Censure Debate

There is a high level of interest in the parliamentary censure debate which began yesterday and has continued today. The motion of no confidence has been brought by the opposition Phuea Thai party in the wake of the incredibly violent crackdown on pro-democracy demonstrators by the army under, presumably, the orders of the government. At least 88 people were killed, most of them shot dead by the military according to reports and nearly one thousand people injured. In the continued ‘emergency’ and ‘curfew’ ordered by the government subsequently, dozens more people have been disappeared and censorship of the media has reached new heights. The media permitted to broadcast have been pouring out pro-government propaganda on a relentless basis. The United Nations has called for an independent inquiry into the events – any inquiry established by the current regime is likely to be stuffed with pro-establishment figures (as, for example, happens with humans rights bodies).

When challenged about responsibility for the events, PM Abhisit Vejjajiva seems to have fallen back on his default discourse – deny all responsibility and blame other people, irrespective of facts or evidence. The Nation has this brief report.

Meanwhile, the censure debate seems to have veered off into discussion of the (allegedly) corrupt nature of the current coalition government – according to anecdote, this Democrat government is possibly the most corrupt Thailand has ever suffered, with particularly high levels of looting from the public purse in those ministries (one in particular run by a minister whose gender I will not specify) in which coalition partners have an interest. Let us wait until new figures from Transparency International or other reputable international bodies are published to see whether these rumours are substantiated.

In any case, it does not seem very likely that the censure debate will have any positive impact other than in the court of public opinion – government MPs will simply deny everything (they are not the first to do so, of course) and know that the force of the establishment will surely support them. It does not matter, in other words, how the majority of the people vote and how often they vote for parties representing their interests, those parties are dissolved and the politicians banned. Unable to achieve their objectives by what they perceive to be not just an unfair system but an illegitimate one, their thoughts turn to direct action.

Review of Ranciere’s On the Shores of Politics

Jacques Rancière has been one of the leading French intellectuals of the past few decades and, in common with many other French intellectuals, his work is little-known among most of the English speaking world. Consequently, this slim volume of essays outlining much of his thought on politics is greatly to be welcomed (and has been translated without fuss by Liz Heron). In the four papers collected here, Rancière lays out the basis of democracy as it has been constructed since the time of Plato and the ways in which it has been used and abused since then.
Read the full review here.

What Is Totalitarianism?

Totalitarianism is a system of government in which the state takes over full control of all institutions of the law, politics and civil society. Everything is governed by the state and no opposition of any sort is permitted. There have been many examples of totalitarian regimes and attempted totalitarian regimes in the past but the two most well-known are the National Socialist or Nazi regime of Adolf Hitler and the Communist Soviet Union regime of Josef Stalin.

Read the full article here.

Review of Setting the People Free: The Story of Democracy

In this thought-provoking and readable book, John Dunn poses the questions of “what is democracy?” “Why is the term ‘democracy’ so prevalent around the world?” and “Why has democracy come to be seen as the only legitimate means by which a government may now claim to rule?” In seeking to answer these questions, he ranges from the bases of democracy in classical Athens through the French and American revolutions and all the way up to the present day (or at least until 2005, when the book was first published).

Read the full review here.

Review of Hannah Arendt’s On Revolution

Hannah Arendt is probably best known for her book The Origins of Totalitarianism, which is mired in the death camps of Europe and paints in detail a grim picture of the willingness of people to create systems that inflict misery on their fellows. She is rather more optimistic about the future in On Revolution, in which she brings to bear the brilliance of her intellect on the comparative study of revolutions.

Read the full review here.

Review of Thai Democracy in Crisis by Chaturon Chaisang

The disastrous military coup of September 19th, 2006 was followed, as coups usually are, by the suppression of free speech, the banning of dissenting politicians and the seizure of assets of those politicians by junta-appointed “neutral” and “legitimate” institutions. In Thailand, this included the banning of 111 leading executives of the Thai Rak Thai Party (TRT) – the party that had for the first time provided a democratically elected Prime Minister who served an entire term, for the first time was re-elected after elections and for the first time introduced a coherent manifesto of policies which, in office, were then enacted.

Read the full review here.

The 2007 Thai General Election and the Management of Political Communications: A Statistical Exploration

Announcing:  Lao-Hakosol, Wilaiporn and John Walsh, “The 2007 Thai General Election and the Management of Political Communications: A Statistical Exploration,” paper presented at International Colloquium on Business and Management, Bangkok (January 26^th-28^th, 2010).

Abstract: Political elections in Thailand have had a comparatively short and often undignified history. It is often concluded that a substantial proportion of such elections are decided by regional loyalties or by vote-buying in one form or another. Consequently, attempts to professionalise electioneering through the injection of ideology, the creation of mass membership parties and the use of sophisticated campaign communications are considered to be failures. However, it is not clear that the facts, as measured by the actual election results, would support such a conclusion. This paper examines the results of the 2007 election in the light of available data with a view to determining to some extent how and why people voted. Conclusions are drawn from the results and some tentative recommendations made for the future deployment of political communications as part of political marketing in Thailand.

The full paper should be available at the conference website.

What Is Neoliberalism?

The term ‘neoliberalism’ is used to describe a set of policies and ideological positions that have been extremely influential in shaping the global political economy since the late 1970s.

Read the full article here.

Kim Dae-Jung

Kim Dae-Jung, who died on August 18th, 2009 of natural causes, will be remembered as one of South Korea’s principal voices for liberty and moderation. Born in 1925, he had a long and often very difficult political career, encompassing such personal disasters as being kidnapped and being sentenced to death.

Read the full article here.