Thailand’s Totalitarian Democracy & The West

They do it again and again, the Western media and Western politicians. Ignoring all the shades between white and black. “Democracy in Asia? Beware of Thailand” is the title of an editorial published by the Italian daily La Stampa.

The author argues that “the explosive mix of street protests and veiled military threats holds the (Thai) government hostage – a risk for the spread of totalitarian regimes in the whole region.”

I’m not saying that elections in Thailand are simply bought and perverted. The very problem is that the “formally democratic process” meanwhile has a global appeal. Just vote – and the West calls it democracy.

By Francesco Sisci, La Stampa

BANGKOK – In modern democracies, countries give themselves an electoral system, then hold elections, and the winner rules for the established period of time. Massive protests sometimes can push governments to send citizens to the ballots at an earlier date, but this is the exception to the rule. Governments brought into power by the shouting of a mob may be revolutionary, but they are not democratic.

That situation seems to occur in Thailand, where street protests have cried for new elections three times in as many years. However, the government won the elections each time and belied the protesters, who then proved to represent only a minority of society.

When a minority imposes its will on the majority, it is not a democracy—it is a dictatorship. In fact, in September 2006, after months of loud demonstrations, the military staged a coup d’etat in Thailand that did not punish the protesters but banished the ruling party, Thaksin Shinawatra’s Thai Rak Thai (TRT). The military set new rules, disbanded the TRT, forbid Thaksin from taking part in campaigning, and called new elections for December 2007. Once again, Thaksin won the elections, with a new party that backed him, the People’s Party.

This should have settled once and for all the situation: If Thaksin managed to win an election held under rules designed to his disadvantage, certainly most Thais wanted him—or his fellow party members—to rule.

Yet, a month ago, protesters took to the streets once again, demanding the government resignation—just six months after last elections!

It is absolutely clear: The protesters represent a minority. As such, they should be allowed to voice their grievances but only as far as they do not interfere with the government functioning.

Moreover, as in any democratic country, demonstrations have to be authorized and otherwise must be forcibly removed. This is necessary to prevent the minority from prevailing on the majority and establishing a dictatorship.

This is not happening—the police seem powerless, the military refuses to intervene, and the demonstrations grow bolder by the day. The protesters insist on the same old thing: The prime minister must quit. Why should he quit? Because a mob said so. Then who should appoint the new government? Who knows. Or does somebody?

But this is not democracy. This is, once again, a coup d’etat. It does not matter whether the military rolls out tanks to banish the prime minister; it is bad enough that they tolerate a situation where a democratically elected government is held hostage to a rabble shouting empty slogans.

Not only that: Last month, the Thai generals publicly announced on television that “they did not want a coup.” This sounded like a threat—so much so that American Secretary of Defense Robert Gates immediately reacted by saying that the U.S. wanted democracy, not a coup, for Thailand.

For a few days, the generals stepped back and the protesters grew silent. But then, the escalation started all over again.

What’s at stake? The power to change Thailand’s old ways. A group of entrenched interests opposes the radical reforms brought by Thaksin. He wants to foster new entrepreneurs, create new small and medium enterprises, give credit to new companies, and let old inefficient ones go bust. But those old companies hate to lose their privileges to newcomers and are trying to cling to their monopolies by any means. Three elections prove that the majority of Thailand is with Thaksin.

If the protesters and their organizers disagree, well, they can write to newspapers, quietly organize, wait for the next elections, and hope to win. But they aren’t doing that—they just demand that the prime minister quit.

One can call it as he likes it, but it is, once more, an attempted coup.

If Thailand’s democracy fails again, Burma, with its military regime, will be lost forever. What’s more, the militaries that just went back to their barracks in the Philippines and Indonesia may be tempted to come out of them and seize power. The effort to push reforms and disarmament in North Korea would lose steam.

Western drive for democracy and human rights in China would lose credibility if America’s firm ally in the region were to slip back to chaos or military rule. Who could believe the West wants really democracy in China when it allows democratic Thai government to be toppled by a raging mob? In sum, the whole Asian political balance would be at stake.

In July 1997 the crash of the Thai stock exchange triggered the Asian financial crisis that crippled the world economy. Then, for months there had been signs of the coming catastrophe, but very few in Thailand and in the world thought that cold lead to a global disaster.

Fascism started in Italy, then a minor European power, in 1922. A group of people took the law into their own hands, donned black shirts, and marched on Rome intimidating the Italian king, the public, and even the army into surrendering power.

Via La Stampa