COMMENTARY What the US could learn from Thailand By Shawn W Crispin
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.
