Public forum is a failure, but a victory

21 August 2000

How to protect the environment and protect the little people in an era which worships the "creative destruction" of the free market? This is a global problem. Despite the explosion of scientific knowledge, we are smashing up the planet. Despite unprecedented prosperity, the ranks of the world’s poor continue to increase.

The Pak Mool dam has become an international issue because it captures this big global problem in a tiny local nutshell. The project was a bad idea, carelessly managed. It has damaged one of the country’s major river systems for very little benefit. It hurt a lot of little people who have refused to be ignored. As a result, Pak Mool has become a rallying point for people who want to stop this sort of destruction. Last week, this put five ministers, two hundred aggrieved villagers, twenty television crews, and a thousand observers into a Thammasat University auditorium for a "public forum" on the issues of dams, land and forests.

The event had great billing. Government spokesmen announced that it would "solve everything". Minister Wattana Asavaheme called it a "historic day". The moderator said this was "a new way to solve problems in Thai society". It seemed many people attended just to be there and to be seen there—the prime minister’s secretary, a TV chat-show host, the university rector.

But in one sense, the forum achieved nothing. There was no attempt to negotiate a solution on any one of the specific issues up for debate. Both the government representatives and the Assembly of the Poor advisers reeled off their speeches like actors in a well-rehearsed play. After all, who really believed that problems accumulated over decades would be solved in four hours under the spotlight of live TV.

It was a drama, with heavy influences from the theatre of the absurd. As the participants arrived, they were treated to a video of Mr Bean. The villagers were identified by pink paper tags. They were ushered into the auditorium in a crocodile, like schoolkids on an outing. The speeches were heard over a soundtrack provided by the constant tinkle-and-beep of personal electronic equipment. The moderator was armed with a sports clock borrowed from the Asian Games, which timed out speakers with a peremptory buzz. When Savit Bhotivihok failed to make his point within the three-minute limit, he giggled like a gameshow participant who had just lost the money.

More importantly, the play on view seemed to be a tragedy in which the two sides end up more alienated than ever. Most of the government side read their lines from a script. Several phrases came up time and time again. The national interest. The benefit of everybody. All sixty million people. The country’s future. The scriptwriter wanted to emphasise that the Assembly of the Poor and the protesting villagers are a small group of selfish people who are standing in the way of the government’s noble efforts to bring prosperity to everybody. We cannot solve land problems of the hill people in the north, said Newin Chidchob, because "ninety percent of them are not Thai". This was not a play about harmony and reconciliation, but about self-justification.

More tragic was the growing realisation that many on the government side have learnt nothing from the Pak Mool affair. Sawit Bhotivihok argued that government has spent the money on the dam, so now we just have to use it. In short, it doesn’t matter that the benefit is small, the ecological costs is high, and the dam is internationally condemned. Who cares about the Mool river. Deputy agriculture minister, Anurak Jureemat, was panting to build Phong Khun Phet and other irrigation dams whose plans are based on the same bad thinking, bad cost-benefit analysis, and devious evasion of environmental controls as Pak Mool was. This is not the last time we will see this tragedy staged.

To understand why, you had to look at the details of the cast list, costuming, and staging. While the villagers were identified by their pink paper tags, the government people were all identified by those telling little lapel pins. Not all of them were so little. Forestry chief Plodprasob had the biggest and shiniest lapel pin that Chang Noi has ever seen. Wattana Asavaheme came with two impressive models of the senior bureaucrat. Their only role was to sit on either side while he spoke, because every temple-goer knows that a god looks much more powerful with a pair of flanking thevada. This was the Assembly of the Gods. Scan down the cast list and read the attending ministers’ surnames: Asavaheme, Bhotivihok, Techaphaibun, Chidchob. This was the Assembly of the Rich too. When the framework of an old dictatorial bureaucratic state is taken over by business politicians, then development is very destructive.

But this play is part of a larger drama, which has some brighter scenes. Two important things have come out of the Pak Mool mess, and the government’s recent confrontations with the Assembly of the Poor. The electricity generating authority has committed that Pak Mool is the last hydro dam. It has junked plans to trash other Isan rivers just like the Mool. The forestry department has said it will no longer move people out of the forests by force. Plodprasob laid this out in detail. It’s no use, he said, evicting 1.2 million people when realistically there is nowhere else to dump them. Some method has to be found to let them stay, but prevent further destruction.

Of course there are still problems with these commitments. The irrigation department still wants to build bad dam projects. The forest land policy sounds fine as policy, but the implementation may be another matter. The government is still trying to evade the local participation and environmental concern mandated by the constitution.

A third victory was the Thammasat forum itself. The only way to oppose destructive development is public pressure. The little people are not admitted to the Assembly of the Gods. Over the last decade, they have created a parliament of the street. With this forum broadcast on live TV, this was for a short time elevated into a parliament of the airwaves.

In the larger scope of things, these are three big victories. The tragic side is that the agitation to achieve these victories has taken about ten years. Almost every day Chuan says to the villagers sleeping on the roads around Government House, go home and we will solve your problems. But the lesson of history is that if you go home, nothing happens. The Assembly of the Gods has its own concerns. As Mot Wanida spoke to huge applause, they can rescue a financial system at any cost, but they resist spending peanuts on the problems of the poor. The only way to prevent the government trampling on the little people and trashing the environment is by constant pressure. Many of the protesters have still not got what they want. Their particular problems are too small, too old, or too tricky for the Gods to tackle. But these protesters have contributed to some big victories which will have value for the future. This is heroism of a kind. Maybe we should think of those pink paper tags as medals.