| Topic: |
Politics > Politics-USA |
| User: |
"Tuttles Almanac" |
| Date: |
07 Apr 2006 05:48:18 PM |
| Object: |
What the US Could Learn from Thailand |
What the US could learn from Thailand
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Southeast_Asia/HD08Ae01.html
* the United States' lethargic and fading democracy
BANGKOK - The similarities between the Thaksin and Bush
administrations in Thailand and the US respectively were
always striking as the two erstwhile allies drew closer in recent
years. It's all the more so now that Prime Minister Thaksin
Shinawatra has been bumped from power by a people-power
movement that complained about his government's moral
bankruptcy.
Both Thaksin and President George W Bush rose to power
under legally dubious circumstances: while the US leader
muscled his way to the top through a Supreme Court intervention,
the Thai premier won a landslide victory two weeks after being
convicted of concealing his assets by an anti-corruption agency.
Both tough-talking leaders professed themselves to be
"CEO-style" leaders, a reference to their business backgrounds
before entering politics. That has often entailed running
roughshod over the law in pursuit of controversial policies, not
the least state-sponsored killing sprees. Thaksin's "war on
drugs" campaign in 2003 witnessed the extrajudicial killing of
more than 2,200 drug suspects; the death toll of Iraqis related
to the US invasion now runs into the tens of thousands.
Thaksin's bloody counter-insurgency campaign against Thai
Muslims, where more than 1,000 people have been killed since
2004, jibed nicely with Bush's global campaign to ferret out
extremists among Muslim populations - seemingly at any human
or moral cost. Ralph "Skip" Boyce, the garrulous US
ambassador to Thailand, has maintained that Washington has in
no way assisted Thaksin's controversial counter-insurgency
efforts, which, similar to US military operations in Iraq, have
been attended by allegations of torture and abuse of Muslim
detainees.
Bangkok-based European and Asian diplomats, however, beg
to differ, claiming that the United States' behind-the-scenes role
in the conflict is an open secret in diplomatic circles. US
officials first pushed Thaksin to shore up security in Thailand's
then-peaceful majority-Muslim southernmost provinces after a
group of alleged al-Qaeda-linked operatives took refuge in the
area in January 2002 from crackdowns in Singapore and
Malaysia, according to senior Thai intelligence officials. It's still
unclear what role US persuasion played in tipping the
historically tumultuous region back into conflict.
Thaksin signed up early on to Bush's "war on terror", offering
Thai troops to both Iraq and Afghanistan in a quid pro quo
exchange for a bilateral free-trade agreement. But pressured by
US officials, Thailand agreed not to sign on to the International
Criminal Court, which conceivably would have the authority to
convict US political and military leaders for bald violations of
the Geneva Conventions.
Bangkok-based US diplomats, who lambasted Thaksin for
cracking down on press freedom in 2001 and early 2002,
drastically changed their tune later in 2002, referring to Thaksin
in glowing terms as a "strong leader" and a "good ally". The
Bush administration has since manipulated and intimidated the
US press, including the imprisonment of journalists, in a manner
strikingly similar to Thaksin's hard-knocks campaign against the
Thai media.
Partners in crime
Unfortunately, that relationship often pushed Thaksin and Thai
security forces into violating their own constitution. Thaksin's
Thailand plays host to a joint top-secret US Central Intelligence
Agency-run counter-terrorism center, charged with managing
covert operations throughout Southeast Asia, according to a
senior Thai intelligence official attached to the National
Intelligence Agency. Those ties appear to have paved the way
for the CIA to establish a secret prison in Thailand, where
abducted terror suspects were allegedly held and interrogated.
Ambassador Boyce has repeatedly declined to comment on the
specifics of the secret detention center. (The facility was closed
down in 2003, according to the Washington Post.)
Thailand-based CIA agents apprehended and extradited to an
undisclosed location alleged al-Qaeda operative Hambali in
August 2003. Thai legal experts said Hambali's extradition
violated habeas corpus provisions outlined in Thailand's 1997
constitution because he was not formally charged or convicted
of a crime. When pressed about the legality of Hambali's
capture and subsequent detention, then US homeland-security
chief Tom Ridge said at a Bangkok press conference in 2004
that he wasn't aware of Thai law. During a 2004 Bangkok visit
where he ceremoniously promoted Thailand to ally status, Bush
referred to Police Major-General Tritos Ranaridhvichai as
"my hero" for his personal role in Hambali's commando-style
abduction.
