Money and democracy

14 November 1996

Is each election a step down the road to democracy? Or is democracy just being swamped by money politics?

Without doubt, money plays a huge part. The majority of voters expect to be paid for their vote. Large sums are being withdrawn from banks in small-denomination notes. The price-per-voter has gone over 1000 baht. Seasoned canvassers have openly threatened candidates who are not generous enough.

A few weeks ago, politicians were skidding from party to party like skate-boarders. A third of all MPs standing for re-election switched party. Some just for career-planning. Others reputedly for money. The sums mentioned soared up to 10-20-50 million baht, much more than the 3-5-7 million in last year’s election. In this market, we seem to suffer from hyper-inflation.

And before that, in the horse-trading around the house dissolution, the rumour mill told of political allegiances traded for nine-figure sums.

The Thai Farmers BankResearch Centre estimates 20 billion baht will be spent on the election, equivalent to a 600 baht bonus for every adult. But somehow that sum seems too small.

Many feel that Thailand’s democratic system has more form than substance, more shell than meat. We have elections. But then we undermine their purpose with money. We have political parties. But then we make a mockery of them with the pre-election game of musical chairs.

We have democratic institutions, but no democratic spirit. After a long history of authoritarian rule, it is difficult to introduce the idea that each individual has the same political rights, the same political value.

But there is a more optimistic view. Take a few paces back to get some perspective of space and time.

In September, we watched an extraordinary piece of political theatre. It was not really a no-confidence debate. More like an impeachment proceedings, crossed with an OJ-style "trial by television". We heard the opposition detail the scandals, deals and corruption which have long been the stuff of rumour and coffee-house chat. But now they were aired on a grand scale in the formal institutions of government.

Not so much the question of who Banharn really is. But all the rest. The BBC scandal, which (remember) the authorities knew about but were trying to suppress. The Nong Khai land affair. The thesis. Suspect decisions over infrastructure contracts. Bankrolling by Rakesh. Raiding the budget to beautify Suphanburi. Fiddling the records to avoid being labelled "unusually rich". Profiteering from land sold to the central bank. And so on.

The no-confidence debate was a crash course in the university of politics, with all the nation enrolled.

Go back 15-20 years. None of this could have happened. Not the corruption and the abuse of power. These have been going on for a long time. But the revelations, the exposure.

Back then the generals still really ran everything, directly or by remote control. They still sat in most of the important ministries; nearly all of the state enterprises; and the boards of many big companies. They still occupied the countryside with propaganda organizations and vigilante groups. They kept a tight control over the media - over the TV and radio by ownership, and over the press by informal influence. Journalists who stepped out of line were still getting shot. Corruption scandals were rarely exposed. We found out only after those responsible had died or been deposed.

Things have improved a lot.

Now look around our neighbouring countries. Do we imagine this sort of abuse of power does not happen there? With the exception of Singapore, it’s doubtful. In many places, corruption has been elegantly institutionalised. But where else can you imagine the same kind of impeachment which we have just seen? In Indonesia? In Vietnam? In Malaysia? In Myanmar?

Thailand’s parliamentary system is very, very new. In effect, not much more than 20 years old. Like many things so new, it doesn’t work very well yet. Comparing it to systems which have decades or centuries of history, obviously it doesn’t look very good.

As the American political scientist Samuel Huntington noted, democracy is really just a trick for limiting the abuse of power. Most countries in the region (Philippines excepted) have decided to have nothing seriously to do with representative institutions. Malaysia, Singapore and Indonesia submerge parliament under one-party systems. Myanmar and Vietnam are still party states. But Thailand is trying to make parliament work.

Thai society is going through very big changes, which are altering the social map, generating new conflicts, and creating new political forces. Rather than being suppressed or bottled up, the conflicts are out on public display. Learning by doing looks very messy. But it’s better than not learning at all.

Of course we would like the learning to happen faster. Institutions tend to change more slowly than the social forces beneath them.

In this election, some things seem to have improved over last year’s round. The level of violence has reduced, at least as measured by the numbers of canvassers murdered. Voters are smarter; they take money impartially from all the candidates. The difference between the major parties is more clearly defined. Debate on policy issues has taken a larger role. Some talented people have been persuaded to stand. Some dubious people have been relegated to the netherworld of minor parties. The Chart Thai party, which more and more represented all the worst aspects of Thai party politics, has been torn apart.

But more important than these marginal shifts is the growth of expectations and hopes.

This election has focused more interest, more enthusiasm, more hope than possibly any previous round. Even more than in 1992, people have high expectations that the election will usher in changes for the better. An economic upturn. Political reforms. Resolution of all the scandals over the abuse of power. Social legislation. Progress on land issues. Debt relief. Speedier work on infrastructure.

The democratic spirit is distilled from hopes like these.

In his recent book "State of the Nation", the leading political scientist Suchit Bunbongkarn concluded: "the more elections Thailand has, the more developed the competitive process will be... the more often people go to vote, the more they understand the democratic system and know how to exercise their right and influence properly".

During the dark days of Banharn, some people began to lose faith. Would electoral politics always mean money politics? Had the struggle to push the military back to the barracks merely delivered the country into the hands of gangsters and gravel-pit owners? Was politics the Achilles heel of Thailand’s development? Would it be better to de-democratize? Many of those pushing for "political reform" clearly thought so.

But the fifty years of struggle against the generals has created a strong momentum towards democracy. The high drama of the no-confidence debate and dissolution has eclipsed these doubts.

Elections have become a critical part of the process of building a democratic consciousness. Each round is another small step on the learning process. Electors gain a little more insight into the power invested in the right to vote. Parties are forced to define more what they stand for. Individual politicians must recalibrate the trade-off between social contribution and personal game.

Lifting the weight of the authoritarian past is not easy. Political reform is certainly needed. But political reform will not create democratic spirit. That must come from the rising hopes and expectations of people. No-confidence debates, dissolutions and elections are the yeast which helps these hopes to rise.