich’. He further concludes that, as a result, ‘democracy’ thus achieved represents only ‘a fully-blown cycle of a sham democracy’.¹⁵

On average, the ‘sham democracy’ required the service of a new Constitution every four years and that of constitutional amendments every two years. Meanwhile, the people’s right to elect their MPs was neutralized by the right of the ruling élite to nominate appointments for membership of the Upper House whose rights and privileges were practically no different from those of the elected members, but whose primary loyalty was with those who selected and appointed them, and not the people. Roughly calculated, the military and the bureaucrats were in control of the political reins for 42 of the 65 years (1932–1973; 1976–1977; 1991–1992); the politicians, scrupulous and unscrupulous, and their self-serving nouveaux riches sponsors and accomplices, with the tacit backing of the military, were in control for about 20 years (1977–1997). So far, the only period when the political legitimacy was derived from the political power of people was the period 1973–1976. Such cold, hard facts typify Thai democracy.

Until the passage of the Constitution in October 1997, it was obvious that democracy in Thailand had been an exercise of process over principle, form over substance. It is also evident from numerous examples discussed that the overwhelming majority of the Thai ruling élite of the pre- and post-1932 periods – rightists, leftists, royalists, liberals, progressives, civilians and the military – practised at best a form of democracy, but never the substance or the spirit of the political ideology that most of them seemed to have promoted and supported. There was no serious attempt to cultivate the Western style of democracy wherein ideology and form go hand in glove in an honest effort to attain the ‘greatest happiness of the greatest number’. In short, one may even go so far as to say that democracy has never really been attempted in Thailand. What has been established and seriously cultivated is a reverse form of democracy, a rule of oligarchy, or in Phibun’s words, paramittaya-sithiraj, a system of absolute power among friends.¹⁶ That system has proved to be a total failure for the aspirations of modern Thailand.

DEVELOPMENT OF DEMOCRACY À LA THAILAND

The complete failure of the People’s Party version of democracy eventually led to many efforts on the part of the ruling élite to come up with a new political system that would at least be true to the aspirations of its promoters. The main reasons cited and agreed upon by most politicians for the failure of the variable types of the 1932 democracy are ignorance and the absence of political awareness among the common people. Added to this, is the s...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Halftitle
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of Illustrations
• Preface and Acknowledgements
• The Chakri Dynasty
• The Present Royal Family
• Part I Analysis of Thai Constitutions
• Part II Reality: The Practice of Constitutional Monarchy, 1932–1952
• Part III Reality: The Coming of Age of Thai constitutional Monarchy, 1952–2000
• Notes
• Select Bibliography
• Index