[New Mandala guest contributor, Thorn Pitidol, recently interviewed Associate Professor Attachak Satayanurak, lecturer in history in the Faculty of Humanities at Chiangmai Univeristy. Attachak is a member of the Midnight University group of academics, and is a major proponent of the campaign “Vote Against the 2007 Constitution”. This post is part of New Mandala's feature on the 2007 constitutional referendum.]
I asked Attachak Satayanurak why he opposes the 2007 draft constitution. Attachak’s respones focussed on the controversial issues in the proposed charter.
At the core of the 2007 constitution is disbelief in “people’s democracy”
The point of departure between supporters and opponents of the draft 2007 constitution are differences in their beliefs about democracy. The proponents of the 2007 constitution, Attachak argues, hold the belief that there can and should be “an external” force to protect democracy from falling under the “dirtyness” of politics. This type of democracy can be described as “aristrocrat’s democracy”. Attachak, however, does not hold this view towards democracy. He says that for him and the Midnight University academics, democracy should be all about the people. He argues that instead of believing in the aristrocrat’s superiority we should strive for “people’s democracy”.
Attachak explained to me that the draft 2007 constitution tries to accomplish the goal of bringing in aristrocrat’s democracy by weakening the political parties. The electoral system is designed to prevent the domination of any political party. Moreover, political power will lean in favour of the group of non-elected senators. This will allow the “external power” to gain control over poltics. Sadly, Attachak reflects, is there anything that can ensure that this “external power” will be accountable to people more than to themselves?
The improvement in community rights is just an empty promise
Attachak moved on to discuss issues related to community rights. These have been advertised by the constitution drafting committee as being better than in the 1997 constitution. While the constitution drafters have put in a section relating to community rights, there is no implementable channel to put the specifications about those rights into action. Since the draft constitution does not link the notion of community rights to the any control over resources, the promise of improvement in community rights will be an “empty” one.
In the end, people are being “deceived”
Finally, Attachak pointed out that the 2007 constitution drafting committee has tried to deceive people by telling them that the draft constitution will make it easier for the people to get rid of bad politicians directly. The drafting committee does not specify that while the amount of signatures required for the task is reduced, what people can do at most is to present their signatures to the senate, and hope for the senate to continue the task. Therefore, the group that will gain control over politicians will not be the people, but will, in fact, be the senate. Half of the Senate will be chosen by an “external power”. In the end, people are being deceived if they believe the 2007 constitution will allow them to gain control over politicians. Attachak concludes that only elites will benefit from the implementation of 2007 constitution.
1 response so far ↓
1 Republican // Aug 2, 2007 at 3:17 pm
Comment on Midnight University’s campaign against the new Constitution:
Given the concerted campaign by the military and state bureaucracy in favour of the new Constitution (as reported on NM) it seems a foregone conclusion that it will be passed in the up-coming referendum. So I think the academics’ campaign against the Constitution can be seen rather as one of those things that Thai academics love to do: make the grand statement, the noble gesture, claim the moral high-ground. The only way that a no-campaign would have any possibility of real success would be if the academics were to ally themselves with the Thai Rak Thai political networks (assuming they are still effective) in a coordinated political campaign, which, even if it were possible in the current security environment, would be something the academics would never deign to do. The academics don’t mind working for the bureaucracy, or the CNS for that matter, but they would never wish to be seen to ally themselves with politicians – the elected representatives of the people – whom they regard with great disgust.
But even though the no-vote campaign is probably a lost cause I think that the Constitution is already doomed by the illegitimate, undemocratic process in which it was drafted and put to referendum. It will go down in history as the “dictators’ Constitution”, illegitimately conceived as a result of a coup, in the same way that, despite its many anti-democratic provisions the 1997 Constitution was characterized as Thailand’s “most democratic ever”, given the relatively more open, transparent process in which it was drafted. Like other products of inbreeding it is unlikely to have a long life. In fact, the whole drafting and referendum process has been so flawed, and has been seen to be so flawed, that it is likely to provide a pretext for a future political crisis. So no doubt the academics will have other opportunities to demonstrate to us their Constitution-drafting skills. (Now if they could just omit those archaic articles relating to the monarchy they might convince even me of their commitment to democracy, “rights” and “freedom”).
Re. Midnight University’s support for a “people’s democracy”, well this is a bit rich coming from the MU academics. Their record over the course of 2006 and 2007 should be closely examined, in particular the writings of its leading figures, Nidhi Eeoseewong and Kasien Tejapira. As I have already stated on NM, Nidhi has a long and consistent record of downplaying the importance of elections, and of showing a deep disdain for politicians. Kasien introduced and popularized the appalling concept of “electocracy” in order to attack Thaksin’s democratic legitimacy. Both have repeatedly demonstrated that they have little regard for political legitimacy that comes from an electoral mandate. MU academics enthusiastically joined the campaign to oust Thaksin even though it did not support the call for Article 7 of the 1997 Constitution to impose a royally-appointed PM. In other words, they campaigned against a democratically-elected PM who was extremely popular with the electorate – “the people”. MU academics were among those who often made the comparison between Thaksin and Hitler, in order to show that elections can produce “tyrants”. In my opinion this anti-election stance, reproduced in the media, did enormous damage to the legitimacy of the Thai Rak Thai government and was a key factor contributing to the campaign to overthrow it. But now the MU network wants to protest about the Constitution’s provisions for a half-appointed Senate and the bureaucratic control of politicians, when before September 19 they themselves were issuing thalaengkans and writing newspaper columns read by hundreds of thousands of people diminishing the significance of elections and expressing their contempt for politicians – the elected representatives of the people!
In fact, what is particularly striking to me are the SIMILARITIES between the discourse of the MU academics and the CNS: their belittling of elections; their abhorrence of politicians; their loathing for capitalism (remember Sonthi’s statement that one of the reasons for the coup was to overthrow a “capitalist dictatorship”); their idealism about local, culturally autonomous, self-sustaining communities (which, taken together with their anti-capitalist stance is not so different from “sufficiency economy” theory); and their fear and mistrust of the outside world, especially the farang.
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