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HONG
KONG:
In Thailand, the prime minister, Samak Sundaravej, is dismissed by a
court for accepting some tiny expenses for appearing in a TV cooking
show he had long hosted. In Malaysia, the prime minister has to send 40
members of Parliament to learn about agriculture in Taiwan to keep them
from defecting to the opposition leader Anwar Ibrahim, who has vowed to
gain a majority by Tuesday.
Political farce in two otherwise prospering Southeast Asian states
is an outward sign of disturbing trends in both countries that have
implications for regional stability.
In Thailand it has long been assumed that the monarchy is on hand in
times of crisis to calm things down, using its status to impose some
sort of order between contending politicians, ambitious generals and
other power seekers.
But now the monarchy is increasingly seen as part of the problem
rather than the source of a solution. Law courts that were once seen as
being easily influenced by the government of the day now appear to have
become a political force, responding to the monarchist, anti-democratic
forces that are strong among the Thai military and senior bureaucracy,
and in recent times have appeared aligned with the privy council headed
by the retired general and former prime minister, 88-year-old Prem
Tinsulanond. On this occasion they declined to restore order and remove
a rabble of mostly anti-democratic, anti-government demonstrators from
official buildings. Then the courts cooked up an excuse to remove Samak.
This is all supposed to be in the name of rule of law, but looks
more like a silent coup. The military coup in 2006 that pushed Prime
Minister Thaksin Shinawatra into exile solved nothing, leaving popular
support for him and his allies almost as strong as ever. Removing Samak
may provide an excuse for the demonstrators to disperse, but it too
solves nothing. Moreover, it may well have eroded the reputation of the
monarchy, which, back in the days of strongman rule in the 1950s and
60s, was largely ceremonial. The 80-year-old King Bhumipol may be
revered, but such respect will not carry through to his successor. The
monarchy will revert to a ceremonial role with scant ability to
arbitrate between contending military, populist and other forces.
Thailand's ultra-nationalist, anti-government forces have already
tried to foment a crisis with Cambodia over a disputed temple, and the
ongoing deadlock in Bangkok has meant that the problems in the southern
provinces, with their Malay-Muslim majorities, have festered, with
almost daily reports of killings of military and government personnel.
Thaksin's strong-arm policies were a disaster, but there is little
chance that a centralizing regime influenced by the military and the
monarchy would tolerate the degree of autonomy needed to solve the
problem. Thailand is a country where some northern non-Thai hill tribes
are still not accorded citizenship.
The problems in southern Thailand can all too easily link to the
power struggle in Malaysia. Although Abdullah Badawi's government is
moderate on racial issues, simmering tensions can bring to the fore
more extreme elements claiming to defend Malay dominance and keep the
other races subservient.
Anwar's opposition coalition of Malay-Muslim purists, pluralist
Malays and secular-minded non-Malays is itself too unstable to offer
much solace for those hoping for a stable Malaysia where racial
equality prevails.
Even Anwar's Sept. 16 deadline is a date with uneasy significance.
It was on that day in 1963 that the British-administered states in
North Borneo, Sarawak and Sabah, and Singapore (briefly) joined
Malaysia. The two have remained very different. Mixing between races
and religions is more evident than elsewhere in Malaysia and the
politics of both states have always been fluid. Their parliamentarians
are allied to the government, but are viewed as susceptible to
defection. There is also resentment at what they see as Kuala Lumpur's
domination, curtailment of rights promised in 1963 and excessive
taxation of their natural resource-based economies.
There is no hint of separatist movements there, or of a re-launch by
Indonesia of its claims on the territories. But Sabah lies next to the
Philippine islands of Mindanao and Sulu and migration from this
troubled region has created political issues in Sabah that have
national reverberations.
This is not to suggest that Southeast Asia as a whole is facing
turmoil. Indonesia, Vietnam and Cambodia - in their own different ways
- have exceeded most expectations in combining stability and increasing
prosperity. But as the two leading middle-sized, middle-income states,
Thailand and Malaysia are casting a shadow over the region.
