Font size: 
There are purists, existentialists, semanticists and others up and down the intellectual ladder who argue pro and con regarding the legitimacy of a country’s democracy when elections are allowed to take place. Some maintain that because elections have been held, such as in Thailand, that they are by definition democratic and that the government that comes into power as a result is thus a democracy.
The relationship between democracy, voting and informed consent is a sticky philosophical issue to the world’s diplomats. Criticism of elections that are clearly, or logically, not democratic can have negative impact on mutual relations, whereas compliments and praise for such elections can have misleading positive impact.
On Aug. 30 Thailand’s People’s Alliance for Democracy core leader Sondhi Limthongkul spoke about this issue on ASTV. He recounted how he recently spoke with many foreign reporters who, he said, he expected to be somewhat smarter than their Thai counterparts, but which he discovered, in his words, to be “just as stupid as the Thai press.”
“They only look at elections,” Sondhi said. “They think that just because an election has been held that the candidates were democratically elected and that the government is then a democratic government.”
Ignorance, domestically and in foreign circles, about what really drives the Thai voter to elect senators and representatives remains a poorly published secret. The secret – according to Sondhi but also to many grassroots Thais and foreign residents of Thailand – is that voters have little access to anything resembling a free flow of information about either issues or candidates.
Instead, they depend on being told who to vote for, or they vote because they are paid. Consequently, the election results, while enshrined in a democratic process as far as voting is concerned, produces a non-democratic government whose members are loyal not to the people or the constituents they serve, but to the ruling party and its leadership.
This was underscored in the past by several leading Thai politicians, including from the defunct Chatpattana Party formerly headed by Suwat Liptapanlop, whose fellow members of Parliament said they would gladly ignore criminal wrongdoing among party members rather than support its investigation and punishment.
With such an undertone to Thai politics, where wrongdoing is accepted, supported, encouraged and paid for, who can legitimately argue that an election process that brings people like this en masse into Parliament is the result of a democratic process?
Sondhi’s comments may be worth serious study by academics, media and politicians so that Thailand’s sociopolitical matrix is understood and can then be properly commented upon and dealt with. On the surface the issue is democracy and voting, but it involves the legitimacy of both when fundamental infrastructure relating to information availability, use and abuse, is seriously lacking.
It is anathema to both the pragmatist and the purist when elections are not democratic. But they both become bogged down in mire when elections structured in a democratic way lead to more crooks taking power or retaining it.
Burma is an easy example; but it is also not difficult to judge whether Thailand’s elections are democratic or not. The answer is a resounding “no” if quality is important, if the issues matter and if ignorance of the electorate is of much consequence.
In some ways, all of this is true in any nation, including Western democracies. But in smaller, more traditional cultures like Thailand – a country that has been called a democracy and that has elections – we need to step back from the mistaken assumption that this is equivalent to democracy. It is not. Unless the electorate gives its informed consent, then elections are not democratic, in theory or practice.
Informed consent is treated in other disciplines as a vital matter, and it should be so treated in the voting process. As defined, informed consent is “a legal condition whereby a person can be said to have given consent based upon an appreciation and understanding of the facts and implications of an action.” Applied to voting, this would translate into the voter actually understanding the implications, consequences and benefits of casting a vote for a person or party during an election.
In Thailand, this is an illusion at best. Most voters – especially those in the impoverished northeast region – do not have any idea of what their candidates are up to. Indeed most adventurous investigative reporters who attempt to find out are killed or simply disappear. As well, Thai candidates are loyal not to the constituents in the area they are elected, but to the party and party leadership.
Thus there are great fundamental obstacles to running a fair and just democratic election in Thailand. Observing that an election is democratic because it has been held is a grievous error.
The question of qualifications of the general public is, in a sense, the issue here. Are people really qualified to vote, and are candidates sufficiently qualified and restricted from abuse to run for office?
Having spent over seven years literally embedded in the local northeast Thailand media, this writer can attest that the further one is removed from Bangkok the more difficult it is to access information or to get people to share it. While also true in Bangkok proper, upcountry there are various impediments to adequacy on the part of the public to submit a vote based on informed consent.
Those impediments include local mafias, tied to Bangkok political elites, who determine what will be published and what not – violators will be excommunicated from advertising revenue. As well, the government itself serves the political elite, not the people.
In Thailand politicians and business leaders use the technique of not answering inquiries and not even addressing them in important policy speeches. The suggestion made by the PAD recently, for example, to bypass dishonest political infrastructure by appointing 70 percent of members of Parliament and electing only 30 percent ignores the basic issue of inherent honesty in society as a whole. The PAD is addressing that issue today, but few dealmakers in Thailand are really prepared to shift alliances and watch vested interests fade away.
--
(Frank G. Anderson is the Thailand representative of American Citizens Abroad. He was a U.S. Peace Corps volunteer to Thailand from 1965-67, working in community development. A freelance writer and founder of northeast Thailand's first local English language newspaper, the Korat Post – www.thekoratpost.com -- he has spent over eight years in Thailand "embedded" with the local media. He has an MBA in information management and an associate degree in construction technology. ©Copyright Frank G. Anderson.)