The US has consistently supported Thai authorities' efforts in
prosecuting counter-terror operations, even when legally dubious.
Former US ambassador Darryl Johnson applauded Thai authorities
in 2003 for detaining three Thai Muslims in Narathiwat province,
who allegedly plotted to bomb five Bangkok-based foreign embassies,
including the US Embassy. Johnson at the time said there was
"strong evidence" against the suspects, whom he characterized as
"really bad guys" during an embassy-sponsored US Independence Day
party in Bangkok. After more than two years in detention,
all three suspects were freed by a Thai court finally for
lack of evidence. One of the suspects, a well-respected
medical doctor, is running and is expected to win a seat in
the Thai Senate this month.
As the Bush administration works to undermine the United Nations'
global authority and legitimacy, Thaksin has consistently lashed
out against UN agencies operating inside Thailand. In 2004, he
forbade the UN High Commissioner for Refugees to interview Myanmar
refugees who crossed the Thai border, and later sparred publicly
with the refugee-protection agency after it interviewed 131 Thai
Muslim refugees who had fled southern Thailand's brutal conflict
for the safety of northern Malaysia. Thaksin famously told a
UN human-rights rapporteur investigating abuse allegations of
abuse during his war on drugs that "the UN is not my father".
Allied abuse
Few of these well-documented abuses - often instigated,
if not tacitly supported, by the Bush administration -
factored in the nationalistic people-power movement that
recently pushed Thaksin into stepping down. Arguably they
should have, as many of the political and legal compromises
Thaksin has made with the Bush administration have represented
blatant violations of Thailand's sovereignty. (Protesters did
rail against the US-Thailand FTA negotiations, which Thaksin
had conducted opaquely without consulting parliament and which,
if completed, will deprive hundreds of thousands of Thai
HIV/AIDS sufferers from the generic drugs the Thai
government now produces under a World Trade
Organization-mandated compulsory-licensing agreement.)
Therein is the rub. Thailand and the US have distinctly different
brands and processes of democracy. When Thaksin's record of
abuse and self-enrichment became apparent to Bangkok's
politically astute upper and middle classes, they took their
grievances to the streets and refused to leave until real
democracy was restored. Faced with popular pressures,
Thaksin's deputies now vow to implement a new round of
political reforms, including better checks on executive powers.
Although articulated through informal and somewhat rowdy
channels, protest politics have historically catapulted Thailand's
democracy ahead. This history includes the tumultuous street
demonstrations in 1992 that eventually resulted in the passage
of the 1997 constitution, known locally as the "people's charter"
and arguably one of the world's most liberal constitutions.
When democratically elected Thai leaders work at odds with
real democracy, Thailand has a time-tested relief valve.
While the US preaches about the virtues of its model
democracy, Americans stay at home and passively watch on
television the outrageous debates concerning legalizing torture,
official eavesdropping and military-style abductions and
detention without trial of terror suspects. The few lonely
protesters against Bush's increasingly unpopular war in Iraq
have been routinely rounded up and arrested for staging
peaceful sit-ins in front of the president's Texas ranch. The
mother of a fallen soldier was in January removed and arrested
from the Capitol Building during Bush's State of the Union
address for wearing a T-shirt emblazoned with the running
number of troops killed in the Iraq conflict.
The tolerance demonstrated by Thailand's police forces during
the recent anti-government rallies was in itself a testament to
the Southeast Asian country's democratic maturity. There were no
arrests and no violence, in what one popular commentator has
described as Thailand's "smooth as silk" democratic revolution.
For all the mainstream media criticism heaped on the
people-power movement for threatening the future of Thai
democracy, the crowds that gathered on Bangkok's streets
assembled precisely to defend their hard-fought democratic
freedoms against an elected leader who they believed was
acting to undermine them. That's a claim the United States'
lethargic and fading democracy, for all its pretensions,
can no longer honestly make.
A top US diplomat said in private that Thaksin "was no longer
suitable" to US interests just before the embattled premier
announced his surprise resignation, according to a well-placed
source. That change of heart, however, is probably a reflection
of more opportunistic US diplomacy than an official recognition
of Thailand's brave democratic example.
With Thaksin's avowed departure, may future elected leaders
stop compromising the country's hard-won democracy in the
service of the United States' often illiberal and anti-democratic
strategic interests.
_________________________________________________
"the United States' lethargic and fading democracy"
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