The south? C’est moi!

 14 nov 2005

The prime minister has offered a new interpretation of the troubles in Thailand’s far south. They are all part of a plot to get rid of him. They are orchestrated by a coalition of his enemies. The main issue is not religion, language, history, oppression, poverty, cultural difference, official neglect, the ideology of the Thai state, or whatever. “We thought it was separatism, but it turns out their main target is me.”

Maybe this revelation has some links to an academic paper that circulated earlier this year. Perhaps Thaksin read the paper. Or one of his aides summarised it for him. Or the gist reached him by some other route.

The paper was written by a British political scientist and leading commentator on Thailand. It argued that the key to understanding why the far south has blown up must be found in Thailand’s national politics – in Bangkok, not in Pattani, Yala, and Narathiwat

Over the previous twenty years, the old separatist movement had seemed to fade away. The army established some control. Some local Muslim politicians from the far south did well in the new parliamentary politics. The few remaining separatist ideologues fled into exile. Attacks on schools and railways still occurred but were sparse and unfocused. A few old separatists metamorphosed into bandits and used violence as part of their business of protection rackets.

Why then did it blow up again? The paper argued that Thaksin’s rise to power in 2001 threatened a “network” which had dominated Thai politics over at least the previous two decades.

This network included major figures in the army, the bureaucracy, and other important institutions in Thai society. It was closely linked to the Democrat Party. The central figure was General Prem Tinsulanond who had been head of the army, then a long-standing prime minister, and later head of the king’s Privy Council. Long after retirement, he remained a public figure with exceptional influence.

This network did not work in the front-line politics of elections, parliament, and Cabinet, but exerted enormous influence in the dim background. It could affect key appointments, especially in the armed forces and Ministry of Interior. It could intervene during crises when elected leaders were in trouble. And it could exert pressure in little ways which are invisible to those outside the charmed circle.

According to the paper’s argument, Thaksin Shinawatra was the first elected prime minister with the power to challenge this network. The 1997 constitution strengthened the prime minister. The backlash from the 1997 economic crisis gave Thaksin unprecedented domination of parliament. The massive profits of Shin Corp gave him lots of the magic ingredient in Thai politics.

Thaksin also had strong motives to challenge the network. The only other remaining party was the Democrat Party, an affiliate of this network. Political events of a decade earlier offered an important lesson. The Chatichai government of 1988 had challenged the power of the generals and the senior bureaucrats, and been promptly tossed out by coup in 1991. Besides, there was a bigger issue. If the parliamentary system was to fulfil its constitutional role, it needed to destroy the remnants of an older political order.

According to this argument, one element of the Thaksinite assault on this old network was the abolition of the Southern Border Provinces Administrative Centre (SBPAC) in May 2002. Prem had set up SBPAC in 1981, and it remained a key node of the network’s influence in the south and in the army.

Thaksin initially replaced SBPAC with the police. It was not long before the turf wars erupted. These wrangles were about the usual questions of power and face, but also about loot. The far south is a border region with all their usual excitement. Thai rice is smuggled southwards, consumer goods northwards. The border towns are booming on the sex trade servicing custom from Malaysia and Singapore. Human traffickers funnel people out to the world over the southern frontier. By late 2002, units of police and military in the south were using the media to slang one another for being deeply involved in these mafia businesses.

After the theft of rifles from an army camp on 4 January 2004, a report alleged that the rifles had already been sold to rebels in Aceh, and the incident staged as a cover up. This report came not from some rash journalist, self-publicising NGO, or foreign organisation trying to discredit Thailand, but from the Thai police, the prime minister’s previous employer. The army was furious.

These turf wars lay behind the repeated revisions of the security arrangements for the south during Thaksin’s watch. According to the academic paper, this in-fighting had big consequences. Competition over the border trades became freer and more heated. Rivalry in local politics became more open because local politicians with connections to SBPAC no longer had special advantages.

Altogether, this created an atmosphere in which political activists could exploit the space created by the divisions among security  agencies, the competition among gangs, and the rivalry between local political factions. It became impossible to determine whether a killing was about separatism, turf, profit, or parish-pump rivalry.

In the academic circle, this paper was criticised for over-simplifying the problem. The network idea may be an important insight on the hidden realities of Thai politics. But using this as the sole way to explain the southern issue may be one-eyed. It argues that questions of religion, culture, history, poverty, bureaucratic exploitation, and so on are not important. It suggests that all is needed is an administrative fix.

Thaksin’s recent revelation goes a step farther. The troubles are happening because the network is fighting back. His revelation may or may not be related to this academic paper at all, but it belongs to the same thinking. He wants to sweep aside difficult questions of history, religion, and culture in favour of a simple explanation confined within the world of politics. Moreover, Thaksin’s further simplification has the hallmark of the autocrat: “It’s all about me”.