Keeping the village outside democracy

11 September 1997

Last week the village headmen and kamnan came to the capital for a show of strength. They brought along some buffalo to add a rustic touch. Was this rural society in revolt against the whole constitution? Why have the constitution drafters provoked the headmen, when the draft’s main aim is to reform rights, courts and parliament?

The system of village headmen was introduced a century ago. Each village has a headman, and each cluster of ten or so villages chooses one of them as kamnan. The model was adapted from colonial systems in India and Indonesia. The idea was that government identified the "natural leaders" of rural society, and rested the framework of administration on their sturdy shoulders. The chain or command through the Ministry of Interior down to the village heads would be the political backbone of a society of contented peasants ruled by paternal bureaucrats.

This vision of the village headman still lingers. A recent official description claimed the headman "preserves the social harmony valued so highly by all Thais ... and acts as a spokesman for the community in negotiations with the government bureaucracy".

But the system changed in the adaptation from colonies to Siam. Many village leaders did not want to become the government’s spies and tax collectors. Some resisted appointment. Some fled. Often government had to appoint local thugs who could see some personal advantage in the job.

Rural Siam was in the throes of a great movement of peasant colonization. New areas were being opened up. New villages founded. Large numbers of people were on the move. Government plonked its administrative grid rather crudely over this fluid base. In some places, many hamlets were lumped into one official "village". In others, a local community was divided between two or three official units. The choice of headmen became a bit arbitrary. They tended to be "suspended from the governmental pyramid above", rather than rooted in natural leadership of the locality.

Then everything changed in the 1960s when government plunged into rural development. The village headmen and kamnan now had many more powers and duties. And a lot more money to spend. The job suddenly became very attractive.

At the same period, agriculture was being rapidly commercialised. Companies were pushing agents into the villages to buy up crops, sell seeds and fertilisers, and market consumer goods from TV sets to toothpaste. These companies found a lot of advantages in using the village heads as their local agents.

Many village heads started out as farmers, but gradually became businessmen. Quite simply, they made more money that way. Over the last decade, this logic has become more forceful. The profits from agriculture have dwindled. The gains from business have increased.

A headman today is very unlikely to spend much time in the fields. Rather, he may own a truck or pickup and run a transport business. He may be a labour contractor, sending villagers off to cut sugarcane or work overseas. He may have a shop selling fertilisers and other inputs, and serve as agent for the local rice miller or feedmill. He may do some commission business for the companies selling televisions and motorcycles on hire purchase. He may be an agent for the underground lottery.

Some develop commercial opportunities from their official role. They have gravel pits and small construction businesses which live off contracts to build local roads. They act as agents for land deals.

In some cases, people have moved the other way, from commerce into village headship. They started off owning rice mills or managing the local market, and have found it worthwhile to become a village headman or kamnan too.

In recent decades, the village heads have taken on a third role, as political agents. The mix of commercial contacts and administrative power makes them the most efficient choice as canvassers and vote banks. The provincial boss politicians look to them to deliver the village vote.

So rather than sturdy yeomen, most village heads are a mix of petty bureaucrat and local entrepreneur.

Rather than the natural leaders of the village, they form a privileged commercial and political elite, supported by the chains of power and profit stretching out from the city. They have become the "local influential people".

Politically they act as a cut-out between the village and the outside world. In their official role, they mediate all dealings between the villagers and the bureaucracy above. As vote-banks, they deliver the village votes in return for some red noted and the promise of a new well or paved road. hey play e key role in keeping over half the population outside the workings of Thailand’s democracy.

The Tambon Administrative Organisations (TAOs) were introduced to increase participation in local government. The Ministry of Interior feared that the TAOs would undermine the authority of the village heads. So it gave the headmen and kamnan ex-officio posts on the TAOs, and effectively placed these bodies in their control.

The drafters of the constitution laid down that all posts in local government should be elective. When the headmen and kamnan showed fierce opposition, the drafters paused to consider whether it was worth wrecking the whole project on this point. Ultimately the drafters regained their resolve. The petty tyranny of the village heads and kamnans counted among the many petty tyrannies the drafters felt they needed to overthrow in the name f democracy.

The protest by the headmen and kamnan s not just the defence of a minor privilege. It is a microcosm of what the whole constitutional reform is about. Thailand has many systems which are left over from the days of bureaucratic paternalism. Often these systems are now taken over an manipulated by the new political bosses.

Snoh Thientong’s leadership of the headmen’s protests straddles the old and the new. As Minister of Interior, he defends a system which is key to the Ministry’s considerable power. As the anointed head of today’s political bosses, he wants to protect a system which I key t the bosses’ ascendancy at the polling booths.

In the debate on the draft charter, other MPs argued that depriving the headmen and kamnan f their ex-officio posts would lead to conflict in the villages. Consciously or unconsciously, they were echoing the nineteenth-century colonial-bureaucratic myth of a harmonious village, where all conflicts can be resolved locally.

This myth makes no sense today. But many are still afraid of bringing villagers more firmly into Thailand’s democracy. In part this is an old fear of the rebellious peasant. In part it may just be fear of the unknown. But the current mixture of paternalist structure and democratic forms does not work. It delivers up the boss politicians who have dominated parliament for much of the past decade.

Last week’s show of force by the headmen and kamnan turned out to be a damp squib. But the constitution issue if not over yet. The Interior Ministry and the provincial bosses will fight to preserve a system which keeps the village out of politics, and politics out of the village.